Researcher Poisoned Wife With Cyanide

A University of Pittsburgh researcher was found guilty on Friday of poisoning his wife with cyanide and killing her. Dr. Robert Ferrante faces a mandatory life sentence for the April 2013 death of his wife, 41-year-old neurologist Dr. Autumn Klein. Ferrante is accused of lacing his wife’s creatine energy drink with cyanide he bought through his lab with a university-issued credit card. Ferrante denied poisoning her, saying he bought the cyanide for stem cell experiments. But Ferrante also did online searches on how cyanide poisoning may be removed by the medical treatments Klein received or detected by a coroner after her death (the results of Klein’s blood tests, which indicated cyanide poisoning, were not known until after she died). Prosecutors say Ferrante killed his wife after she pressured him to have a second child and because he may have feared she was having an affair or planned to divorce him.