Producer’s Death Exposes 2 Doctors to New Scrutiny

Robert H. Gerner, a renowned West Coast psychiatrist on the cutting edge of his field, is so skilled, acquaintances say, that doctors regularly referred him patients when all else failed. Those he has managed to pull back from the abyss of mental illness have called him “God.”

His protege, Nomi J. Fredrick, a respected physician in her own right, graduated from medical school after a promising career as an artist. During a 1970s stint at the Jim Henson Muppet Workshop, she helped create the prototype of Miss Piggy.

Today, both doctors are facing notoriety of another kind as federal, state and local authorities probe the death of their most famous patient--Hollywood film producer Don Simpson, who overdosed on cocaine and 20 prescription drugs in January.

Neither doctor would comment. Attorneys they have retained adamantly deny that their clients did anything wrong.

But a review of court records and interviews with law enforcement sources suggest that there were cracks in the impeccable professional reputations built by the two doctors. Gerner is on professional probation for having sex with a patient to whom he overprescribed powerful drugs.

Law enforcement sources say they have uncovered a pattern of prescription abuse involving more than a dozen of Fredrick’s upscale clients.

“When we reviewed Dr. Nomi Fredrick’s patient profiles, we found that she was dispensing a staggering amount of dope,” said Det. Dave Miller, supervisor of the LAPD’s narcotics group in West Los Angeles, who launched the seven-month investigation into Simpson’s death. “The frequency and the volume and the strength of the prescriptions went way out of bounds.”

Gerner and Fredrick, who are on the staff of St. Johns Hospital in Santa Monica, are among 15 physicians under investigation by law enforcement for allegedly overprescribing addictive drugs to Simpson and others.

More than a week ago, dozens of investigators raided their West Los Angeles offices and seized medical records, prescription drugs and computer disks. Fredrick’s home was searched. Authorities are now preparing evidence to present to a federal grand jury in the weeks ahead.

“What the public has to understand is that the accusations that have appeared recently in the newspapers are only that--mere accusations,” said Melissa N. Widdifield, Fredrick’s lawyer. “Dr. Fredrick will respond when and if these matters ever get to court, and then it will become clear that she has been a dedicated medical doctor.”

Simpson’s body was found Jan. 19 at his Bel-Air estate, five months after his friend and doctor, Stephen Ammerman, died of a multiple drug overdose on the same property. Among other things, authorities suspect that the drugs that contributed to both deaths came from an illegal detox program conducted by Ammerman and Fredrick at Simpson’s home.

News of the police raid and the allegations involving the physicians have stunned patients and colleagues who know their work and have frequently sought their guidance, particularly Gerner’s.

“He has been a recognized authority and one of the more prominent people in the field,” said Dr. Daniel B. Borenstein, a Brentwood psychiatrist and trustee of the California Medical Assn. “I am saddened by some of this. It’s hard to have someone in your community who has been so well thought of become tarnished by the media before we know all the facts.”

Gerner and Fredrick are specialists in an emerging area of psychiatry known as psycho-pharmacology. The newly developing field relies extensively on the use of drugs to control severe psychiatric disorders. Physicians say those in the field often care for difficult, high risk patients who have not responded well to traditional methods.

Over the past 25 years, Gerner has developed a national reputation as an expert in depression and sleep deprivation as well as the use of new medications. He was author or coauthor of more than 65 research papers.

In the mid-1970s, Gerner held a research post at the National Institute of Mental Health shortly after graduating from medical school at the University of Oklahoma. He was chief of psychiatric research at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Long Beach during the early 1980s.

Now 49, Gerner has held faculty and research positions at UCLA and UC Irvine medical schools in addition to building a successful private practice in West Los Angeles. Gerner still has a post at the Wadsworth Veterans Administration Hospital in Westwood.

“I’ve often asked for his advice,” said Dr. Stephen R. Marder, chief of psychiatry at the Wadsworth facility. “He was always willing to handle the hard cases. It takes a certain individual to do that. The cases are challenging and demanding. They are risky. You don’t know what will work, but he would often get good results.”

Because of his expertise, attorneys have sought Gerner as an expert witness or to perform psychiatric examinations of people involved in lawsuits. A few years ago, his testimony helped undermine the theory of repressed memory in a case against Gary Ramona, a Napa Valley wine executive accused by his grown daughter of molesting her when she was a child.

Until earlier this year, Gerner served as president of the western chapter of the American Suicide Foundation, a research and educational organization based in New York. The executive director of the foundation said Gerner resigned the post citing personal and professional problems.

Some of those difficulties began in late 1988 when a married couple from Beverly Hills complained to the Medical Board of California and sued him for malpractice, seeking at least $1 million in damages.

The lawsuit alleged that for almost two years, Gerner had sexual relations with the wife, while she and her husband were under his care at the now defunct Center for Mood Disorders. Medical Board records state that Gerner--unbeknown to the husband--had oral sex and intercourse with the woman during office visits.

The couple also accused Gerner of improperly prescribing them more than 20 types of controlled substances, including tranquilizers and stimulants. When problems developed because of the medications, Gerner did nothing to stop the drug abuse, they charged.

The woman, a West Coast editor of a popular fashion magazine, had sought Gerner’s care for depression. Gerner was treating her husband for mental problems apparently caused by the couple’s deteriorating marriage.

Case records state that during her relationship with Gerner, the woman was hospitalized several times for overdosing on alcohol and medications prescribed by Gerner.

In March 1994, court documents show that Gerner paid the woman’s husband $175,000 to settle the lawsuit. The wife received a substantially larger, though undisclosed, amount.

Five months later, the Medical Board suspended Gerner’s license for two months. The board also placed him on seven years professional probation and restricted his practice for a year to patients at Wadsworth.

At the height of Gerner’s problems with the Medical Board, Fredrick assumed charge of his patients, who were told, sources said, that Gerner was on sabbatical to write a book.

Gerner’s protege was born in Puerto Rico and grew up in the South Bronx. As a child, she was gifted as a visual artist and entered Brooklyn’s prestigious Pratt Institute of Design, where she graduated in 1977 with a bachelor’s degree.

Fredrick landed a job as a sculptor at Jim Henson’s Muppet Workshop where she specialized in sculpture, foam and casting techniques. A spokesperson for the workshop said Fredrick was a talented artist who helped cast the prototype for the first Miss Piggy puppet, which was designed by Bonnie Erickson.

Fredrick then decided to change careers. After graduating from the New York University School of Medicine in 1989, Fredrick did her residency in psychiatry at UCLA, where she first worked with Gerner.

In an interview three months ago, Sandra Lipschultz, an administrator for the psychiatry department, said, “It would be impossible to forget Dr. Nomi Fredrick. She was a fun, fascinating character with a very unusual background in the arts. How many psychiatrists are there who could say they helped create a pig with an attitude?”

Fredrick, now 40, received her medical license in 1990 and soon began treating troubled children at the Department of Mental Health in the psychiatric division at McClaren Hall. Her reputation as a therapist spread rapidly, and she soon joined Gerner as a partner at the Center for Mood Disorders.

Law enforcement sources say they now are investigating Fredrick’s prescribing pattern involving a number of her patients.

Fredrick allegedly prescribed six years worth of Dexedrine, an addictive amphetamine, in less than six months to one local businessman, law enforcement sources said. She also prescribed four times the average dosage of Ritalin, a stimulant, and twice the normal dosage of Vicodin, a painkiller, to a Los Angeles artist, records show.

Over the past year, Fredrick prescribed more than 4,600 pills to Aileen Getty, the granddaughter of the late oil baron J. Paul Getty and former daughter-in-law of actress Elizabeth Taylor, law enforcement sources said.

The 36-year-old Getty, who was diagnosed as HIV-positive in 1985, recently discussed her lengthy battle with substance abuse in the May issue of Poz magazine, saying that she nearly died this year due to misuse of drugs and alcohol.

Despite the oil heiress’s drug problems, records indicate that Fredrick last year prescribed as many as 800 pills of addictive drugs to Getty in the course of a single day. Indeed, on Aug. 16, 1995, Fredrick wrote Getty prescriptions for 120 morphine, 200 Percodan, 200 Dexedrine, 90 Clonidine, 60 Klonopin, 90 Xanax and 60 Valium--a potent combination of painkillers, tranquilizers and stimulants.

Getty declined comment, as did her attorney, Alan D. Hamilton.

Those prescriptions were written by Fredrick one day after Ammerman, a previous patient of hers, was found dead on Simpson’s property with a lethal amount of morphine in his system. Records show that Fredrick wrote Simpson numerous prescriptions in July and August for addictive drugs, including one for morphine sulfate on Aug. 7--eight days before Ammerman overdosed.