Addicted To Love

A Plastic Surgeon's Risky Affair With A Patient Turns Deadly

(CBS)  If he appeared contrite when speaking to the jurors, it was a different Christ Koulis who spoke to 48 Hours later, blaming Lesa for her own drug problems.

Asked if he got her addicted to drugs, Koulis says, "I think the choice of addiction is her own."

"When I recognized that I was addicted I got help. I got her help. From that point on, all bets are off," he says.

Koulis says while he was "wrong" in providing the drug and syringes, it was her responsibility to "stay clean."

"I don't think I bear responsibility for her death," he says.

Guilty or not, Koulis' lawyers are hoping to throw a huge wrench into the case with experts who will testify that it was not a drug overdose that killed Lesa Buchanan after all.

Defense lawyers are highly critical of what they consider sloppy police work, even suggesting that detectives failed to properly isolate the Lesa's apartment, the crime scene.

Det. Anderson says the apartment was secured almost immediately.

But mistakes were made, like losing evidence: medicine bottles from Lesa’s apartment that the detectives forgot to take from the hospital the day she died.

An even bigger problem for prosecutors is a defense challenge to the very heart of this case. What killed Lesa Buchanan?

Dr. Michael Graham, a forensic pathologist and medical examiner, testifies for the defense that the drug did not kill her, but that the filler did. The filler is the powdery material used to give shape and form to the pills when they're made.

Drug abusers crush pills, mix them with liquid, and inject them into their veins for a quicker high. But Graham explains that over time, tiny particles of crushed filler can build up and clog blood vessels in the lungs. And that, he says, is exactly what happened to Lesa.

"Injecting crushed pills over a long period of time caused her death suddenly," Dr. Graham testifies.

"It took months to years to form those things. It came from Lesa injecting herself when he wasn't around," defense attorney Lee Ofman says.

But prosecutors argue that the defense theory of what killed Lesa is only partially true, that in fact it was both the filler and the narcotic working together that caused her death.

"The filler was impacting the lungs," prosecutor Kim Helper says. "The oxycodone was suppressing her breathing mechanism."

"And I would suggest to you that the evidence fully supports the state's assertion that Lesa Buchanan died at the hands of this defendant," Helper says during closing arguments.

But Ofman says there's no proof Koulis did it. "And because of that you’ve got to find him not guilty!"

As the case goes to the jury, Lesa's family is concerned over what the verdict may be. "We hope he is convicted. There's nothing he can say to me, there's nothing he can say to that court, there's nothing he can say to my family to change what's happened," Tara says.

So Koulis is left to wait, facing the possibility of spending his next 25 years in prison. Left unanswered is the question of how an ambitious young doctor, a plastic surgeon, ended up here.

"Dr. Koulis is an extremely intelligent person. He went into medical school at age 19, if that tells you something," Ofman says. "All he did was work, work, work. So Dr. Koulis never had the time to enjoy his youth. His immaturity caught up with him."