Cross-dressing doc found dead in jail cell

M.L.

Norwood (WBZ Newsroom) -- A cross-dressing dermatologist serving life in prison for killing his wife was found hanged in his cell, a spokeswoman for the Department of Correction said Tuesday.

Richard Sharpe was found by his cellmate at MCI-Norfolk at about 7:30 p.m. on Monday, said Department of Correction spokeswoman Diane Wiffin.

"He tied a bedsheet to the top bunk," Wiffin said.

Sharpe was taken to Norwood Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 8:11 p.m.

The Department of Correction and Norfolk District Attorney William Keating is investigating Sharpe's death. A spokesman for Keating said the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner was expected to perform an autopsy Tuesday.

Sharpe tried to hang himself in his cell before, at MCI-Cedar Junction in Walpole in March 2002.

The Gloucester dermatologist was convicted in 2001 of shooting his wife, Karen, with a rifle in July 2000. In 2007, he was acquitted of charges he plotted to kill the prosecutor in his murder trial.

Karen Sharpe had left her husband several months before she was killed. Her divorce attorneys called Richard Sharpe's death "a sad ending to a tragic tale of deceit, betrayal and murder."

"Hopefully, Richard Sharpe's death brings some closure to this nightmare for the three Sharpe children," said attorney Mark Smith, a partner in the law firm that represented Karen Sharpe in the divorce.

Sharpe, 54, was a member of the Harvard Medical School faculty who ran several businesses outside his medical practice and parlayed his earnings into millions in the stock market. His case drew national attention when photographs of him wearing slinky dresses and fishnet stockings were widely published after his arrest, and his wife had said in affidavits that her husband stole her birth control pills in an effort to enlarge his breasts.

During his trial, Sharpe testified that he began cross-dressing at a young age to escape his father's rage. He testified that he didn't remember much about the night of the killing, when he shot his wife in front of her brother and other witnesses as the couple's two youngest children slept in another part of the house.

Defense witnesses, including Sharpe's siblings, testified that Sharpe endured years of childhood abuse by his father. A psychiatrist testifying for the defense said Sharpe suffered from a half-dozen psychiatric disorders, including severe depression and intermittent explosive disorder. He said Sharpe's disorders were aggravated when he drank alcohol. Sharpe testified he had two to four glasses of wine the night of the killing.

But prosecutors said Sharpe carefully calculated his actions before the killing so he would appear insane, and later faked symptoms of mental illness to impress psychiatrists and the jury. Sharpe stole a gun from a friend the night of the killing to make it look like a heat-of-the-moment decision, then used another gun he had obtained before that night to shoot his wife. Neither weapon was ever recovered.

During the trial, there was testimony that Sharpe had physically abused his wife during their 27-year marriage. In 1991, he was committed to a mental hospital for stabbing his wife in the head with a fork after she asked for a divorce.

The Sharpes married as teenagers, and had three children, including two who were 7 and 5 when their mother was killed, and a daughter, Shannon, who was 26 at the time.


Source: wbz.com