Doctor Held After Co-Worker’s Body Is Found at Base of Cliff

A neonatologist at Huntington Memorial Hospital was arrested and booked on suspicion of murder Thursday night shortly after he was reportedly seen pushing a car--and the body of a female pediatrician with whom he worked--off a cliff in the San Gabriel Mountains.

Dr. Kevin Anderson, 40, admitted that he strangled Dr. Deepti Gupta in a fit of rage over a business matter, then pushed her off a rocky escarpment to make it look like an accident, said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Lt. Ray Peavy.

A single witness driving along the Angeles Crest Highway about 8:15 p.m. saw the incident, then followed Anderson and called authorities. The doctor was arrested five miles down the road, where his vehicle had become stuck on a berm in a turnout, officials said.

The La Verne man, who is married and has a child, was booked at the La Crescenta sheriff’s station.

The body of Gupta, 33, of Glendale, was found about 270 feet below the highway, where she had been thrown from her vehicle. An Indian emigrant, she was the mother of a 2-year-old girl and the wife of a UCLA mechanical engineering professor.

Anderson told investigators that he and Gupta were planning to open a private practice together in Pasadena. They had already leased the space and worked out many of the business details when he decided to back out of the deal and stay at Huntington in Pasadena, Peavy said.

She was upset, and they decided to go up into the Angeles National Forest to discuss it, said Peavy. Anderson did not explain why they chose to talk there, the lieutenant said.

“This is his story,” Peavy said. “They were in his car, got into a heated argument about it. He lost his temper and strangled her. In his opinion, she was dead. . . . He put her in her car and decided to push her off a cliff to make it look like an accident.”

Investigators are still looking into other motives for the attack, including possible romantic involvement.

Also, according to one county official at the scene, the victim’s body temperature was a low 80 degrees, indicating that she had died at least eight hours before she was discovered. The official said her body was in a state of rigor mortis with discoloration “hard-set” in the upper torso. The Los Angeles County coroner’s office would not confirm these observations, and said it would take four to six weeks to determine the cause of death.

The man who saw the incident only saw the car go over the side of the cliff, officials said. He then turned around and came back as Anderson was leaving, officials said. He then notified authorities. At some point, he headed after Anderson and found a vehicle stuck on a berm with a bystander helping him.

Then the witness “saw the guy stuck and asked if he needed any help,” said Peavy. “And the suspect said, ‘No, I’m OK.’ ”

So the witness drove back to the scene of the crime and climbed down the embankment to discover the woman’s body, officials said. “This guy is unbelievable,” Peavy said of the witness.

Paramedics with the county Fire Department pronounced her dead at the scene, and the Montrose Search and Rescue team later removed the body.

Meanwhile, deputies closed the highways and swarmed in on Anderson, officials said. First, they detained him and the bystander, but later determined that the man was simply a good Samaritan and released him.

Dr. Lawrence Opas, the chief of pediatrics at County-USC Medical Center where Gupta recently finished her residency, said she was “extremely friendly” and made children light up when she entered the room.

“She had this wonderful, big smile,” he said. “This is a real loss to children. She was an excellent doctor.”

Huntington Hospital officials refused to comment about either of the doctors.