POLICE SUSPECT RAT POISON USED TO CUT DRUG

TAUNTON - It will be months before anyone knows for sure whether
Christopher Gardner died as a result of heroin cut with rat poison or
some other mixing agent, as police suspect.

And whomever is responsible may never see the inside of a jail cell
for helping to kill him.

Gardner, 48, was found unconscious a week ago Friday morning outside
his Silver Street apartment. He died at Massachusetts General
Hospital in Boston that night.

Another Taunton resident, Cheryl Raymond, was brought to Morton
Hospital and Medical Center after overdosing on heroin the same
morning. The Bay Street resident was released Monday.

Sgt. Michael Grundy said the two may have gotten a bad batch of the
drug, bought from the same location near Winthrop Street and the Taunton Green.

"There are two possibilities," Grundy said. "Either the heroin
contained a lethal substance - sometimes they use rat poison to cut
it with - or the purity of the heroin was so strong that their bodies
couldn't cope with it."

Raymond insisted the heroin she took was not bad, but refused further comment.

Dr. Stephan Becker said there is nothing to suggest bad heroin has
been going around.

"I just think people accidentally hurt themselves," said Becker, who
is medical director of the emergency department at Morton. But
toxicology on Gardner won't be back for weeks, making it hard to tell
how he died and even harder to nab someone for selling drugs, tainted or not.

Taunton police Lt. Philip Warish said the story isn't new.

"Unfortunately, for the most part, historically, we do very little
with overdose deaths," Warish said.

"They die, and by the time you find out what's killed them,
toxicology, that takes several weeks to come back."

Further complicating things for police is a shortage of fresh leads
to the source of the drugs, mainly because the user is dead.

Becker said medical ethics preclude him from calling police to report
drug use. He also could speak only broadly about heroin users in Taunton.

"An investigation into where somebody obtains drugs can be very, very
time consuming," Warish said.

A drug dealer could be charged with manslaughter for selling heroin
used in an overdose, Warish said.

But not every heroin-related death is an overdose. A user could,
hypothetically, take drugs and nod off outside, dying of hypothermia,
Becker said.

Grundy is investigating Gardner's death. He said last Friday that he
was following leads pointing toward two suspects police believe sold
the heroin to both victims.

Craig Gardner, Christopher Gardner's brother, said he doubted his
brother's heroin was cut with another lethal substance. "He never
bought on the street - he knew where to get the good stuff," Gardner said.

"If it's so-called rat poison, he would have been dead hours before."

Gardner remembered his brother as a "very intelligent" man who loved
to read and had musical tastes ranging from the great classical
composers to the Grateful Dead.

Christopher Gardner never shot up heroin, as a Daily Gazette report
stated, but instead snorted the drug, his brother said.

Raymond, who overdosed and survived, lives in a well-kept house on
the edge of Lake Sabbatia.

The point, Gardner said, is that not all heroin users are vagrants or
drug addicts wandering the streets at night. Taunton, by the numbers,
is a city that knows heroin.

Overdoses on heroin killed two people in 2003, one person in 2004 and
two people so far this year, according to a review of Taunton police reports.

Sgt. Daniel McCabe, who conducted the review, said three other
unattended deaths this year are suspected to be heroin overdoses.

The Morton Hospital emergency room has seen 27 narcotic overdoes
between January and October of this year. October has been a "banner
month," Becker said, with five narcotics overdoses in the ER.

"A serious overdose is almost always going to be heroin," Becker said.

But an overdose does not always mean death. Emergency room doctors at
Morton use Narcan, a narcotics counteragent, to zap users out of an overdose.

Most people overdosing on heroin have used a needle to inject the
drug, Becker said.

Heroin arrests are low, but not nonexistent.

Five people were charged in 2004 for possession of heroin or the
misdemeanor crime of being present where heroin is kept, McCabe said.

Police have charged another five so far this year. Only one person
was charged with heroin possession in the last six months of 2003.