Doctor ’used Indian poison to kill five’

Press, 28 February 1978, Page 9

Doctor ’used Indian poison to kill five’

NZPA-Reuter Hackensatt, New Jersey An Argentine-born surgeon will go on trial today charged with murdering five persons by injecting them with lethal doses of a poison oue favoured by primitive American Indians. The surgeon is Dr Mario Jascalevich. The poison is curare, which in small doses is used in modern medicine as a muscle relaxant. In larger quantities it can relax breathing muscles to the point of fatal paralysis. Jascalevich is accused of injecting curare into the five patients at the tiny Riverdell Hospital in Oradell. New Jersey, in 1966 as they either recuperated normally from operations or were about to undergo surgery. The first order of business tn what promises to be a long trial is the selection of a jury. Jascalevich's lawyers will seek to prove that, because of pre-trial publicity, an impartial jury cannot te found in Bergen County, a v ealthv suburb of New York. ' Prosecution lawyers have a extremely difficult task in front of them. They must first prove that the victims died of curare overdoses, a-’d then that these were administered by Jascalevich. f highly-respected surgeon. The prosecutors are expected to call several of America’s leading forensic » ientists. But medical ex-

perts are debating whether curare can be detected in a person after death. The Bergen County prosecutor’s office dropped its in- ; itial investigation in 1966’ after medical experts said curare could not be detected in body tissue after death. The case was reopened a decade later, after a series of investigative reports in the case by the “New York Times.” The prosecutor, Joseph Woodcock, said in 1976 that science had progressed to the point where curare's presence could be determined. After five bodies were exhumed. and curare found in two of them, Jascalevich was indicted on charges connected with all the deaths. The prosecution is expected to contend that Jascalevich was either insane or jealous of competing surgeons at the hospital. The doctor claims he is innocent and that 24 vials of curare found in his locker at ißiverdell w r ere used by him only in experiments he conducted on dogs to develop new surgical techniques. Curare was supplied to the American U2 spy-plane pilot. Francis Gary Powers, to use if he was caught. But Powers, who was captured after crashing in the Soviet Union in 1960. never used it. The drug creates a sense of terror in its victims as they feel themselves sudden!'. paralysed and unable ,to breathe.