Lady Doctor Under Investigation For Two Murders Commits Suicide

In New Zealand last month a doctor by the name of Shelagh Isabella Dawson was found dead of an apparent suicide, two weeks after she learned she was being investigated for the murders of two different men in her life.

Dawson, a Christchurch medical researcher, is believed by police to have poisoned her boyfriend last year, and to have poisoned her husband 9 years ago, using her very own prescription drugs.

Dawson, age 60, was an epidemiologist and diabetes expert who was a staff medical lecturer at Otago University School of Medicine. She died at her home in Richmond on May 9. In the weeks before, police had questioned her about her boyfriend, who had unexplainably fallen unconscious 3 different times in 2017. The victim, who remains unnamed, was rushed to the ER each time - in June, July and August. The hospital laboratory tests revealed that he had five different prescription medicines in his blood - most of which had never been prescribed to him.

When police searched her home they found what they described as "literally a suitcase full" of drugs - all prescribed to the doctor by her own physician, for numerous conditions she insisted she had.

Her husband, Graham Edward Dawson, age 54, had died at Christchurch Hospital from multi-organ failure in September 2009. A doctor-friend had signed off on the death as 'natural causes'. There was no autopsy, and his body was cremated 3 days later.

In the most recent death, investigators learned that the doctor had taken out a $350,000 life insurance policy on her boyfriend before the poisoning began. He believed the policy was for travel insurance and agreed to sign the document and - bizarrely - he even made the monthly payments. Not long after the death, the insurance company paid out the cash.

The couple had been together for about three years before they broke up last year.

So the final tally of this sordid saga? One dead husband. One dead boyfriend. One dead, murderous doctor,

We could make this stuff up, certainly. But with the appalling amount of outrageous doctor behavior going on everyday . . . we don't have to.