Mass. Doctor Linked To 1993 Killing Dies In Prison

BOSTON (AP) - A doctor who was ordered to pay a $15 million civil judgment in the killing of his girlfriend has died in a prison hospital.

Timothy Stryker died Wednesday at the Lemuel Shattuck Hospital in Boston, said Diane Wiffin, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Correction. Wiffin would not release the cause, but said his death had been anticipated.

Stryker, an endocrinologist, was serving a four-year prison sentence after pleading guilty in a perjury scheme. Prosecutors said he had enlisted two men to help him concoct a story about seeing his girlfriend with another man shortly before she was last seen alive.

Stryker was never criminally charged in the death of Dr. Linda Goudey, a 42-year-old obstetrician from Stoneham. In 2006, a civil jury found there was enough evidence implicating Stryker and ordered him to pay $15 million to Goudey's family in their wrongful death lawsuit.

Goudey's body was found on Oct. 4, 1993, covered in a blanket in her Saab in the parking lot of New England Memorial Hospital in Stoneham. She had been strangled. Stryker insisted he had nothing to do with her death.

During the civil trial, Goudey's mother testified that Stryker and her daughter had been having arguments in the days before Goudey was found dead.

In a motion for a new trial filed after the civil judgment, Stryker submitted a sworn affidavit from Craig Pizzano, who claimed he saw a woman in the early morning hours of Oct. 1, 1993, in a Saab in the hospital parking lot having a sexual encounter with a man who resembled former NFL quarterback Boomer Esiason.

Pizzano later recanted his story.

Prosecutors said Stryker offered to pay Pizzano and another man $50,000 to $100,000 to carry out the scheme, if he was successful in overturning the civil judgment.

Michael Altman, a lawyer who represented Goudey's mother, Marguerite Rafuse, in the civil case, said Stryker's assets were used to pay a portion of the $15 million judgment. He said he has mixed feelings about Stryker's death.

"Just as a human being, one doesn't like to feel good that anyone has died and been terribly sick," he said. "This does bring closure to a very terrible event."

(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)