A psychiatrist accused of slowly murdering his wife with poison tried to get his mistress involved in her care, the High Court in Christchurch heard yesterday.
The Crown claims Colin Bouwer's affair with fellow Dunedin psychiatrist Anne Walsh was one of the reasons he decided to kill his wife, Annette,
with a "clever cocktail of chemicals" that replicated the symptoms of a pancreatic tumour.
Patrick Manning, one of the doctors who treated Mrs Bouwer before her death on January 5 last year, told the court that Bouwer had seemed concerned about his wife's condition and rang him late one night.
"He commented during this conversation that his wife seemed somewhat down and I agreed with him that if this should continue, I may request a psychiatric opinion," he said.
"I asked who he'd be comfortable with and he suggested Dr Anne Walsh."
Dr Manning said Mrs Bouwer was not referred to a psychiatrist because her attitude became more positive.
He also said that when Mrs Bouwer was admitted to hospital after the first of three hypoglycaemic - low blood-sugar level - comas, he had ordered a blood test to check for sulphonylureas, a drug that altered blood sugar. The test was negative.
Dr Manning said that during the conversation about Mrs Bouwer's possible depression, her husband had asked about the doctors' assessment of the cause of her illness.
"He was concerned that we might be thinking that she had been on ongoing medication to produce her illness," he said.
"I told him that I was not thinking that medication was causing her illness. I thought we'd excluded sulphonylureas drugs as a cause."
Dr Manning said he later learned that the result of the test was inconclusive because sulphonylureas could be detected only with sensitive testing methods.
He accepted under cross-examination by defence lawyer David More that the negative result might have been because Mrs Bouwer had not taken sulphonylureas.
When Mrs Bouwer was discharged on Christmas Eve, he told her and the defendant that they had to monitor her blood-sugar and bring her back to hospital if it fell below normal.
On the afternoon before she died, Mrs Bouwer had blood-sugar readings of one-third the normal minimum amount, but she was not taken back to hospital.
The trial continues.
- NZPA
