DOCTOR'S DEATH AS MYSTERIOUS AS HER LIFE

COLUMBUS, Ohio (Associated Press) -- In the end, a doctor known for her
love of life died like so many of those in the rock 'n' roll world that she
admired so much: choking on her vomit from a drug overdose.

The mystery of 39-year-old Joanna Demas' death was much like the one
surrounding her life. Family members and colleagues described Demas, who
once posed for Playboy, in contradictory ways.

"This is my worst nightmare,'' her husband, Peter Way, told The Columbus
Dispatch for a story Sunday. "I am absolutely devastated.''

Way, bassist for the British head-banger group UFO, found his wife's body
on the bathroom floor of their apartment Dec. 26 when he returned home from
England. She had been dead at least a day.

A recently completed autopsy showed the 5-foot-3, 110-pound Demas had
enough drugs to kill several people her size.

She had ingested more than two times the lethal amount of cocaine; more
than five times the lethal dose of Elavil, an anti-depressant; and six
times the lethal limit of Inderal, a beta blocker used to treat anxiety and
hypertension.

The combination implies suicide, two doctors told the newspaper. But Demas
left no note and had no history of suicide attempts, and Franklin County
Coroner Brad Lewis has ruled the death accidental

Asked how a doctor could mistakenly overdose on two prescription drugs, he
said, "The cocaine may have clouded her judgment.''

Demas came to Columbus in 1986 from Florida. She joined a medical group at
a local hospital while her first husband, Mark Arnold, accepted a
fellowship at Ohio State University.

Her patients adored her. Doctors said she was a caring and compassionate
internist.

But by the time the marriage ended in 1991, "We were totally different
people,'' said Arnold, still at Ohio State University Medical Center as a
surgeon and remarried. "She started taking singing lessons, hanging with
this rock group and having an affair with a band member who was married and
had two kids.''

She generated controversy in 1992 by becoming the first physician to pose
in Playboy. She told The Columbus Dispatch at the time that she saw the
photos as an opportunity to express herself.

"I want women to think they can be professional and sexual at the same
time,'' she said. "Too many professional woman suppress their femininity.''

Demas began to regularly change jobs and started seeing patients at home.
There were complaints about medical care, inquiries about her
prescription-writing practices, suspicions of illegal drug activity at her
home, and financial problems.

She became a regular at clubs in Columbus and would often treat band
members who had become ill. She met Way at a UFO concert in 1995 and
married him the following year.

"If the guys she was attracted to in high school were any indication, Pete
was the embodiment of everything she wanted in a man,'' said her sister,
Carol Demas.

Those who saw her before her death say she appeared to be happy. She and
Way had planned to move to Florida, which meant she could be closer to her
father and sister.

"Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought something like this could
happen to her,'' her sister said.

Others, though, were not so surprised.

"She looked like a shadow of herself. ... It spooked me,'' a former
neighbor, Roger Williams, said when he saw her last year. "She was very
thin and pale, like a walking dead person.''