Two "whistleblower" anesthesiologists have broken the "taboo of medical assassination": the Doubs Assize Court examined on Thursday the triggering of the case of 30 poisonings, including 12 fatal ones, attributed to Doctor Frédéric Péchier.
"Doctors Sébastien Pili-Floury and Anne-Sophie Balon were whistleblowers in this case," former police commander Fabrice Charligny told the court.
His department was contacted by the public prosecutor's office as soon as the investigation opened, following the unexplained cardiac arrest of Sandra Simard, 36, on January 11, 2017.
The patient was transferred to the Besançon University Hospital (CHU) for resuscitation.
The clinic's anesthesiologist in charge of the patient, Anne-Sophie Balon, "arrived in the department with a furious desire to understand," said Sébastien Pili-Floury, head of the intensive care unit at the university hospital, on Thursday. She showed him Sandra Simard's electrocardiogram.
"When I saw the electrocardiogram, it was obvious to me that it was a typical tracing of massive hyperkalemia (an excess of potassium, Editor's note)," he continues.
"Having been alerted for several years about the arrival of patients at the Saint-Vincent clinic in cardiac arrest, who should not have had cardiac arrest," the head of department advised his colleague to "rush to the clinic" to "recover everything that had been administered to the patient" and to have "the potassium measured."
A potassium level 100 times higher than normal was discovered during the analyses. "We were clearly in a malicious context," says Dr. Pili-Floury.
An electroshock for the medical world. This dose was "enormous, it's miraculous that this patient survived," Philippe Panouillot, a pharmacist inspector with the Regional Health Agency (ARS), also testified on Thursday.
– “Stop the massacre” –
The clinic management and the ARS then alerted the Besançon public prosecutor's office, which opened an investigation.
The Péchier affair begins.
Sébastien Pili-Floury told investigators about several similar cases of patients transferred from the Saint-Vincent clinic to the CHU.
Before these events, "several investigations" into suspected cardiac arrests "had not been successful, it was really this 2017 case that made it possible to unravel the threads" of all 30 poisonings of which Dr. Péchier is now accused, noted the president of the court, Delphine Thibierge.
At the start of the investigation, "Dr. Péchier was above suspicion; he was the best anesthesiologist at the Saint-Vincent clinic. In the doctors' software, it was unthinkable," according to Commander Fabrice Charligny.
To move forward, the investigations had to break the "social taboo of medical assassination," notes Attorney General Christine de Curraize.
After Ms. Simard's cardiac arrest, "the unthinkable began to emerge," recalls Philippe Panouillot.
"We get scared and we say to ourselves: maybe there's someone who's been killing people for years in Besançon and we haven't seen it. We have to stop the carnage, we have to stop the massacre."
The ARS was quickly "convinced of Frédéric Péchier's guilt" and, like the investigators, feared further poisonings.
– “Goldsmith of Death” –
Frédéric Péchier, 53, was arrested in March 2017. He is suspected of having contaminated patients' IV bags to cause their cardiac arrest, in order to discredit colleagues with whom he was in conflict, while demonstrating his skills as a resuscitator.
The accused's lawyer, Randall Schwerdorffer, admits that the poisoning of Sandra Simard "is necessarily a crime committed by a healthcare worker."
But according to his lawyer, Frédéric Péchier is "an ideal culprit" for investigators, and at the beginning of 2017, there was an emergency: "if we don't arrest Frédéric Péchier, we'll close the clinic."
And "does someone who is a master of death, of anesthesia, need to use 100 times the dose of potassium to kill?" asks the tenor, who suggests that a colleague of Mr. Péchier could also have been the poisoner.
Lee Takhedmit, another counsel for Mr. Péchier, also criticizes his client's lack of "a specific motive."
Frédéric Péchier, a father of three, has always maintained his innocence. He appears free but faces life imprisonment.
The verdict is expected on December 19.
English 
French