Tony Protopappas

Victims

3 CONVICTIONS FOR SECOND-DEGREE MURDER, not first degree: three patients, thirteen-year-old Patricia Craven, twenty-three-year-old Kim Andreassen and thirty-one-year-old Cathryn Jones, killed by doses of a general anaesthetic he held no licence to administer. This is not a series of killings in the ordinary sense and the entry says so. HE WAS RELEASED ON PAROLE IN AUGUST 2011 by order of the California Court of Appeal, which overturned a governor’s reversal of the parole board

Years active

1982 - 1983

Location

Costa Mesa, California, USA

Method

Poisoning (anesthetics)

Status

Arrested on April 9, 1983 and CONVICTED IN 1984 OF THREE COUNTS OF SECOND-DEGREE MURDER, not first, for the deaths of three patients given fatal doses of a general anaesthetic he WAS NOT LICENSED TO ADMINISTER, at a time when he was using narcotics heavily. Sentenced on October 22, 1984 to concurrent terms of fifteen years to life. **HE IS NO LONGER IN PRISON.** A parole board found him suitable in 2010, on the argument that he could never practise dentistry again and so posed no danger; GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER REVERSED THAT DECISION ON DECEMBER 15, 2010. THE FOURTH DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OVERTURNED THE GOVERNOR IN JUNE 2011 and ordered his release, and HE WALKED OUT OF FOLSOM PRISON IN AUGUST 2011, having served more than twenty-five years of a fifteen-to-life term. He was sixty-five. His lawyer then sought to have prosecutors held in contempt over the delay in releasing him.

Tony Protopappas was a dentist in Costa Mesa, California whose patients died under general anaesthesia in his surgery. Three deaths in fifteen months led to murder charges, and he was convicted of second-degree murder in all three. The entry is flagged because this is not a series of killings in the ordinary sense.

He was born in 1945. Patricia Marguerite Craven was thirteen, Kim Minna Andreassen twenty-three and Cathryn Louise Jones thirty-one. Each died during dental work between 1982 and 1983 after being given anaesthetic drugs. The prosecution case was not that he intended any of them to die but that he administered anaesthesia with such reckless disregard for their lives, running multiple chairs at once, using unqualified staff, ignoring warning signs, that the deaths amounted to murder.

Arrest warrants were issued on April 9, 1983. He was convicted and on October 22, 1984 sentenced to concurrent terms of fifteen years to life on each count. The case is cited in medical and legal writing on criminal liability for anaesthesia deaths.