Could former anesthesiologist Frédéric Péchier, on trial in Besançon for 30 patient poisonings, including 12 fatal ones, committed before 2017, have been implicated as early as 2009? The question was examined Thursday by the Assize Court, where former colleagues recounted their dismay at a dark series of three unexplained cardiac arrests.
"As early as 2009, investigators had everything they needed to understand" that a poisoner was operating in Besançon, observed Frédéric Berna, lawyer for a patient who was the victim of similar incidents in 2017. This woman, who survived, is "almost in tears" when she considers this prospect, he emphasized.
In 2009, three suspected poisonings took place on April 7, April 27, and June 22 at the Polyclinique de Franche-Comté (PFC), an establishment where Dr. Péchier worked from January to June of that year. He then returned to work at the Saint-Vincent clinic, where the other 27 victims were identified.
These three serious accidents were extremely surprising, doctors who encountered them told the court. "Since 1985, when I was installed, this was the first cardiac arrest I had seen" at the start of anesthesia, testified anesthesiologist Jacques Pignard, who had to manage the first case.
After the second, "we were saying to ourselves, something's wrong," recalled Lydie Steinmetz, the surgeon who was to operate on the patient.
After the third case, Dr. Pignard, suspecting malice, had the patient's IV bag seized and analyzed. It contained "a completely abnormal quantity of potassium" and "adrenaline in enormous doses."
An investigation was opened by the Besançon prosecutor's office. Frédéric Péchier's name appeared, but since he was not physically present at the Polyclinic during two of the three heart attacks, he was not implicated. The investigation was closed in 2012 due to "unknown perpetrator."
At the time, no one thought it possible to introduce products into a bag before an operation. But after new suspicious cardiac arrests in 2017 at the Saint-Vincent clinic, the police reopened the investigation and believe that Dr. Péchier may have been active at the PFC as early as 2009, poisoning IV bags before surgical operations.
A theory that the accused's lawyer, Randall Schwerdorffer, tried hard to counter.
He thus maintained that his client could not have poisoned the infusion bags without it being noticed: "if you make a hole in them to introduce the product, the air passes through and it is no longer under vacuum, it is visible", but "no one had noticed anything abnormal", according to him.
And he was also surprised that a PFC nurse, who testified on Thursday, was exonerated because she was absent during some of the incidents, even though this reason was not upheld in his client's favor. "When you're not there, you can't be suspected, and (...) when Frédéric isn't there, he can be suspected," he summarized, addressing the nurse.
Frédéric Péchier, 53, is the only practitioner who worked in the two establishments concerned by the case at the time of the alleged events. The accused, who has always maintained his innocence, faces life imprisonment. The verdict is expected on December 19.
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