Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Wife Tammy Harris, 70 lbs., No Hair, Fingernails, Dead of Vitamin Supplement

Episode Date: November 29, 2021

Tammy and Dr. Jeffrey Harris had been married for 11 years when Tammy was diagnosed with lupus. Doctors begin a treatment regimen but her health did not improve. Harris was wheelchair-bound, her weight dropped to just 70 pounds, and her hair and fingernails fell out. The couple traveled from Moscow, Idaho to New York in search of a holistic doctor, when Tammy suddenly collapsed in the lobby of the Lotte New York Palace hotel. She died six days later. An autopsy determined that Tammy Harris died from an overdose of the dietary supplement, Selenium.  Selenium, a trace mineral is considered safe in small doses, but the city medical examiner found eight times the average amount of Selenium in Harris's system. An investigation revealed that Dr. Harris did not believe his wife had Lupus.He insisted that she suffered from mercury poisoning from working at a dental office several years prior.  Dr. Harris kept up the pretense that his wife was taking what she had been prescribed by her doctors, but instead, she was taking Selenium, prescribed by her husband. Joining Nancy Grace Today: Darryl Cohen - Former Assistant District Attorney, Fulton County, Georgia, Defense Attorney, Cohen, Cooper, Estep, & Allen, LLC, www.ccealaw.com Dr. Shari Schwartz - Forensic Psychologist, www.panthermitigation.com, Twitter: https://twitter.com/TrialDoc, Author: "Criminal Behavior" and "Where Law and Psychology Intersect: Issues in Legal Psychology" Justin Boardman - Former Special Victim's Unit Detective, West Valley City (Utah), Author: "I Was Wrong: An Investigator's Battle-cry for Change Within the Special Victims Unit", JustinBoardman.com, Twitter: @boardman_train  Dr. William Morrone - Chief Medical Examiner, Bay County Michigan, Author: "American Narcan: Naloxone & Heroin-Fentanyl Associated Mortality", RecoveryPathwaysLLC.com Nicole Partin - CrimeOnline.com Investigative Reporter, Twitter: @nicolepartin Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. A gorgeous young wife seemingly collapses out of nowhere. Days later, she's dead. What happened to Tammy Harris? Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. First of all, take a listen to our friend Tyler at Crime Online. When Tammy and Jeffrey Harris married in 2007, it was really no surprise. After all, they had a lot in common.

Tammy graduated from Washington State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing and a Master's degree as a psychiatric nurse practitioner. Jeffrey had earned the right to use doctor before his name. One of Tammy's three children from a previous marriage says they had a very loving relationship during their 11 years together. And when Tammy Harris was diagnosed with lupus, the couple looked at treatment options together. Straight out to an all-star panel to help make sense of what happened to Tammy with me. High-profile lawyer, former prosecutor out of Atlanta, Daryl Cohen, Dr. Sherry Schwartz, forensic psychologist and author of Criminal Behavior, Justin Boardman, former Special Victims Unit detective, West Valley City, and author of I Was Wrong, An Investigator's Battle Cry for Change, renowned medical examiner joining us, Driam maroney joining us from michigan author

of a best-selling book america narcan on amazon and crimeonline.com investigative reporter nicole parton so nicole we've got these two that are seemingly hand in glove perfect for each other Tammy and Jeffrey Harris married since 2007 so she collapsed was that due to lupus right Nancy so they left their home in Idaho traveled to New York City because she had been diagnosed with what doctors thought was lupus so they headed up to New York City to treat some or seek some holistic treatment for her lupus. But she collapsed at the hotel they were staying at. Six days later, she's dead. Whoa. Okay, Dr. William Maroney, Chief Medical Examiner, Bay County, Michigan.

First of all, what is lupus and how often is it fatal lupus involves a number of different systems but they're all tied together because you treat lupus which is um a flare of inflammation so you treat it with anti-inflammatories and immunosuppressants. It affects the lungs. It affects the skin. It can affect the heart. Well, I still don't understand what it is. Is it some type of an inflammation problem? It's an autoimmune problem. There's no virus. There's no bacteria. There's no damage. There's just some part of the body that you have an autoimmune attack, and you can see it on certain rashes in people. It can bring weakness, but lupus is very rarely the cause of a death.

Well, what does it do to you? Because do you remember us discussing the Chris Watts and Shanann Watts case? Chris Watts, the killer husband that killed Shanann, his wife, who was pregnant with baby Nico. And they had the two daughters, Bella and Celeste. And then he hid their bodies at an oil well area. You remember that? I think she had lupus. Didn't she have lupus? Yes. And when they met, he was so supportive of her trying to battle her lupus. So I still don't understand. You get rashes. You have a hard time breathing sometimes.

What are the other symptoms of lupus? It can affect the GI tract. It can affect the lungs. And it can sometimes have an inflammatory effect on internal organs. So they become inflamed. What does that mean? Listen, Dr. Maroney, not all of us have MD degrees. So when you throw around phrases like your organs have inflammatory, whatever you just said, what do you mean? Your organs swell up. Your organs can't get a rash.

So what are you saying? Oh oh how i would love to have you on cross exam i would have so much fun because you really can't argue back with the lawyer but sadly now you can't wear sunglasses i would have to hide but what does that mean inflammatory process yeah if you're diabetic you're not getting enough insulin because the pancreas swells up. You have a difficult time breathing in lupus because the airways can swell up. Okay, now I'm getting it. That's what you mean by inflame. Okay. But there's no virus and there's no bacteria. It's an autoimmune disease. How do you treat it? What we have grown to treat it with is immunosuppressants and why did you say it like that what we have

grown to treat it with does that mean it's hit or miss and right now we're trying immunosuppressants what what do you mean by we've because for instance if somebody has um if somebody cuts their hand and it starts turning red you put neosporin on it it's an antibiotic and you get well so what do you and i know that to be a fact so what do you mean we we have grown to treat it with an acute lupus flare is treated with massive amounts of steroids because that shuts down inflammation but you can't live off of steroids day in and day out why does it destroy your kidney it destroys your adrenal glands that are on top of the kidney and it'll change your pituitary and it'll change your hormones and it'll demineralize your bones and steroids are a wonderful drug for

acute pathological problems but not for long term and that's lupus is a long-term disease got it got it so now we have immunosuppressants and an acute flare you can use uh steroids what's an immunosuppressant sorry for the rest of you on the panel what because some people can't speak english and explain it to me in a way i can understand what What is an immunosuppressant? Well, there are branded name immunosuppressants, but some of the people I know that have lupus arthritis, their rheumatologist prescribes them one of two things, hydroxychloroquine or an antibody infusion. And those antibody infusions are proprietary.

So they're expensive. But hydroxychloroquine can be used to treat. Do we just need to cut everything he just said? Okay. Dr. Maroney. Yes. Just name me something we can all identify. What is an immunosuppressant medication?

Just name one. Don't say hydroxychloronate. Not that one. Because that's too associated with unsuccessful attempts to treat COVID. What's another one that I could get? Immunosuppressant. Well, hydrosteroids.

Okay. Gotcha. Steroids. Okay. I got got it i got it now all right present zone everybody knows yes there you go oh thank you amen brother all right that i know about so let me understand nicole parton tammy marries the doctor husband Dr. Jeffrey Harris they they are in New York trying to find a holistic healing for lupus do you know it took me seven minutes to get that out of Maroney seven minutes Maroney as I have told you before Dr. Maroney I'm a JD not a DDS I'm not that good at pulling teeth okay so you, help a girl out here and just give me a simple dummy down answer so we can all just move on with this case

so I can understand what happened to Tammy Harris. Holistic, is that right, Nicole Parton? They began searching the earth for holistic cures for lupus or treatments. Right, right. So her husband, Dr. Jeffrey Harris, was very adamant that he was going to seek out holistic treatment and try to find a way to battle what the doctors were calling lupus, but what he believed to be another ailment. So he wasn't buying into the fact that she had lupus.

What did he think she had? He was believing that she had mercury poisoning because she had been a nurse at a dental surgical center okay now wait wait stop again sorry justin boardman dr sherry schwartz daryl cohen please just jump in because i'm about to go back to dr maroney and you know what's going to happen dr maroney mercury poisoning wouldn't you have to break about 200 thermometers in order to get mercury poisoning? How else would you get mercury poisoning? Fossil to mercury compounds in dental fillings. But that is now very rare.

That is very rare. And that just doesn't happen. We don't see it in people. Because didn't they change what dentists use for feelings so that would no longer be a possibility right they're ceramic they're epoxy which were the type of feelings that had mercury in them pure mercury they it was uh it was it was a mixture of liquid elemental mercury and something to harden it up. Silver. Yes, the silver fillings. Did you hear that?

And don't give me the chemical element. Don't. Don't do it. Don't. Well, they look silver. They look silver. Yes, you're right. So maybe it's not actual silver.

Maybe it looks. Oh, it is actual silver. Okay. Looks like silver. Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Okay. Holistic cures. Daryl Cohen, I'm not knocking holistic cures, but all I can, it's just ping ponging off the inside of my skull is Steve Jobs. Remember he wanted, he had a curable cancer,

but he wanted a natural cure and he died. A natural death. I mean, holistic cures, I believe in them. My mother, my grandmother, we all had holistic cures growing up for various maladies. But at a certain point, I think you've got to fall back on Western medicine or am I just brainwashed? What about it, Dr. Maroney? There's certain things you just can't find in holistic herbs. You know, we don't treat people really with silver and we don't treat people with mercury. In the old days, you used mercury to kill bacteria. That's bad for the body now, just like we have in this case. True.

Take a listen to our cut to this is Tyler at Crime Online. Despite treatment for lupus, Tammy Harris' health did not improve. She was wheelchair-bound, her weight had dropped to just 70 pounds, and her hair and fingernails had fallen out. The couple traveled from Moscow, Idaho to New York in search of a holistic doctor when Tammy suddenly collapsed in the lobby of the Lott New York Palace Hotel. She died six days later. Okay, right there, down to 70 pounds, her hair and nails had fallen out. Instead of putting her in the hospital, he was carting her around from hotel to hotel trying to find a

holistic cure. Okay, so what killed her? Take a listen to Hour Cut 3. Again, Tyler Hunt, Crime Online. An autopsy determined that Tammy Harris died from an overdose of the dietary supplement selenium. Selenium, a trace mineral, is considered safe in small doses, but the city medical examiner found eight times the average amount of selenium in Harris' system. In large amounts, selenium can cause a variety of health issues, from hair loss to kidney failure and, in rare cases, death. An investigation revealed Tammy Harris was taking the supplement on the advice of her doctor husband, who did not believe his wife had lupus. He insisted that she suffered from mercury

poisoning from working at a dental office several years prior. Dr. Harris kept up the pretense that his wife was taking what she had been prescribed by her doctors, but instead she was taking medicines prescribed by her husband, which continued her spiraling health problems. Dr. Sherry Schwartz, why would you not seek a specialist and rely on your own MD, your medical doctor, which I think he was a GP, general practitioner. Could you find that exact? He's an internist. Okay. That adds to his credibility in this area. But why would you not see the wisdom of seeking another health professional as opposed to just giving your wife high doses of selenium? Well, one of the things that they say, Nancy, is that doctors are, in fact, the worst patients because they think that they know better than the practitioner or at least as much as the practitioner. And in Dr. Harris's case, he may have had some success before in his own practice with alternative remedies.

So he may be believed that he knew his wife best, he knew the illness best, and he could treat it best. Dr. Maroney, isn't there something unethical about that or no? Oh, it's totally unethical. That is so off the wall. You don't treat your children. You don't treat your parents. You don't treat your wife. You send your children to a pediatrician because of conflict of interest.

That's one of the reasons is probably things like this. And then narcotics. You would never do this. Everything he's doing is going against what we learned. This is reminding me of another case we recently covered. Let's take a listen to my longtime friend from CNN, Jane Casares, Our Cut 13. Prosecutors say Martin McNeil forced his wife, Michelle, to have a facelift, then plied her with a laundry list of painkillers and depressants. My dad was telling the plastic surgeon what medication he wanted. I vividly remember this.

And he told me that he gave her the Arnica, the Valium, the Lortab, the Phenergan, and then gave her two Percocets at 1.30 a.m. and then one Ambien at 1.30 a.m. As a matter of fact, Dr. McNeil insisted that the treating physician add on additional painkillers and additional medications that were not normally prescribed following a facelift, a very long and arduous surgery that Michelle endured about seven hours under the knife. But the husband, her husband, Dr. Martin McNeil, stepped in and interfered with what the doctor prescribed and added additional prescriptions. Well, take a listen to our Cut 15. This is Marcus Ortiz, ABC4 Utah.

At first, it was ruled accidental. A week earlier, she had cosmetic surgery, and Martin McNeil was personally medicating her. At the time, Alexis Summers was a medical student and was already suspicious. My mother began to suspect that my father was having an affair, and she confided in me. It turned out her mother was right. Gypsy Willis was Martin

McNeil's mistress. Did the relationship become sexual? It did. And when was that? I think that was in January of 2006. Summer set out to prove her father gave their mother the wrong drugs causing her death. We uncovered who he truly was and he was actually a monster. McNeil introduced Willis as the younger children's nanny and moved in. Unhappy with the police investigation, Rachel McNeil began investigating her father online. Gypsy's roommate who contacted me and said that Gypsy, she overheard Gypsy saying that she wanted to cut the brake lines for my mother. Willis allegedly wanted Michelle McNeil out of the way.

That was Dr. Martin McNeil. Michelle McNeil suffered an over-medication death. She was OD'd on pills given to her by her husband, the doctor. Now, in no way are we suggesting that this doctor, Dr. Jeffrey Harris, was having an affair or anything of the sort? We are stating that he was giving her large amounts of selenium. Now, Dr. William Maroney, what do large amounts of selenium do to a person? And Dr. McNeil is just one of the many examples as to why doctors are not supposed

to treat their spouse. Selenium as a micronutrient is important for enzymatic function, the growth of skin, the growth of bones, the growth of hair, and the growth of your nails. And a very important enzyme called glutathione peroxidase that helps take peroxides out of the system, and peroxides are very toxic, but that's only when it's in micronutrient concentrations. Otherwise, it's just as toxic as any other metal, heavy metal or anything else in the biological system. He knew what he was doing. It was murder. And he was lying about it, telling everybody else that the regular treatment for lupus and mercury, that was still there. And he was substituting all this super selenium concentration.

Very suspicious. You believe, Dr. Maroney, that he knew full well what he was doing. On the other hand, take a listen to our cut five from Crime Online. Joshua Hubbard, Tammy Harris' son, tells the New York Daily News that he has no doubt Jeffrey Harris loved his mother. He says, quote, he loved her deeply, almost to a fault. I do not believe he intended to hurt her in any way, end quote. Hubbard also told the Daily News that he has a lot of

compassion for Jeff Harris, saying Harris was a physician who thought he could cure his wife, but what he was doing was wrong. Hubbard said it was a very confusing time, end quote, incredibly weird. crime stories with nancy grace so let me clarify dr maroney you're saying that he intended to give her the selenium or are you saying he intended to give her that much selenium knowing that death could result? I'm saying he intended to give those high doses and was hiding it. So that's suspicious. He was leading her to a path that was incapacitating her that ended up leading to homicide. You know, that's a really good point that you just made.

Daryl Cohen, former felony prosecutor in inner city Atlanta, now high profile defense attorney in Atlanta. The fact that he was in fact hiding it. He was stating that, and correct me if I'm wrong, Nicole Parton, because this is crucial, it's critical in this case. Nicole, wasn't he telling everyone that she was taking medications and treatment prescribed to her by other doctors than himself? Right, and he was telling her to tell those doctors that she was taking those medications

when, in fact, she was not taking the medications prescribed by the other doctors. Got it. She was only taking the medications her husband was prescribing to her and giving her. Okay, Daryl Cohen, former prosecutor, now private attorney. Daryl, that does, just like Maroney said, make it more nefarious, the fact that he was covering his tracks in the sense that he was lying that she was about what medication she was getting. She was only getting medications he prescribed, not what the regular doctors told her to take. This is nothing more and nothing less than a conspiracy of one. He conspired to kill her.

She went along with it, maybe because she thought he was doing the right thing and the other physicians did not. But this is so nefarious, Nancy. It's straight down the line of why a physician does not and should not treat his family member for anything serious other than a cold, other than tripping and needing a Band-Aid of some sort. Yeah, and he takes her reportedly all the way from their home in Moscow, Idaho, to New York to get treatment, to find holistic doctors. But yet he's covering up the fact that he is the one prescribing her with this heavy dose of selenium. Now, you can find selenium naturally in Brazil nuts, tuna, oysters, pork, beef, chicken, tofu, pasta, shrimp, mushrooms, all sorts of things, but not to this extent. Justin Boardman joining me,

former special victims unit detective in West Valley, author of I Was Wrong, an investigator's battle cry for change in the special victims unit. Justin, I want you to listen to another case. Now, in this case, the parents think they're absolutely doing the right thing. Take a listen to Hour Cut 10. This is Katie Johnson, CBS Miami. Two parents in Cape Coral are charged with the death of their 18-month-old son. The baby weighed just 17 POUNDS IS WHAT A 7- MONTH-OLD SHOULD WEIGH, NOT A BABY WHO IS A YEAR AND A HALF OLD. A LEE COUNTY GRAND JURY INDICTED

RYAN PATRICK O'LEARY AND SHEILA O'LEARY WEDNESDAY ON CHARGES OF FIRST- DEGREE MURDER, AGGRAVATED CHILD ABUSE, AGGRAVATED MANSLAUGHTER, CHILD ABUSE AND TWO COUNTS OF CHILD NEGLECT. ACCORDING TO A

POLICE REPORT, THE MOTHER CALLED 911 IN SEPTEMBER WHEN SHE NOTICED HER SON WAS NOT BREATHING AND FELT COLD. ACCORDING TO NEWSPRESS, THE BABY WAS IN THE BED WITH A BABY IN THE BACK OF HER

BED. THE BABY WAS SLEEPING IN THE BED WITH HER BABY. THE BABY WAS SLEEPING IN THE BED WITH two counts of child neglect. According to a police report, the mother called 911 in September when she noticed her son was not breathing and felt cold. According to news press, the baby was dead when paramedics arrived. The state attorney for the case says the indictments also include three other children who suffered child abuse and extreme neglect. They are three years old, five years old, and 11 years old. But that's not all. Take a listen to Cut 10A, Megan Braugh, NBC2. We're also learning the three other children in the home were only allowed to eat raw fruits and vegetables, and two of them were severely underweight. Sheila and Ryan did admit to police they thought something was wrong with their baby weeks before,

but didn't call for help. In this nine-page report just obtained by NBC2, Sheila tells police the baby became sick six months ago and was throwing up and lost weight. About a week before the baby died, Sheila says the 18 month old stopped eating and would only breastfeed occasionally. The medical examiner says the baby was extremely malnourished,

dehydrated, and feet were swollen. Sheila says the baby has never been to the doctor and was born inside their home. Cape Coral police also say two other children were also extremely underweight, and one of their children's teeth were rotting. Sheila told police the family would sleep in the living room with one child on a hammock and another on a dog bed. Justin Boardman, have you ever heard anything like it? Justin, I don't know if you have children or not, but you don't give a newborn baby raw fruit and veggies to eat. They can only take liquids.

The child died and they had them on some wacky, holistic, raw fruit and veggie diet. It's horrific. Just right out of the gates. It sounds horrific. It had to have been a horrible scene. And you don't. Where I start having some issues is where the mental health of the offenders come into play and to try to find the intent. Was the intent to actually kill them or to keep them pure, if you will? Justin Borman, no offense, but did you get your law degree that I didn't know about it? No. Was that a no? Did you say no?

Okay, let me school you very quickly that the law presumes that you intend the natural consequence of your act. For instance, if I take a gun, put in a bullet, point it at Jackie over here. I kill her at least once a day and in my mind. Okay, pointed at her and pull the trigger and kill her. And then I went, oops, I only meant to scare her. B.S. Because the law presumes I intend to kill her when I point a gun at her and pull the trigger. You don't feed your child food.

You try to give a little bitty baby a piece of apple. No, a child cannot eat at that young age. So the natural consequence of your act is a starvation death. Now, keep that in mind when you go to law school. Okay, Daryl Cohen, go ahead. I know. Law school is a wonderful thing. I reluctantly agree with you, Nancy. It hurts me to agree with you, but I am agreeing with you. This is a first. Now, listen, speaking of their state of mind, and I'm glad you brought that up, Justin Borman, because neither of them were insane under the legal sense of the word.

I want you to listen to our cut 10B. Our friend Rachel Lloyd at Fox 4. Sheila O'Leary's attorney told me all the kids living in this home were healthy. And now I did ask him about the claims of malnourishment. And he says O'Leary actually breastfed her son just a few hours before he died. So he doesn't think malnutrition was the cause of death. Now, Sheila O'Leary and her

husband Ryan face a manslaughter charge after their baby died here back in September. They turned themselves in last night after the medical examiner revealed malnutrition caused the baby's death. O'Leary's attorney John Muska told me on Skype today that his client was so religious that she did not allow any of her four kids to watch television. He also says she's vegan, but fed her children balanced meals. But he did say there were health concerns regarding the toddler before he died. Yeah, he was starving. The child had been sick six months prior and had not fully recuperated.

The child had started eating better and then the child began teething. And the mother was concerned, very concerned that that was causing him to not to not eat as well. He was suffering, all right, because he was starving. That was the problem. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. To you, Dr. William Maroney, just as Dr. Jeffrey Harris was ODing his wife with selenium, thinking he was giving her a holistic cure, mean and that's putting in the best light favorable to the defendant just like these parents they killed their child now she's dead the biggest difference is he was covering up what he was doing and using the situation that what he was really doing was another doctor was treating her.

So he was hiding the fact that he was giving these high doses. Is that true, Nicole Parton? Tell me how, if he did, that he hid the truth. He was, in fact, keeping this hid, but the doctors eventually caught on to what was happening. And they even asked him, please be a supportive husband, not a doctor. Let us doctor just be a supportive husband. So there was a point in all of this where the doctors caught on to what was happening, realizing that she wasn't taking the medication they were prescribing. She was only taking what her husband was telling her to take. So the doctors knew.

Her regular treating physicians knew what was happening. Right. That's right. This is not the first, and I'm afraid won't be the last, of a family member forcing a health regimen on their children. Take a listen to our cut two from Crime Online. Carla Garriga says she kept her son Kamari on a biblical vegan diet because she didn't want to carry a fat ass child. And he would often be fed fruits and vegetables crushed with boiled potatoes, according to the child's grandmother. Garriguez told the New York

Post she believes vegan means everything that's in the Bible. Okay, Dr. Maroney, help me out. All jibes aside, there you see a young mother describing her child as, quote, fat ass and would only give him fruits and veggies crushed with boiled potatoes, claiming he was on some sort of a biblical diet. And as you and I both, as me, of course, not as accomplished as you, biblical scholar, they ate a lot more than that in the Bible. But that said, misguided and deadly. Well, they ate lamb. They ate chicken.

They ate fish. They may have had beer. I know they had wine and they had bread. So there's a lot of things where these people get their information that this is healthy and that this follows some religious guidelines. This is pathological. This is mental illness. Well, wait a minute. When you say mental illness, though, to Dr. Sherry Schwartz, author of Criminal Behavior and Where Law and Psychology Intersect, Dr. Sherry, to say it's a mental illness, I don't know about that. I think the opportunity to totally lord over someone, control even what they eat,

I don't know that that's a mental illness. I know it's not insanity because these people knew how to lie to CYA. That's a technical legal term. I think you're familiar with it when they're caught. Well, correct. And that type of controlling, manipulative behavior, obsessive behavior might be a component of a mental illness, but not necessarily a mental illness in and of itself, right? And just because somebody's mentally ill, as you know, Nancy, when we talk about the concept, the legal concept of insanity, that does not mean they don't know the difference between right and wrong. So you may have these, you know, very hardcore beliefs. And even if you believe you're doing the right thing, you see this person suffering. So you may have these, you know, very hardcore beliefs. And even if you believe

you're doing the right thing, you see this person suffering. So you must know that something is wrong. When you see your wife down to 70 pounds and she has no fingernails or hair, wouldn't that be the time that you would call in an expert and not rely on your selenium supplements to cure her, Dr. Maroney? I think every time he looked at her, it's like that body morphic disorder. He didn't see what she was, or he continually blamed what he saw misguidedly on Mercury, so he was covering his behind because everything he was doing was wrong, unethical, immoral. So even if Daryl Cohen, he did not have the specific intent to kill her, if he had performed a felony, which was, I would have to say, aggravated battery, not aggravated assault,

but battery to the extent that she was losing her hair and her fingernails. That in the course of this felony, a death occurred, which equals felony murder. You follow that legal logic? Could he be charged with felony murder, as well as in the alternative malice murder with the intent to kill? So a jury would have two alternatives. I think he could be charged with both, but I'm not sure he'll be convicted of either one. I think aggravated battery would be a much better charge to be convicted because he will argue with this guy with his ego. He will jump on the witness stand and listen and make it heard from all the world that the right thing.

And he was trying his best for this alternative medicine. And he was treating her because no other physician would do the right thing. Oh, how happy I would be if he did take the stand to explain all that so I could have him on cross-exam. And the first question I would ask Dr. William Maroney is, isn't it true that you hid from the doctors, from her family, from the world, that you were no longer following the advice of doctors, but had launched into your own alternative medical treatment. In other words, eight times the normal amount of selenium was found in her body. She had no hair. She had no fingernails. She weighed 70 pounds and he did not call a specialist. He did

not put her in the hospital. There's no way he could withstand that on cross-exam, Dr. Maroney. The main thing that stands up is when you treat somebody like that, you have to measure and monitor the selenium. And you can't. It's too expensive and too difficult. So if you're not monitoring it and you're giving it in large amounts, that's your number one problem, that the toxicity is there. The second problem is alternative medicine, while it's an alternative, still has to have some kind of evidence that it's been published or proven to work. I do not know anybody in America that's treated mercury poisoning with selenium. He has nothing to stand on medically or scientifically. And did you know, Dr. Maroney, I think Nicole Parton with Crime Online mentioned this earlier, when the autopsy was performed, they also determined that she was starved.

She was actually starved. Not only was she OD'd on selenium, she was starved. And he stood by and let that happen? The prosecutors also say, Dr. Maroney, and I quote, he cheated doctors by pretending his wife was taking what she had been prescribed. Anytime you have an adult that doesn't get enough nutrition, we call that failure to thrive. The only time you see failure to thrive is end of life in hospice. And that's putting somebody that is so far out, that is so so how bad is that malnutrition? The scientific name is in addition. And the long phrase is failure to thrive.

We do not create failure to thrive in people to treat any other condition. You know, I looked up the effects of mercury, O.D., exposure to mercury, loss of peripheral vision. She didn't have that. Pins and needles feelings and hands, feet around mouth. Didn't hear about that. Lack of coordination. No. Impairment of speech, hearing, walking. No. Muscle weakness. None of those really fit with what he's saying she had. Guys, take a listen to our cut for from Crime Online. Dr. Jeffrey Harris is charged with second degree manslaughter. He pleaded not guilty and is being held on a $3,000 bond. When the judge a listen to our cut four from crime online dr jeffrey harris is charged with second degree manslaughter he pleaded not guilty and is being held on a three thousand dollar bond when the

judge asked why second degree manslaughter charges were brought rather than murder assistant district attorney valerie meyer referenced terrace's quote sincere belief that his wife suffered mercury poisoning and that spared him the more serious murder charge end quote dr harris's lawyer says his client wants to clear his name, telling the court he has no incentive to flee and has cooperated with New York detectives during their investigation. I think that was a huge mistake. They should have charged him with intentional murder, murder one, murder two,

voluntary, involuntary, infelony murder, and then let a jury decide what the truth is. They're going to have to live with their charging decision when they take this to a jury. Right now, it's not $3,000, it's $300,000 bond. I anticipate he will get out on bond. Whether he will flee will be another matter. We wait as justice unfolds. Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.