Doctor gets up to 15 years for fatally poisoning wife with dietary supplements that once had her ‘seeing frogs’
A Manhattan judge on Friday threw the book at a doctor for fatally poisoning his wife with a cocktail of alternative medicines that once had her “seeing frogs.”
Dr. Jeffrey Harris, of Vancouver, Wash., was sentenced to the maximum penalty of five-to-15 years behind bars by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Curtis Farber — as the physician appeared in court handcuffed and wearing beige jail clothes.
Harris, 59, was convicted by a Manhattan jury in October of manslaughter after a month-long trial where prosecutors claimed his fixation on the dietary supplement selenium led to the fatal overdose of his wife Tammy Harris, 55, in 2018.
Tammy had Lupus but her husband — who specialized in internal medicine — rejected the diagnosis from other doctors, taking her care into his own hands and plying her with a range of medicines and supplements.
The pair met in 2003 when Harris was Tammy’s doctor and they married in 2007.
She first became ill in 2016 when she came down with mysterious aches and pains.
But her health quickly declined with Harris’ treatments — including extreme weight loss, suffering severe jaundice and eventually becoming bedridden.
He had given her so much pain medication one night “that she started seeing frogs jumping on her walls in the bedroom,” Sarah Hopkins-Hubbard, Tammy’s 41-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, testified in September.
Then in the late summer of 2017, Harris baselessly became convinced his spouse had mercury poisoning despite numerous tests to the contrary and he started giving her high doses of selenium — which eventually killed her, prosecutors say.
On a trip to New York City in January 2018 to see a doctor Harris admired, Tammy weighed under 80 pounds, the DA’s office says.
The Big Apple alternative medicine center confirmed with testing that Tammy didn’t have mercury poisoning and she, in fact, had 10 times more selenium in her blood than is recommended, prosecutors say.
Then on Feb. 22, 2018, Tammy suffered heart failure at the Palace Hotel and died six days later at Lenox Hill Hospital. Her death was eventually ruled a homicide.
“Jeffrey Harris betrayed his duty as a physician and as a husband by ignoring all medical evidence and advice and experimenting on his wife, leading to her slow and painful death,” Manhattan District Attorney Bragg said in a statement Friday.
“Dr. Harris prevented his wife, Tammy, from being treated for lupus, and instead filled her with unnecessary prescription medications and herbal supplements that exacerbated her symptoms and left her in excruciating pain,” the DA said.
Meanwhile, Harris’ lawyer Jason Goldman said he was unhappy with the outcome of the sentencing.
“Many loved ones, friends, and colleagues of both Doctor Harris and his late-wife Tammy had urged the Court for leniency today,” Goldman said. “We are disappointed, to say the least.”
