Death by Antifreeze

Like a good mystery?  Especially when it takes place in Massachusetts?

Julie and James Keown…

Married for 8 years they left their home state of Missouri and settled in Massachusetts when James was accepted at the Harvard Business School.

Both he and his wife continued working for their Missouri employers by telecommuting.

Proud of her hard working husband, Julie couldn’t believe how solicitious he was when she began feeling ill.  Chronic tiredness, confusion, a bout of slurred speech every so often – it took some time before the source of her malady became apparent.

She’d lost most of the function of one of her kidneys.

A devastating diagnosis, particularly for a young woman hoping to begin a family.

Through it all, family and friends commented on how caring James was.  Ever vigilant, he made sure she was always hydrated, even getting Gatorade so she’d be certain of getting needed nutrients.

But continuing to go down hill, Julie ended up in the hospital.

When she recounted that visit to her parents, she mentioned that her doctors kept asking if her husband was poisoning her.  James interjected saying, yeah I didn’t like that; it was annoying.

But Julie started feeling a bit better, and kept searching on the internet for ways to cope with kidney failure.

But then she ended up back at the hospital where she slipped into a coma.

…I’d been tapping away on my laptop, eyes glued to the computer screen, while listening to this seemingly too common story playing on my TV.

But I was hooked now.  This story was going to turn out badly, I knew.

The question would be, ‘Did he or didn’t he?’

But the coma got my attention, so  I looked up and saw an all too familiar shot of the hospital entrance…Newton-Wellesley Hospital.

Newton-Wellesley Hospital

Wow…this happened here!

Newton-Wellesley in the middle of a mystery!

And so I watched to the inevitable conclusion where the husband turned out to have lied – a lot – never accepted by Harvard, made up past jobs, yada yada yada.

The wife never knew.  She never knew the person she married or the person who killed her.

And now the airwaves are full of the craigslist killer – the fiance his betrothed never knew, the son the parents thought they raised -  he never existed.

Does anybody really know the people they think they know best? When you hear of stories like these, it’s the question that comes to mind.

I guess the good thing about this story is that the doctors at Newton-Wellesley thought they might know.  They suspected.  They questioned.

And then they solved the medical mystery.  Julie was poisoned.

Newton-Wellesley…good at healing…good at investigating…even good at thinking the unthinkable.

Video

Watch the full hour Jan. 9: Things seemed to be going well personally and professionally for James Keown, a Missouri radio announcer. He and his wife Julie, exemplified “opposites-attract” — he the ambitious dreamer, and she the down-to-earth girl. -Dateline NBC

For more:

Death by Deception/Dateline.msnbc.com

JOHN PRESCOTT

-BostonKayakGuy

Top Real Estate Agent for more than 14 years, serving the real estate needs of Wellesley, South Natick, Weston, Needham, Wayland, Newton, Framingham and other MetWest communities. www.johnprescott.net

JOHN PRESCOTT

Vice President

Century 21 Commonwealth

508-523-9252

BostonKayakGuy…The MetWest Scene