State Medical Board Investigates Psychiatrist in Murder-Suicide Case : Inquiry: The pistol used in the killings is registered to a Downey doctor who prescribed drugs for one of the victims.

The state medical board has opened an investigation of a Downey psychiatrist whose handgun was used in the murder-suicide of a British stripper and her husband in Sherman Oaks, officials said.

The psychiatrist, Dr. V. Charles Charuvastra, had also prescribed medication to Victoria Howden, 26, who killed her husband, Charles House, 40, on June 10 before turning the gun on herself, Los Angeles police said.

Police said they referred the case to the Medical Board of California, which investigates allegations of professional misconduct, after discovering that the .357 magnum revolver that Howden used was registered to Charuvastra. In the couple’s apartment, police also found antidepressants that Charuvastra had prescribed for her.

“The allegation is that patient shot husband with subject’s gun,” said Ron Olson, a supervising investigator for the medical board in Sacramento.

“The question is how she got the gun. How did she get it and from where? That’s why we opened it. We have an interest in his involvement in it,” Olson said.

Charuvastra did not return phone calls to his office and answering service.

But the psychiatrist told police that Howden, who once was a nanny for his children, used a key to get into his condominium and took the gun without his permission, according to Lt. Richard Blankenship.

Charuvastra also told detectives that the woman, a native of England, contacted him in January, saying that she was depressed about her immigration status, Blankenship said. The medication found in Howden’s apartment was prescribed about that time, the police lieutenant said.

Howden, who landed a bit part on a TV sitcom last year, worked as a striptease dancer at private bachelor parties, police said.

She did not have a “green card,” however, and married House early this year so she could legally live and work in this country. But House, a former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy who was training to become a school district police officer, told a relative that he regretted their Las Vegas marriage and planned to divorce Howden.

The state’s investigation of Charuvastra is the latest twist in a case that has taken many turns.

Police originally believed there had been a double suicide, based on a phone call Howden made to her employer shortly before her death. She said that House had just shot himself and that she didn’t know what to do.

But autopsy reports and a closer study of the crime scene showed that House was shot in the head about 2 a.m. after he fell asleep while working at the dining room table, detectives said. They concluded that Howden took the same gun into the bedroom, where she shot herself in the chest.

Howden left a suicide note, police said, which disclosed her previous involvement with a California Highway Patrol officer, who killed himself May 7, apparently despondent that she split up with him.

CHP Officer Ronald Webb, 34, was found dead near the San Diego Freeway, where he shot himself in the chest with his service revolver.

Police said Howden, in turn, became despondent over Webb’s suicide and threatened to kill herself. Days after his death, she was arrested at his estranged wife’s home and placed under a psychiatric observation.

At that time, Ventura County sheriff’s deputies confiscated a gun that Webb had given her.

Blankenship said police still are not certain when Howden obtained Charuvastra’s revolver, but believe it was sometime in May. While the doctor did not report the gun stolen, police said, he apparently suspected Howden had taken it because he tried contacting her to get it back.