Caretaker Told Police He Witnessed Mercy Killing : Probe: Court papers show that Melvin Seifert’s live-in aide claims to have watched a lethal injection. Seifert’s wife and doctor are under investigation.

A live-in assistant hired to help care for an ailing Redondo Beach man went to police on the day the invalid died and reported that a doctor had given the man a lethal injection, court documents released Wednesday say.

After taking a statement from caretaker Louis Walters Jr., who gave investigators an empty container of a sedative he said the doctor used, police searched the home where Melvin Seifert, 79, died on Oct. 27, then conducted a search of the home and office of Seifert’s doctor, Richard C. Schaeffer.

Both Schaeffer and Seifert’s widow, Mary, were arrested on Oct. 28 on suspicion of murder, but were later released after prosecutors concluded that it could take as much as three weeks to decide whether to charge the pair.

Authorities have not released information on the cause of Seifert’s death, saying that toxicological studies are continuing.

Attorney Michael R. Magasin, who represents Schaeffer, called Walters’ comments “fiction.” Mary Seifert twice said she had been told by her attorney not to talk about the incident.

Police have declined to reveal the events leading up to the arrests and have refused to comment on the statements made by Walters.

But supporting material attached to a search warrant indicates that Walters told them he witnessed the alleged mercy killing of Seifert, who had Alzheimer’s disease and emphysema and was partially paralyzed after a stroke seven months ago.

In his comments to police, Walters indicated that he did not know Schaeffer intended to kill Seifert until after the lethal injection had been administered.

“When (Walters) realized what Dr. Schaeffer had done, he became emotional and started crying,” said Detective Mark Sturgeon in a summary of Walters’ comments. “Dr. Schaeffer tried to calm him down, telling him this was the best thing . . . that Mary Seifert called him and said that Melvin Seifert was in a lot of pain.”

Magasin said his client did nothing wrong.

“That’s just not correct. That’s just not what happened,” he said. “If this had happened, why would you do it in front of a witness? That’s just remarkable. I’m just astounded.”

At Seifert’s house, police confiscated a syringe needle and a paper container for amytal sodium, the same substance that had been in the container given to them by Walters.