$1 Million Bail Set for Doctor Accused in Chloroform Killing : Courts: Prosecutors say the New Jersey physician administered the anesthetic to his female traveling companion so he could have sex with her.

From the get-go, 20-year-old Jennifer Klapper was none too sure she wanted to accept the invitation from the handsome, baby-faced physician to accompany him from New Jersey to California for a summer vacation.

Jennifer’s older sister remembers hearing her tell the 28-year-old man that if he expected “anything sexual” during the trip, “to forget it.”

Prosecutors would allege later that at a Carlsbad motel, Dr. Sam Dubria would snuff out her life with an overdose of chloroform for the sex that he wanted and was denied.

In Vista Municipal Court on Tuesday, bail for Dubria was set at $1 million while he awaits his preliminary hearing on charges of first-degree murder. Prosecutors say they eventually might try to allege special circumstances--which could bring the death penalty--that he raped her in the course of murder and used poison to end her life.

It was supposed to be an innocent relationship, a summer fling for Klapper before enrolling in some tough science courses at the University of Louisville in the fall.

The couple had met while he was interning at Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati. She lived in Cincinnati and met Dubria while she worked at the hospital’s medical library. To some degree, they socialized after work, but Klapper had a more serious boyfriend and let it be known to her doctor friend that there would be no sex in their relationship, family members would say later.

“She trusted him, and he betrayed that trust,” her father, Michael Klapper, would say later. “She had asked us for our opinion about going to California with him, and we told her she was old enough to make her own decisions. She generally has a good sense of character.”

And indeed, the vacation trip to California started off platonically enough, especially after the couple spent several days--in separate bedrooms--at the doctor’s parents’ home in Glendale.

This was, clearly, an upstanding family of an upstanding young doctor just starting his career in rehabilitative medicine. His father, Paterno, is a mechanical engineer for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power; his mother, Lourdes, is a secretary at the Los Angeles offices of the U.S. Attorney. Dubria himself graduated from Glendale High School and then attended UC Berkeley and the George Washington University School of Medicine, a bright student on his way to a bright career.

Dubria and Klapper left Glendale on Aug. 15 for a trip to Tijuana and, just before midnight, they stopped for the night at the All-Star Inn in Carlsbad.

Dubria would tell investigators later, according to court documents, that they watched television and “although they were just friends, Klapper for the first time had sexual intercourse with him.”

Afterward, she went to sleep, he told investigators, and about 3 the next morning, when he was in the bathroom, he heard a thud, a groan, and found his female traveling companion “on the floor, unresponsive and in respiratory arrest.”

He tried to administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation for five minutes, then ran to the motel clerk to ask that he call 911, Dubria said. The clerk said he was too busy, but that the doctor could call for help from his own motel room, he said.

Dubria said he ran back, found he had locked himself out, ran again to the clerk for a second room key, then finally called 911 from his room.

That’s Dubria’s story. Prosecutors allege something decidedly more sinister.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Tim Casserly alleges that Dubria knocked Jennifer Klapper out with chloroform, then raped her--only to find that she wouldn’t regain consciousness.

An examination by the San Diego County medical examiner’s office concluded that Klapper, who had scratches on her neck and whose pants were on her inside out, died of chloroform intoxication.

And, their examination concluded, there was semen in the victim indicating both vaginal and anal sex.

After the death, Dubria returned to his residency at the Lyons Veterans Administration Hospital in Basking Ridge, N.J. When he was arrested Dec. 5, he waived extradition and was ordered held without bail in the County Jail in Vista.

Dubria went before Vista Municipal Court Judge Suzanne Knauf on Tuesday, asking to post bail for his freedom until his preliminary hearing, scheduled for Feb. 13.

Casserly argued that Dubria, a naturalized citizen who was born in the Philippines, might be willing to post any amount of money just so he can flee the country “and ply his trade anywhere (else) in the world.”

Dubria’s attorney, Los Angeles defense attorney Leslie H. Abramson, said Dubria’s family--who filled two rows of seats in Knauf’s courtroom--had come to court prepared to post nearly $1 million in real estate security, enough to release Dubria on $500,000 bail.

Abramson said Casserly’s suggestion that Dubria might flee to the Philippines was uncalled-for. “Everyone in the United States of America is from some other country,” she argued. “To imply that naturalized Americans and their families are to be treated differently is an inconsistent statement.”

She suggested confiscating his passport, putting him under house arrest with an electronic monitor or giving his mother responsibility for his appearance in court.

“His mother has worked for the U.S. attorney’s office for a number of years,” she noted. “You can’t ask for a more reliable jailer than Mrs. Dubria.”

Casserly asked for bail of at least $5 million.

“He has family support, but the court has to consider, how much is someone willing to pay in order to escape spending the rest of his life in prison?

“There was a great degree of premeditation--if not in the killing, then in the (rape) itself,” Casserly said. Why else would he have chloroform with him at the time, Casserly alleged.

In the end, Knauf set bail at $1 million.

Abramson said it was unclear wither Dubria’s family could raise that much money--or twice that amount in real estate security, as the law requires. She asked for another bail review on Jan. 31.

The victim’s father said the man belonged in jail, period.

“We knew him. He had been to our house several times,” said Michael Klapper, who flew out from Cincinnati with other family members to attend the bail review hearing.

“He seemed like such a decent person,” he said. “Then, the first night they were away from his family, this is what happened.”