Del.icio.us
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon
TwitThis
The Cover-Up
But last summer, Dr. Mercer, now 73, was arrested and charged with his wife’s murder, 38 years after her death. The case is pushing the limits of human memory and forensic science. Prosecutors contend that Dr. Mercer, who has not denied having been involved with a nurse at the time Sally died, killed his wife with a lethal injection of the prescription painkiller Darvon. During a preliminary examination that concluded earlier this year, prosecutors presented a financial motive. At the time of Sally’s death, they pointed out, Michigan’s fault-based divorce laws could have awarded her a substantial payout given her husband’s extramarital affair.
The doctor is scheduled to stand trial on September 10. Mercer’s lawyer, Chris Bergstrom, says his client is innocent and that the evidence will show that Sally indeed died of polio or a similar viral infection. (Dr. Mercer, who currently lives alone in the same house where Sally died, did not return requests for an interview.) Paul Merrifield, former husband of the Mercers’ daughter Cindy, calls the case against the doctor “a witch hunt. I would be very shocked if they find him guilty.”
Others wonder why it took so long to bring charges in the first place. One of them is Detective Evan Bennehoff, now retired from the Ingham County Sheriff’s Office. He observed Sally’s autopsy on February 28, 1968, at the Hoffmeyer Funeral Home in Lansing. As a trained mortician’s apprentice, he was surprised to find Dr. Mercer’s father (now deceased) also in attendance at the autopsy, and was shocked that Sally had already been embalmed. Looking at her body, he spotted a number of bruises. “There were bruises that appeared to be fingerprint bruises on the right arm,” he said, suggesting she had been violently restrained. “There were some scrapes on the knees and some scrapes on the bottom rear of the torso.”
Dr. Black, the pathologist (also now deceased), told Bennehoff that he had approved embalming the body before realizing it had suffered trauma. Later during the autopsy, Bennehoff noticed severe bruising and contusions to Sally’s skull. “I asked Dr. Black what he thought would cause that trauma,” said Bennehoff. “He indicated to me that it would take significant force.”
Then, listening from the hallway outside the coroner’s office, Bennehoff heard Dr. Black say to the elder Dr. Mercer, “Don’t worry, Bill. I’m sure we’re not gonna find anything … I’m sure everything will be all right.”
Donald Reisig, Ingham County prosecutor at the time of the autopsy, was incensed when Dr. Black ruled the cause of death as bulbar polio, which invades the brain stem. “I was absolutely convinced this woman did not die of bulbar polio,” he testified. Like Bennehoff, he was troubled by the rush to embalm the body and the close relationship between Dr. Black and Dr. Mercer’s father. “I was concerned about the potential lack of objectivity,” he said.
Detective Bennehoff recalled a heated confrontation in the prosecutor’s office between Reisig, Dr. Black, the coroner and Leo Farhat, an attorney then representing Dr. Mercer. Theories about the death were batted back and forth. According to Bennehoff, “Dr. Black looked at Don Reisig and said, ‘You need to tell these investigators that she died of bulbar polio. This investigation is over.’”
And over it was, officially, for a very long time. Reisig reluctantly closed his investigation within a week of Sally’s death, but the questions continued to mount.
Some of them arose from the actions of Dr. Mercer himself. Sally’s friend Eunice Klewicki testified that he came to visit her within a day or two of his wife’s death. “Do you realize you can be held liable and sued if you talk to people about other people?” the doctor asked her.
Replied Klewicki, “Are you threatening me?”
“Just be careful what you say,” said Dr. Mercer.
Advertisement 
