VA Murders Case: 'Lot More To Come'

VA Murders Case

'Lot More To Come’

BY JOHN BARTON
Police Reporter

DETROIT — Closing arguments should get under way here Monday on a defense motion to suppress testimony of a key prosecution witness in the VA Hospital murder case.

The witness, Richard Neely, has told the FBI he remembers Leonora Perez being in his hospital room shortly before someone allegedly tried to kill him.

But Neely, a 62-year-old retired factory worker, was unable to name Perez, a former nurse at the VA Hospital, as his alleged assailant until after he had been hypnotized three times and interrogated by FBI agents.

In four days of pretrial testimony, the defense has tried to prove to U.S. District Court Judge Philip Pratt that Neely’s recollection of Perez being in his room is a false one. They say the presence of Perez was implanted in his subconscious through subtle cues and the suggestive line of questioning used by the FBI interrogators while Neely was in the hypnotic trances.

Neely’s identification of Perez could be a false memory; a true memory or a combination of both, according to two psychiatrist-hypnotists called to the witness stand by defense and prosecution attorneys.

Both experts have told Pratt they could not be certain about the true state of Neely’s memory without further tests. Even then, both experts said, the question might never be resolved.

Perez, 32, and Filipina Narciso, 30, two natives of the Philippines who were nurses when mysterious breathing failures and deaths swept through the Fuller Road hospital during the summer of 1975, are to go on trial Feb. 1 under a 16-count federal indictment.

The indictment accuses the two women of conspiracy, five counts each of first-degree murder and 10 counts each of poisoning patients.

Federal prosecutors charge Perez and Narciso murdered and poisoned the patients by injecting Pavulon, a power muscle-relaxing drug, into the victims' intravenous feeding tubing. Pavulon affects voluntary and involuntary breathing muscles within seconds. A person given the drug will suffocate unless he is connected to a breathing machine or given an antidote to reverse Pavulon’s effects on the muscle system.

At issue in the motion to suppress Neely’s so-called eyewitness identification of Perez, is whether that identification was taken from Neely’s true memory or inadvertently planted there by his FBI interrogators.

Although the defense has called a number of persons who have testified to Neely’s long history of strange behavior, drinking and mental problems, both sides agreed Friday that Neely’s credibility is not an issue in the hearing.

The media has been very hard of Mr. Neely and his personal life," said Asst. U.S. Atty. Richard Yanko in a mild rebuke to newsmen covering the hearings. “But Richard Neely’s believability is not what this hearing is all about.

“We’re here simply to decide whether the government — the FBI — used improper techniques or tainted Mr. Neely’s memory in any improper way,” Yanko continued. “Only a jury can decide issues of credibility, and that’s why I think the judge is going to rule that there was absolutely nothing about the FBI agents’ questioning that would make Mr. Neely's testimony inadmissible in court.

“You may not think so,” Yanko said, “but I think we are going to win this hearing. And we’ve got witnesses we will call to substantiate Mr. Neely’s testimony. There is a lot more that is yet to come out about this case when we go to trial: "

Yanko refused to elaborate, and smilingly told reporters who asked who his witnesses were they "will just have to wait for the trial.”

Pratt has given no indication when he will rule on the motion to keep Neely from testifying at the upcoming trial.

Still pending, too, is a ruling from Pratt on a previous defense motion to dismiss the 10 counts of poisoning because they were incorrectly brought into federal court under a Michigan law.

City/County/Region
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The Ann Arbor News
Saturday, January 8, 1977