Former Doctor Who Relished Luxuries Is on the Lam

Ronald Fischer presented himself as a bona fide bon vivant, a cultured doctor with a taste for life’s luxuries. He prowled for women in dating publications and on the Internet, advertising as a physician with an interest in shopping, sports, travel and theater.

Authorities and some who knew him paint a different picture -- that of a phony, self-obsessed man who thought he was above the law. In at least two cases, he brought unsuspecting women to his boat, where he attacked them.

Five days before a jury in April convicted him of sexually assaulting a woman aboard his yacht, the Lion King, Fischer wrote an e-mail to his lawyers and said he was skipping town.

“Although I believe my trial has gone very well, and expect to be acquitted and dismissed, the small chance of losing could carry extremely and unacceptably harsh penalties,” Fischer wrote. “I have therefore decided not to take the risk and to leave the U.S. and enjoy life in another country where I have long been carefully planning a good, safe, secure and comfortable life.”

No one has seen him since.

The conviction came 11 years after Fischer, 49, a onetime anesthesiologist stripped of his medical license, was accused of the same crime -- under strikingly similar circumstances.

In both cases, he used his status as a doctor and the trappings of wealth to lure women in personal ads, invite them to his boat and, prosecutors say, rape them.

Now, a manhunt is underway for the divorced doctor, who disappeared while out on bail and has since been profiled on “America’s Most Wanted.”

He could spend the rest of his life in prison if caught, said Michael Healey, spokesman for the state attorney general’s office.

Fischer, who has been known to use other names, gave up his passport as a condition of his bail, but Healey said it was possible he had phony documents.

Babette Augustin, picture editor at the Providence Journal, met Fischer for a date over coffee at a Starbucks in East Greenwich in the fall of 2002. She said his weathered, pockmarked face and bad comb-over were not what she expected from reading his ad in a local newspaper.

“He put himself out there as someone who was very wealthy, very worldly and cultured,” Augustin said, calling Fischer a name-dropper.

Nevertheless, she returned to his apartment, which she said was decorated with “bad Florida condo furniture” meant to impress. When he tried to kiss and grope her, she rebuffed him.

“I thought to myself how foolish I was just to have trusted someone because they said they were a doctor,” Augustin said.

She was one of the lucky ones.

Charles Plouff, who lived next door to Fischer’s East Greenwich house, said he often saw Fischer washing down his white Jaguar convertible, and wearing shorts even in cold weather.

“He looked like he thought he was God’s gift to women,” he said.

Which is apparently how he hoped to come across in his personal ads, in which he called himself a doctor -- even after losing his license -- and said he was years younger than he actually was. In one Internet posting, he used the label, “Romantic at Heart.” He described himself as a 6-foot tall Aquarius, a blue-eyed physician able to find time for the “finer things in life.”

“Sometimes I like to go out on the town, take in a show, music event, or comedy club,” he wrote. Other times, he said, he liked to relax at home with a video.

The case that led to his conviction in April began two years earlier. On April 12, 2003, Fischer raped a woman who responded to one of his Internet ads. The assault occurred at a Portsmouth marina, aboard the Lion King.

The woman told police that Fischer drove her to the yacht during their date. As she studied a photograph of his two daughters, he threw her onto the bed and began forcibly kissing her.

She said Fischer made her perform oral sex and then raped her.

The circumstances of the rape are nearly identical to an assault in August 1994, which occurred aboard another of Fisher’s boats, The Dreammaker, in Quincy, Mass.

That allegation put an end to his successful medical career, causing him to lose his medical license in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Fischer had served as chairman of the anesthesia department at Memorial Hospital in Pawtucket and as assistant professor at Brown University Medical School.

The victim in the 1994 case, a young single mother, met Fischer through an ad he placed in the Dating Pages, in which he boasted of being a handsome doctor “seeking an intelligent, very beautiful companion in her twenties for fun, laughter and love ... “

The woman said Fischer led her below deck into a bedroom, where he gave her a back rub, pushed her down on the bed and ultimately forced her to have sex with him.

Fischer pleaded guilty in 1996 to two felony counts of assault and battery. He received a 2 1/2 -year suspended sentence and 5 years’ probation.

In a written recommendation that Fischer be sanctioned, an administrative magistrate advised the Massachusetts medical board that Fischer’s conduct was that of “an angry, controlling man determined to have his way regardless of the wishes of the woman who had sought his company.”

State and federal authorities won’t comment on the details of their search for Fischer or say where they believe he might be.

Detective A.J. Bucci in Portsmouth said police found a book at Fischer’s home on how to conceal an identity.

On April 23, he sent his lawyers, Robert Mann and Dana Harrell, an e-mail titled “Goodbye.” He thanked them for their work representing him.

He concluded by admonishing Mann to watch his diet and eat less chocolate.