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Brits would have picked up foul play earlier than NZ forensic experts, says world authority

British experts would have sensed foul play earlier in the 1999 Dunedin insulin murder case than New Zealand forensic specialists, a world authority on insulin murders says.

UK expert Vincent Marks has spoken for the first time this week in an exclusive interview about the ensuing High Court murder trial in Christchurch nearly six years ago.

Otago University medical school department head Colin Buower was found guilty in November 2001 of murdering his wife Annette in 1999. Marks was called in as a defence witness to the trial.

He said if the Buower case had been handled, investigated and tried in Britain the outcome would have been very similar.

``The only difference is that the cause of her (Annette’s) hypoglycaemia would most probably have been identified earlier in Britain and shown to have been factitious that is, caused by sulphonylureas rather than spontaneous due to an abnormality of the pancreas, because of our greater awareness of the condition and use of more sensitive methods of measurement.

``But this may just be being wise after the event. There have been – and regrettably still are – cases of self-induced factitious sulphonylurea hypoglycaemia misdiagnosed in Britain for us to be too smug,’’ Marks said.

At the time, the judge in the trial criticised Marks for not offering his opinion on the wider aspects of the case after being flown from London to give evidence.

This week Marks said the jury got it right in finding and Otago University medical school department head guilty of murdering his wife Annette in 1999.

``I think the jury probably got it right. I am not convinced that the scientific evidence was as strong as was advance by the prosecution but coupled with the very strong collateral evidence it would be stretching the imagination to say the whole thing was purely coincidence. It was however not my job to say this in court – whatever the judge may have thought – as this was something the jury could make its own mind up on.

``I still find it extremely difficult to see how Colin persuaded Annette to take so many metformin tablets as she clearly must have done to achieve the concentration found in her blood.’’

He said the sentence Bouwer received was absolutely commensurate with the sentence he would have received in Britain for a similar crime.

``The only difference is that the cause of her hypoglycaemia would most probably have been identified earlier in Britain because of our greater awareness of the condition and use of more sensitive methods of measurement.

``But this may just be being wise after the event. There have been – and regrettably still are – cases of self-induced factitious sulphonylurea hypoglycaemia misdiagnosed in Britain for us to be too smug.

``I am not sure the police could have done very much more to bring the case to its ultimate conclusion without good forensic science advice.

``It is unfortunate for example that no one thought to measure insulin and C-peptide in Annette’s post-mortem blood.’’

``What stood out about this trial was Bouwer’s Walter Mitty of Baron von Munchausen character and the extraordinary coincidence of his son with the same name being on trial and eventually being convicted of murdering his wife in South Africa.’’

Marks is a former president of the Association for Clinical Biochemistry and former vice-president of the Royal College of Pathologists.

The Royal Society of Medicine reopened the chapter on the infamous Dunedin psychiatrist wife murder case this week with a new book about insulin murders.

Insulin Murders -- True Life Crimes, released in the UK by the society’s publishing arm looks, at how insulin has been used as a murder weapon in cases spanning the last 50 years, including the ‘cocktail of drugs’ New Zealand case.

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