Taunton nurse facing murder trial found dead

A Taunton nurse who was to appear in court yesterday on charges she killed her husband with an insulin injection has been found dead, apparently after jumping out of a hotel window in Atlanta, local police and colleagues said yesterday.

The body of Leona Mattson, 56, was found around dawn Tuesday in the driveway of the city's Georgian Terrace Hotel, Atlanta police Sergeant John Quigley said.

''Everything points toward a suicide," he said.

In June, after a three-year investigation, authorities charged Mattson with murdering Alfred Mattson, 53, her husband of more than 30 years. Prosecutors charged her with killing him with insulin in May 2001.

Colleagues, however, insist the mother of two sons and a daughter, who spent 23 years working for the Brockton Visiting Nurse Association and served on its board of directors, was innocent.

''We know that she was innocent, and it would have been proven that she was innocent," said Ellen Marlette, a spokeswoman for the Brockton Visiting Nurse Association, who knew Mattson for 10 years and described her as ''beloved by everyone, . . . a mentor to younger nurses, . . . [and] an absolutely wonderful woman."

''We are devastated; this is a real human tragedy," she said.

Mattson, who had been released on bail in June, had been on paid leave since prosecutors filed the charges against her, Marlette said, adding that Mattson had an unblemished record as a nurse and supervisor.

Relatives of Mattson's husband said they were denied justice.

''I don't believe she was innocent," said Augusta Mattson, Alfred's mother. ''I don't know why. It's just a gut feeling."

Bristol District Attorney Paul Walsh did not return calls last night. But in a statement reported by the Associated Press, he said Mattson's death resulted in an ''unfinished quest for truth and justice."

Kevin Reddington, a Brockton lawyer who had represented Mattson for the past three years, said he thought she had a strong defense.

''It says something that it took three years to indict her," he said. ''She did not inject him with insulin, and they couldn't prove that she did it."

Reddington said Mattson went to Atlanta to see one of her sons, but that she never met him there. She was supposed to appear at a pretrial hearing yesterday.