Trial postponed for man accused of poisoning wife

(Globe file photos)

James Keown is accused of slowly poisoning his wife, Julie Keown, by lacing her Gatorade with antifreeze.

By Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff

WOBURN -- A medical emergency for a defense witness delayed the start of the trial today of James Keown, a former Waltham man accused of slowly poisoning his wife with antifreeze-laced Gatorade.

A Middlesex Superior Court judge granted a one-day continuance after the defense said that their medical expert had to undergo emergency surgery. The lawyers will return to court Tuesday to determine how long the trial will be delayed. Opening statements had been scheduled this morning.

Keown has pleaded not guilty to killing his wife, Julie Keown, a 31-year-old registered nurse. She died in September 2004 after struggling for at least four months with mysterious symptoms, including vomiting, slurred speech, and deteriorating kidneys.

Prosecutors allege that Keown amassed a debt of at least $34,000 and killed his wife to collect a $250,000 insurance policy. A Middlesex grand jury handed up an indictment Nov. 3 after a 14-month investigation by Massachusetts detectives and the state Medical Examiner's Office.

According to a case summary read in court in 2005, the Keowns were living in Missouri when James Keown asked his employer, Learning Exchange, a nonprofit Kansas City-based educational consulting agency, if he could pursue a master's degree at Harvard Business School and telecommute, the summary said. The company agreed, and the Keowns moved to Massachusetts in January 2004.

But Keown, who never graduated from college, instead took a course about the Internet at the Harvard Extension School, which he failed, according to the summary. That July, the Learning Exchange fired Keown.

Meanwhile, Keown amassed at least $34,000 in debts, and his Jaguar was repossessed. In May, his wife began suffering symptoms that waxed and waned, baffling doctors, the summary said.

By late August, she was admitted to Newton-Wellesley Hospital for several days and diagnosed with weakened kidneys. Alarmed, her mother, who had flown to Massachusetts with her husband, noticed a bottle of Gatorade in the refrigerator and found it odd because she was not used to seeing the beverage in the couple's house, the summary said. Julie Keown improved.

Soon afterward, Julie Keown was on the phone with her best friend, identified only as Heather in the summary, when her husband yelled, "Tell Julie to drink her Gatorade." When she became ill and was vomiting, he suggested she take the sport drink to replace minerals.

Julie Keown was readmitted to the hospital several days later and lapsed into a coma, the summary said. Doctors determined that she had been poisoned with ethylene glycol, the substance in antifreeze.

When her parents asked their son-in-law how it could have gotten in her system, he speculated she might have picked up a soft drink bottle on the street and inadvertently drunk antifreeze that had been poured into it.

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