OVERDOSE CASE OFFERS FEW ANSWERS

WORCESTER-- Raymond A. Diaz probably thought the suggestion that he go
out for a drink at a Main Street nightclub was a good one. He had,
after all, put in a full shift as a Yellow Cab taxi driver; it was a
Friday night, and it was only 10:30.

A drink with some friends, a little music, maybe a dance or two, and
in an hour or two, he would walk the few blocks to his apartment at 63
Dorchester St.

But the hour or two turned into an eternity. Sometime that evening,
Mr. Diaz walked to an address on King Street, where he bought a
package of heroin from a drug dealer. He evidently snorted the drug as
he was walking home.

He made it as far as an embankment behind the parking lot of the
Crystal Palace nightclub on Southbridge Street.

There, just a few blocks from where his wife and three children waited
for him, he sat down, lapsed into unconsciousness, and died. A worker
from the Come Play Products Co. on Suffolk Street who was out for a
breath of fresh air spotted the body just before 10 a.m. the following
Monday, June 28, 1999.

Mr. Diaz's body was in an area of the city where many homicide and
assault victims have been found, as well as many victims of drug
overdoses or alcohol poisoning.

Sometimes emergency help arrives in time to save the luckier ones.
Often, however, the help comes far too late.

That was the case with Mr. Diaz, and with Jayne M. Downs and Carol
Tebeau, whose bodies were found in a parking lot at Jackson and
LaGrange streets on May 7.

The first police officers at the scene the morning Mr. Diaz was
discovered treated his death as a possible homicide. As the
investigation continued, though, they became convinced that he wasn't
killed by another person. Dr. Jennifer Lipman, state medical examiner,
concluded that Mr. Diaz died of "cocaine and opiate intoxication."
Since there were no other extenuating circumstances or relevant clues,
the manner of death -- whether it was an accident, a suicide or a
homicide -- remains undetermined. Police considered the death an
overdose and closed the investigation. For Mr. Diaz's, wife, Lynn
Diaz, the official answer was not enough. She is convinced that her
husband met his death due to foul play of some sort. When police found
Mr. Diaz, he was not wearing a shirt. In addition, some personal items
from his wallet, including his taxi license, were missing. Police
reports indicate he had suffered a laceration on his forehead and nose.

But neither police nor Dr. Lipman considered the laceration anything
other than an injury due to falling forward.

The fact that Mr. Diaz had no shirt and that he had sustained some
sort of cut was significant to Mrs. Diaz.

"I think somebody did something to him," she said. "I'm not going to
take away from the fact that my husband used a drug, OK, and that it
killed him. But my husband was very self-conscious about the way he
looked and he would never walk around without his shirt on. ... He was
found without his shirt and I tried to explain that to them." For a
time, Mrs. Diaz called police frequently, asking for information on
the investigation and offering to help. But when police concluded that
there was no evidence of a homicide or foul play, they closed the case
and went on to other business.

Mrs. Diaz remains convinced that there was more to her husband's death
than what came up in the autopsy and police investigation. She even
went so far as to consult a psychic, who told her that her husband
went out with two people the night he died and that the heroin was
"laced with something." The medical examiner, Mrs. Diaz said,
confirmed that there was more than heroin in the drugs her husband
took.

"She told me it wasn't the quantity of the cocaine or the opiate,"
Mrs. Diaz said. "It was the quality that did it to him." Now, two
years after her husband died, Mrs. Diaz still has much anger, but few
answers.

Police, she said, would not give credence to anything the psychic told
her. Nor would they contact him, she said.

"To this very day -- he's going to be dead two years June 27 -- I
still don't know where is my husband's stuff, the things that were
taken," she said. "Now I'm a widow and his three little kids are
growing up without a dad. I'd just had our first daughter, Elizabeth.
She's 2. Raymond Jr. is 5 and Andrew is 4." Mr. Diaz was buried July
1, 1999, at Riverside Cemetery in Grafton. Mrs. Diaz still feels the
pain of that day and of the weekend her husband went out for a little
socializing and never came home. "What about the people that deal that
stuff in ... Main South?" she said. "There has to be something done.
All this is going on, on King and Orient and Piedmont streets. Why can
they do nothing?"