INDICTED DOCTOR: OXYCONTIN DEATH CHARGES 'A TRAVESTY'

Before he was charged with murder last month, Dr. Denis Deonarine
made $650,000 a year, five times the average family practitioner's
income.

"I am a workaholic," he said. "I work my . . . (backside) off, to put
it mildly."

Patients said they endured hours sometimes in a crowded waiting room
to see him. He took weekend rounds at the Veterans Affairs Medical
Center for nearly a year, arriving at 8 a.m. and leaving at midnight.
Some of his sickest patients say he gave them his home number for
emergencies, saw them any time of day and, in some cases, made the
difference between life and death.

By his own "modest estimate," he admitted 11,000 patients to
hospitals since he opened his Jupiter practice four years ago. That's
more than seven patients a day, assuming no time off for weekends or
holidays. That number includes some, but not all, of the 3,000 to
4,000 patients he saw in his office.

Deonarine said he missed his own son's wedding in Georgia this year
- -- a wedding he paid for -- because he failed to find another doctor
to take his calls. "What does that tell you?" he asks.

Some patients told authorities there was another reason Deonarine
made so much money -- he made it easy for recreational drug users to
get prescriptions for powerful narcotics.

Now Deonarine's work habits are drawing national attention.

He's only the second doctor in the country charged with murder
because a patient for whom he prescribed OxyContin died from an
overdose. Charges against the other doctor, a San Francisco man, were
later reduced to manslaughter.

A Palm Beach County grand jury indicted Deonarine last month,
charging him with first-degree felony murder in the overdose death of
a 21-year-old patient, Michael Labzda, of Jupiter. Prosecutors apply
the felony murder charge when a homicide occurs during the commission
of another felony -- in this case, prosecutors say, drug trafficking
by Deonarine. If convicted, Deonarine would face at least life in
prison.

Deonarine's lawyer, Richard Lubin, accuses prosecutors of getting
sucked into a national hysteria. The drug, which critics have dubbed
a legalized heroin, has been blamed for hundreds of overdose deaths
across the country. National magazines and newspapers have
dramatically chronicled its rise and its patients' falls.

Labzda's friends told police he was snorting crushed OxyContin pills
and drinking beer and rum before he died in February, according to
investigators' reports. An autopsy found high levels of oxycodone,
the active ingredient in OxyContin; the tranquilizer alprazolam
(Xanax); and marijuana. The cause of death was multi-drug poisoning,
the autopsy report said. OxyContin, which many patients use safely
and legally to relieve severe pain, is not supposed to be snorted or
mixed with other drugs.

Labzda's family's civil lawsuit includes Deonarine but targets
drugmakers Purdue Pharma and Abbott Laboratories for marketing
OxyContin.

Deonarine, 56, also prescribed OxyContin for three others who later
died from overdoses, prosecutors have said. Prosecutors have not
charged Deonarine in those deaths but say the cases are still under
investigation, state attorney's office spokesman Mike Edmondson said
Friday. In the meantime, Deonarine faces 79 other drug-related
charges from his family medicine practice.

Police say they found Deonarine hiding in the closet of his Jupiter
home July 27 when they arrested him. Since then, the doctor has lost
his affiliation with Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center. Jupiter
Medical Center has suspended his staff privileges. State regulators
suspended his medical license July 30.

Before it all unraveled, Denis Deonarine's identity was so married to
his medical practice that his patients became his employees; his
employees became his lovers and his family members became distant.

'I Have Good Intentions'

Deonarine sat in his attorney's office last week, five days after
bonding out of jail.

"I'm not here to kill anybody. I have good intentions," he said,
having exchanged his awkward blue jail outfit for a stylish dark
business suit. He looked befuddled and hurt that anyone --
prosecutors, patients, the public -- would think he is anything but a
caring and dedicated doctor. He vehemently denied accusations from
some former patients and staff that he dispensed prescriptions freely
or took drugs while on duty.

The oldest of 10 children born in Trinidad and Tobago, he had built a
lucrative career. He bought a $400,000 house in Jupiter and two
Jaguars, a red 2000 model and a topaz 2001 model, with checks from
his office and offshore bank accounts, Lubin said during a bond
hearing. None of the medical boards in the five states that have
admitted him had ever disciplined him before the criminal charges
began.

He said he has faith his attorney will prevail over this "saddest
travesty of the American justice system."

The Palm Beach Post used a patient list from an unsuccessful
Medicaid-fraud case against Deonarine to find and interview nine
former patients. Additional information about patients and former
staff members came from criminal and family court records and
testimony at Deonarine's bond hearing.

Todd Shea, 31, described tipping Deonarine $100 to $300 while in the
examination room by placing the money into his patient file after he
got his OxyContin prescription, according to an investigator's sworn
affidavit used as evidence in Deonarine's bond hearing. Shea, the
account continues, also brought other patients to Deonarine, told
them what to say and at times went into the examination room with
them.

Shea's medical file lacked the appropriate tests or documentation to
justify his prescription, the investigator said in the affidavit.

State records show Shea has been arrested eight times since 1992 on
charges that include weapons and narcotics possession. He pleaded
guilty to possession of heroin and possession of drug equipment in
March and was sentenced in 1993 to three years' probation after
pleading guilty to selling marijuana and possessing a weapon during
the commission of a felony, but adjudication was always withheld,
according to court and state records. His most recent charges include
a June 1 domestic battery and violation of probation.

Christina Brown, another patient for whom Deonarine prescribed
OxyContin and other painkillers, worked in the office and was
pregnant at the time, according to the same investigator's affidavit.
Brown's patient file included no information suggesting she had been
informed of the risks to her unborn child, the affidavit says.

Deonarine dropped another patient, Jennifer Coates, after she tried
to get him to help her control her addiction rather than continue to
prescribe her OxyContin and Diazepan, the affidavit said.

Fraud Probe Dropped

Deonarine, under his attorney's advice, declined to answer questions
about specific allegations, but he said of them generally:

"Not true. I listened to my patients, and there was a shared degree
of trust between the patient and the doctor."

Lubin, the attorney, said he has not seen most of the evidence that
the government cites. He says generally that Deonarine never offered
inappropriate care, that he always made sure his patients understood
the proper use of their medications and that he refused to see
patients who abused their prescriptions. And, specifically, he points
to the criminal charges Shea faces as a motive for possibly lying
about the doctor.

Lubin also had another doctor, Douglas Baird, of Largo, review
several of the government's charging documents. Baird signed an
affidavit saying Deonarine's medical care of Labzda met professional
standards.

When Medicaid fraud investigators sent a wired undercover agent to
get OxyContin from Deonarine, it wasn't easy. A transcript created
from two visits to Deonarine's office in April and May indicates
Deonarine asked detailed questions about the supposed Vietnam war
injury to the undercover agent's knee. He asked the undercover agent
to retrieve old X-rays and magnetic resonance imaging tests or agree
to order new ones. The agent resisted, offering several excuses.
Deonarine eventually agreed to prescribe a temporary supply of
OxyContin, but insisted that the patient order new tests.

The government has since dropped the Medicaid fraud charges, which
were separate from the murder and drug trafficking charges that
Deonarine now faces.

Deonarine said he feels deep compassion for sick people in pain. He
said watching his mother give birth to nine other children in his
Caribbean homeland made him upset with the lower standard of care
there. Later in his career, when he worked at a Veterans Affairs
hospital in Tennessee, he saw former soldiers with limbs amputated
and said it devastated him.

He said he knew at 14 that he wanted to be a doctor so he could make
a difference.

He graduated with honors from the University of the West Indies in
Jamaica in 1973, officials there confirmed. When Deonarine pursued
his residency at Queen Mary's Hospital in London in 1974, he was the
first person of color from the British colonies in the gynecology and
obstetrics department, he said.

Deonarine speaks proudly of his British education and his experience
at the hospital.

In 1976, Deonarine flew back to Trinidad to deliver his second child,
his daughter, Michelle.

'Booming' in the '70s

By the late 1970s, Deonarine was living well, by his own estimation.
His gynecology practice in Trinidad was "booming, booming." He had
affiliations with five private hospitals.

"That's where I made my millions," he said.

He had a $1 million home at the end of a cul de sac with no mortgage
and two extra lots he would one day use for his children's homes, he
said. Deonarine would work until 2 a.m., fall asleep with the
television on and a plate of uneaten food in front of him. The phone
would wake him two hours later, and he'd run out to deliver a baby,
he recalled.

He wanted his children to have it easy, no shifts at Burger King and
Dunkin' Donuts while they went through school.

But his wife had another vision.

"I wanted to live here in the States," said Irene Deonarine, who now
lives in Atlanta.

Her mother and four sisters lived in New York and Florida, and she
wanted to be closer to them.

Deonarine's wife arranged for the family to get legal U.S. residency.
She and the two children moved to New York.

"I think they were disgusted with the fact that my work was ruling
me," he said.

He followed his wife there briefly, but they separated in 1983 and
divorced in 1987. In between, in 1985, he had his third child, with a
Trinidad woman whom he did not marry, Deonarine said.

Irene Deonarine said he's always been there financially for her and
the children, but he spent most of his time with patients.

"That was his life and it still is his life," she said. "His patients
love him dearly."

In the 1980s and 1990s, Deonarine moved back and forth between the
United States and the Caribbean, starting and stopping his medical
practice. Moving to the United States presented a problem, because it
meant he would have to complete another medical residency. Deonarine
felt he'd already been trained well in England.

So he tried a few other options: a public health degree from Columbia
University in 1982 and a paralegal certificate from Nova Southeastern
in Davie in 1992. He has lived continuously in the United States
since 1992.

In 1993, Plantation police charged him with stealing shampoo,
conditioner, dental floss, a cleansing mask and deodorant from an
Albertson's grocery store, according to Broward County court files
from that case. He pleaded no contest to petty theft, a misdemeanor.
A judge withheld adjudication, which means the conviction does not go
on his record.

The charge apparently did not affect his plan to train as a family
practitioner in the United States. Deonarine, who had been a
gynecologist, switched specialties to reduce the amount of training,
which, by this time, seemed redundant to him, Lubin said.

Employer and Boyfriend

In 1992, he began a new residency in Nashville, at Meharry Medical
College, and spent another year at the Veterans Affairs hospital in
Murfreesboro, Tenn.

There, he had another child, Oliver. Deonarine lost parental rights
to the child as part of a March court settlement that allowed the
child to move with his mother back to Tennessee and allowed Deonarine
to quit paying child support. Deonarine, however, said he continues
to support the 6-year-old boy and speak with him once a week, though
he is legally bound to do neither.

Oliver's mother, Gabriel Wood, did not return phone calls. Records
from the paternity suit indicate she knew Deonarine as both a
boyfriend and an employer, a pattern that would be repeated at least
twice more.

By the time Oliver was 2 years old, Deonarine had left Tennessee and
begun working for a practice in Port St. Lucie. In June 1997, he set
up his own practice in Jupiter.

He also married one of his nurses that year, Jeannine Garner Hopson,
according to court records. The marriage lasted 14 months.

The third woman who would know Deonarine as both boyfriend and
employer started as a patient and now ties her fate to Deonarine's:
Wayna McCullom, his co-defendant on some of the drug trafficking
charges that shattered his practice this year, met Deonarine when she
came to his office as a patient in January, according to Medicaid
fraud investigative records. Deonarine stopped treating her
officially two weeks later when the romantic relationship began,
according to her medical records.

But investigators seized several subsequent OxyContin prescriptions
signed by Deonarine for McCullom. And at midnight on Feb. 24, before
rushing to catch a flight to Jamaica, the couple stopped at a Hobe
Sound pharmacy to pick up 120 OxyContin pills, according to a
complaint the pharmacist wrote to the Agency for Health Care
Administration. The order was so large, the pharmacist told Deonarine
they did not have enough stock to fill it.

"I believe Dr. Deonarine is not having a doctor-patient relationship
with the patient," pharmacist James Longo wrote.

From Patient to Worker

Several other patients also became employees and, in one case, ran
into legal problems.

Careen McCray, charged in March with fraud and three counts of
forging prescriptions from Deonarine's office, had been working in
his office, according to a Jupiter police report. McCray said she
came to Deonarine first as a patient. The report says Deonarine
prescribed painkillers for her, and she said she became hooked.
McCray told police she used blank signed prescriptions she got from
Deonarine and filled in her mother's and her husband's name to save
money on insurance co-payments, according to arrest records.

Another patient who testified at Deonarine's bond hearing last month
said she also answered phones in her doctor's office one day when
Deonarine's regular employee unexpectedly quit.

Becky Davenport, a retired teacher, said at a hearing that she agreed
to answer the phones because Deonarine needed her and he had shown so
much compassion during her husband's illness.

"I called him one night at 11:30 and talked with him for an hour,"
she said, explaining the kind of support available from Deonarine.

Indeed, many of Deonarine's former patients -- several of whom were
contacted by The Post without Deonarine's knowledge -- say they came
to him because of his hard work and dedication, not for prescriptions.

"To me, he was the best doctor I ever had," said Karin Bowden of
Jupiter, who saw Deonarine for high blood pressure and digestive
problems. "I'm not a kid. I'm 58 years old.

"When people abuse the medication, it should not be his problem," Bowden added.

Bowden said Deonarine was a doctor who would sit down and listen,
then order appropriate tests.

"If there's a problem, he will explain the problem with you. He's not
just in and out," said Grady Tatum, 49, of Jupiter.

That contrasts with the picture one former employee painted for investigators.

Barbara Groseclose told authorities she began working for Deonarine
last July after two or three months as his patient. She quit in April
out of frustration, she said, because she became frustrated with his
prescribing narcotics to patients who came to the office for that
purpose alone, according to a Food and Drug Administration
investigative report.

She told investigators Deonarine pre-signed his prescription pads,
the report said.

"She said that Deonarine is also taking the drugs and she recalled
one patient . . . told her that Deonarine fell asleep on her," the
FDA report said.

Deonarine said the allegations that he was taking drugs are "absolutely false."

He said he's spent the days since bonding out of jail getting himself
mentally and physically stable. He's reevaluating his priorities. In
the past five years of practice, he took two one-week vacations. He's
never been fishing. He doesn't sail, dive or golf.

His adult children, Dennis and Michelle, stand by him. Although they
didn't see him more than a few times a year growing up, they say he
wrote them cards and called and paid for everything.

"It is very unfair that a man would dedicate his whole entire life to
helping people, and then (for authorities) to turn around and say
these things . . . ," said Michelle Deonarine.

If he's acquitted, which he said he fully expects, he wants to get
his medical license back. If he can't, he said he'll use his legal
background to work as a malpractice consultant. Either way, he'll
change.

"I have realized the bottom line is my family needs me," he said
"Greenbacks aren't enough."

Staff writers Clay Lambert, John Pacenti and staff researchers Monica
Martinez, Madeline Miller and Sammy Alzofon contributed to this story.