Sedative Aided in Death of Invalid, Autopsy Reveals : Investigation: Mercy killing is suspected as prosecutors decide whether to file charges against Redondo Beach widow and doctor of the deceased.

An overdose of a sedative contributed to the death of a Redondo Beach invalid whose wife and doctor were arrested on suspicion of murder, according to an autopsy report released this week.

In his report on the death of Melvin Seifert, 79, deputy medical examiner James K. Ribe stops short of saying that an injection of amobarbital was the primary cause of Seifert’s death. But he said the injection was clearly a factor.

Prosecutors declined to say how the coroner’s findings would affect their decision on whether to file criminal charges against Seifert’s wife, Mary, and his doctor, Richard C. Schaeffer, who were released a day after their arrests last October on suspicion of a mercy killing.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Brian Kelberg criticized Schaeffer’s decision to give Seifert an injection of amobarbital, a once-popular, powerful sedative that doctors use less now that other drugs have become available. Seifert died minutes after the injection.

Of considerable concern, the prosecutor said, was the fact that several drugs found in Schaeffer’s medical bag had expired in the 1970s. Packaging found by police suggests the sedative Schaeffer gave Seifert that day may have been 30 years old.

“Dr. Schaeffer did not have the drugs of choice when he went to the Seifert home, so the fact that he would use this outmoded and expired drug is in itself a significant finding,” Kelberg said. “When you use a drug which has long since passed the safe period of potency, you enter the realm of the unknown . . . you don’t know what effect it might have.”

The retired Redondo Union High School coach died in his south Redondo home the morning of Oct. 27. A live-in aide for the Seiferts, Louis Walters, told police the day after Seifert’s death that he believed Schaeffer, 70, used the sedative at Mary Seifert’s request to euthanize her husband.

The pair were arrested Oct. 28, but released a day later pending completion of the criminal investigation. Prosecutors have been studying the case for the past eight months.

Seifert suffered for a number of years from Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, as well as diabetes, emphysema and heart disease, “a combination of illnesses from which his death was to be expected within anywhere from a few minutes to a few days,” Ribe noted.

“It is a medical fact, well known to all physicians, that the giving of such an injection to a patient in the condition that decedent was in carries a high likelihood of causing a respiratory arrest. There was no acceptable medical indication for the giving of this injection in this case,” Ribe said in the report, which categorizes the death as a homicide, although not necessarily an illegal one.

Toxicology tests show that Seifert’s blood contained 9.6 micrograms of amobarbital per milliliter at the time of his death. The autopsy report states that one to five micrograms is considered the “therapeutic” level, and above 10 micrograms is considered toxic. More than 13 micrograms would be lethal.

“I believe it is likely that (amobarbital) caused acute respiratory depression and contributed to decedent’s death. . . . I think it would be going too far to say I can establish this as a medical certainty from my vantage point as autopsy pathologist,” concludes Ribe. He listed the immediate causes of death as acute bronchopneumonia and amobarbital intoxication.

Walters told police that Mary Seifert told him the shot was “to put (Melvin Seifert) to sleep or help him sleep.”

After the shot was administered, “Mary Seifert said goodby to Melvin Seifert,” according to a police summary of Walters’ comments. “For the next 15 minutes, Mary Seifert and Dr. Schaeffer discussed how long it would take for Melvin Seifert to die. Dr. Schaeffer said between 10 and 15 minutes.”

After Seifert died, Schaeffer allegedly called a mortuary and asked that Seifert’s body be cremated “right away, without preparation.” Police took the body from the funeral home to conduct an autopsy.

An attorney for Schaeffer, who has declined all interview requests, did not respond to telephone calls Wednesday, but previously has called Walters’ account “fiction.”

Schaeffer, 70, and Seifert grew up together in Redondo Beach, where the doctor has had a general practice for 45 years, friends have said. Schaeffer had been making house calls on Seifert for several days before his death.

Mary Seifert also has declined to comment, but her attorney, Joel Levine, said he would discuss the case after prosecutors have decided whether or not to file charges.

Neighbors and friends have said that Mary Seifert, 75 and partly paralyzed in one arm, took on the demanding task of caring for her ailing husband after his health began sharply deteriorating after a mild stroke in 1984.

Records from a day care program in which Mary Seifert enrolled her husband indicate that she had become “extremely stressed with his care giving” by early last year.

A few months before his death, Seifert, a previously vigorous athlete who retired in 1972, had become so weak that he could scarcely talk and had to be carried between his wheelchair and bed.

Three days before Seifert’s death, on his last day at the center, day care officials wrote in his record that they believed he had suffered a second stroke.