NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) – A doctor was sentenced to five-to-15 years in prison for recklessly killing his wife by overdosing her with alternative medicines, prosecutors announced on Friday.
Jeffrey Harris, 59, of Vancouver, Wash., met Tammy Harris, 55, as her doctor in 2003 and married her in 2007, according to the indictment.
In 2016, Tammy started to experience aches and pains and was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, lupus, by her primary care physician.
However, Harris refused to accept the medical opinion and instead searched the internet for rare diseases, prescribing Tammy a range of treatments including antibiotics, antifungals, pain medication, and numerous herbal supplements.
Tammy's health deteriorated rapidly over time as she lost a considerable amount of weight and became bedridden.
During a hospital visit in August 2017, Harris pushed Tammy to reject her physician's medications and gave the meds he had selected.
Tammy’s health would get worse at home, briefly improve with hospitalization, and then decline again when Haris removed her from the hospital against medical advice.
In the summer of 2017, Harris, despite negative tests, concluded that Tammy was suffering from mercury poisoning.
He treated her with dangerously high levels of selenium which led to her death.
On Feb. 22, 2018, Tammy's heart failed in the Palace Hotel in New York. She was taken to Lennox Hill Hospital, where she passed away six days later.
“Jeffrey Harris betrayed his duty as a physician and as a husband by ignoring all medical evidence and advice and experimenting on his wife, leading to her slow and painful death,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Jr. said. “Dr. Harris prevented his wife, Tammy, from being treated for lupus, and instead filled her with unnecessary prescription medications and herbal supplements that exacerbated her symptoms and left her in excruciating pain. He moved from one diagnosis to the next, finally falsifying mercury poisoning and giving her such high doses of selenium that he eventually killed her with his reckless treatment."
On Oct. 26, the jury found Harris guilty of manslaughter for killing her by giving her numerous supplements and alternative treatments, including poisonous levels of selenium, and preventing her from seeking treatment for lupus.
"My heart goes out to her loved ones, and in particular her children, who were pulled into Dr. Harris’s machinations," Bragg said. "I hope they have some sense of resolution as this final chapter closes.”