Prattling Before the Pratfall

The headline in Wednesday’s Boston Globe read, New civil trial sought in slaying of doctor.

The place: New England Memorial Hospital, Stoneham, Massachusetts. Later renamed Boston Regional Medical Center. Later closed.

The time: October 1(?), 1993

The event: The murder of obstetrician, Dr. Linda Goudey.

Here is a brief timeline of the facts of the case, as given in The Globe.

1993

Oct. 4 – The body of Dr. Linda Goudey, 43, an obstetrician who specialized in high-risk pregnancies, is found inside her car parked at New England Memorial Hospital in Stoneham, where she worked.

Oct. 17 – Dr. Timothy Stryker, 41, an endocrinologist at the hospital who had been dating Goudey, says police have talked to him about her death four times.

Nov. 29 – Autopsy results show Goudey was strangled.

1994

The Middlesex district attorney’s office says that the case is still open and that “it will remain open until it’s solved.”

1996

The Goudey estate files a civil wrongful-death lawsuit against Stryker.

2003

March – A superior court judge rules the district attorney’s office must turn over its investigation files to the Goudey family, because enough time has passed to make the possibility of an arrest remote.

2006

June 6 – The civil trial begins.

June 16 – A jury finds Stryker responsible for Goudey’s death and orders him to pay $15.1 million. With interest, the amount would total $33 million. Stryker says he will challenge the verdict.

My eldest sister is an obstetrician specializing in high-risk pregnancies, but that wasn’t the primary reason why this case interested me. My wife Carol worked at the hospital, and she knew Dr. Goudey. Our son Eric was born at New England Memorial (although he wasn’t delivered by Dr. Goudey). Not only that, the day before her body was discovered we saw Goudey’s car parked at the hospital.

Instead of being in the physician’s lot, Goudey’s Saab was in a far corner of the main lot, when we took Eric, not quite two years old, for a Sunday walk in the woods behind the hospital, through an area known as The Fells Acres Reserve. I am SO GLAD I didn’t take a look inside of that Saab that autumn afternoon!

Early in the investigation it was revealed that a security guard had confirmed he spotted the car on Sunday. Whew! Otherwise, I would have felt that Carol and I should come forward and confirm the car’s presence some 20 hours before Goudey’s strangled body was found inside of it.

Several years later, a nurse who had worked with Goudey was murdered and dismembered by her husband. After that nightmare, the hospital was renamed to Boston Regional Medical Center. There were other problems, stemming from prior financial mismanagement by the Seventh Day Adventists, who owned and ran the facility, which included an accredited high school and a neighborhood of homes behind the hospital.

A simple name change wasn’t enough to distance the hospital from its woes, and in early 1999 it closed. The main building remains empty and unsold. The high school and homes are gone, and now there’s just a weedy field, as it they had never existed. But the adjoining medical building is still in operation. In fact, my eye surgeon’s office is there and I visit the place twice a year.