Tracing the Untraceable

After his acquittal in New Jersey last year on charges of murdering his some time mistress' husband, Dr. Carl Coppolino appeared a sure bet to beat the less likely charge that he had murdered his own wife. Since there was not even any public evidence that she had died unnaturally, the case against Coppolino seemed flimsy indeed. Yet last week, when the twelve male jurors in Naples, Fla., returned their verdict after less than four hours of deliberations, the retired physician was pronounced guilty of second-degree murder.

The lean, hook-nosed Coppolino, 34, was caught up by the patient, plodding groundwork laid by Prosecutor Frank Schaub, 45. In contrast with the flamboyant forensics of F. Lee Bailey, 33, Coppolino's cocky Boston attorney, Schaub wove a damning case showing that Coppolino had the motive, opportunity and, most of all, the scientific background for committing the murder.

It was done, he demonstrated in minute, Sherlockian fashion, by an injection of the drug succinylcholine chloride, which hitherto had been thought to be undetectable in the human body.

Murderous Motive. With surgical thoroughness, Schaub showed that Coppolino obtained a lethal amount of succinylcholine chloride -- supposedly for animal experiments -- from a friend a month before Dr. Carmela Coppolino's death Aug. 28, 1965, at the age of 32.

Schaub had a witness testify that the death was wrongly ascribed to a heart attack because Coppolino persuaded a physician that she had suffered chest pains earlier. He called Carmela's father to relate how Coppolino claimed an autopsy had proved that a heart attack was the cause of death--though in fact no autopsy had been performed at the time.

Coppolino's deteriorating finances, Schaub charged, spurred his murderous motive. While the Coppolinos were living in New Jersey, Carmela earned $16,000 a year as a physician in a research laboratory. But when they moved to Sarasota, Fla., in April 1965 because of Coppolino's heart condition --which Schaub did his best to show was faked--Carmela flunked the state's medical examination, and could not work as a doctor. They were left to live on Coppolino's $22,000-a-year disability insurance, which was plainly not enough to sustain his high-living tastes plus losses in real estate speculations that amounted to $15,500 that year. Only three weeks before his wife's death, Coppolino increased by $10,000 the $55,000 in life insurance policies covering Carmela.

Early Marriage. Schaub called as a witness Coppolino's former mistress, Marjorie Farber, 53, but was prevented by a bench ruling from questioning her about the 1963 death of her husband, retired Army Colonel William Farber. In the New Jersey murder trial, the shapely widow had told a weird story of being hypnotized by Coppolino and standing helplessly aside while he smothered Farber with a pillow. Though it was Mrs. Farber who had aroused police suspicions against Coppolino after he spurned her for wealthy Divorcee Mary Gibson, 39, whom he married six weeks after Carmela's death, she had little to offer the current trial. Schaub called on a group of women who attended the same weekly bridge sessions as Coppolino and Mary; several of them testified that they were quite certain that the couple lived together before their marriage.

From experts, Schaub got all the help he needed on the obscure pharmacodynamical properties of succinylcholine chloride. As an anesthesiologist, Coppolino had had the opportunity to use it frequently on surgery patients to relax their muscles. Schaub proved to the jurors that it was also used on Carmela, injected into her left buttock in such massive dosage that it paralyzed and within minutes killed her. To carry the crux of his case, the prosecutor relied on the experts--and they came through with explicit, if esoteric evidence. Although scientists never had before been able to find traces of the drug after it had been injected into a patient, pioneering experiments under the direction of veteran New York City Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Milton Helpern (who also had testified against Coppolino in the first trial) and his aide, Toxicologist Charles Joseph Umberger, revealed that there were components of it in Carmela's brain and liver. Try as Bailey might to refute their testimony by calling other medical witnesses, the New Yorkers' findings proved to be the clinching testimony.

"Are these experiments good enough for a jury to make a decision which can strike this defendant from the face of the earth?" thundered Bailey. The jury's answer was a blow to the criminal counselor, who gained fame only last year by winning acquittals for Dr. Sam Sheppard and Coppolino and liked to brag about having an impressive string of 19 victories in homicide cases. So far this year, with the conviction of the Boston Strangler, he has a string of two well advertised losses. Though Bailey vowed to appeal the verdict, a stunned Coppolino was led from the courtroom to prison to start serving his sentence of life. Mumbled he: "I just don't understand."

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