Kay Sybers was fifty-two years old and, by anyone’s standards, unhealthy. She’d been a smoker years ago; she was overweight. But she didn’t show signs of medical problems until one evening in 1991, when (after a dinner of prime rib and Chardonnay) she had trouble breathing and developed shooting pain down her left arm. Those are classic signs of a heart attack-something her husband, Bill, should have recognized. After all, he was a Florida physician who doubled as the county coroner. Instead of calling an ambulance or whisking her to the ER, though, he attempted to draw blood from her arm. He wanted to run a few tests that day at work, he said. Yet hours later, Kay was dead. Concluding that she had died from a coronary, Bill Sybers decided against an autopsy.
A day later, based on an anonymous tip of suspicious activity, Kay Sybers was scheduled for autopsy. The toxicology reports came back inconclusive, and Kay was buried. However, suspicions arose again when rumors circulated that Bill Sybers was sleeping with a lab technician at his workplace. Kay’s body was exhumed, and forensic toxicologist Kevin Ballard screened for succinylcholine, a drug that increases the release of potassium and paralyzes the muscles, including the diaphragm. In the tissues, he discovered succinylmonocholine, a by-product of succinylcholine and proof of the poison’s presence in Kay’s body.
Ironically, although Bill Sybers seemed in a hurry to bury his wife and hide the evidence, the embalming process helped preserve the succinylmonocholine and made it easier to detect.