The Doctor & the Spinster

Donald Farnham Gibson was a slim young graduate of Yale medical school when he hung out his shingle in Danbury, Conn, as assistant to the town's leading surgeon. That was in 1929. Over the next ten years he made one of the best reputations in Fairfield County, specializing in urology.

After wartime duty in the Navy, Dr. Gibson went back to Danbury. An aging physician, Leslie B. Griffin, invited him to live in the ample house where the older man was rattling around alone except for his housekeeper, Elizabeth May Ayres. For her faithful services over 20 years, Lizzie Ayres inherited Dr. Griffin's estate (estimated at $60,000 to $100,000) when he died in 1947. Dr. Gibson went on living in what was now 'Lizzie Ayres's house. Within two months, the 71-year-old spinster made him her sole heir, named him co-executor of her estate--and thus set the scene for one of the oddest courtroom cases in Connecticut history.

The Widow Wetmore. The year after Dr. Gibson became the spinster's heir, one of his patients died, and the doctor gave the widow, Ann Wetmore, a job as his receptionist. Lizzie Ayres was a bit jealous of Ann, but her fondness for Dr. Gibson did not cool: in 1949 she changed her will, making him the sole executor. In the spring of 1950 Gibson got a divorce, helped by Lizzie's testimony that his wife, from whom he was separated, had deserted him. That month, according to later testimony, he asked an official at Yale medical school how to go about donating a body for dissection.

A Day at the Races. Last week, Donald Gibson, 50, looking like a puffy Clifton Webb, sat in a Bridgeport courtroom charged with manslaughter by negligence in the death of Lizzie Ayres. The state knew that it had a weak case, but the witnesses paraded to the stand and told amazing stories.

A Danbury physician, Frank T. Genovese, told of being called in by Dr. Gibson for consultation in June 1950. He visited Miss Ayres often, said Dr. Genovese, but he prescribed no medicine for her. Neither did he ask what Dr. Gibson was prescribing. Sometimes when Dr. Genovese called, the bedridden woman was alone in the house. Dr. Genovese wanted to take X rays and make laboratory tests, but Dr. Gibson said she refused to go to a hospital.

On July 26, according to Dr. Genovese's testimony, Dr. Gibson called him over at 8 a.m. and asked him to sign a death certificate for Miss Ayres, although she was still alive. At first he refused. But then he examined her, decided that she probably had only a couple of hours to live, and he signed the certificate, leaving the cause of death blank. Dr. Genovese spent the rest of the day at the races at Jamaica. Next day, he learned that Lizzie (Ayres had died, and he asked Dr. Gibson where he should send his bill. Dr. Gibson asked how many calls he had made, and he told him about 20. Dr. Gibson said to charge for 30 calls, the witness testified.

"No Evidence Here." The death certificate reported that Elizabeth May Ayres had died at 3:40 p.m. of "chronic myocarditis, chronic nephritis, carcinoma of the colon." Dr. Thomas L. Chiffelle, who was pathologist at Yale medical school at the time, testified that her body had been received a few hours after death and was soon embalmed. Said Pathologist Chiffelle : his examination did not confirm the causes of death listed on the certificate. Because of the embalming fluid, he could not make a satisfactory study of the blood in her body. Neither he nor a toxicologist could say what had caused Lizzie Ayres's death.

At that point the bottom fell out of the state's case. Judge Kenneth Wynne let the prosecution finish and then dismissed the indictment. Said he: "The State is unable to produce evidence that the deceased died from any act of the accused . . . There is no evidence here that she did not die from natural causes."

Donald Farnham Gibson rode home in his chauffeur-driven Cadillac to the $50,000 house he built just before Miss Ayres's death, to be greeted with tears of joy by his second wife, the former Widow Wetmore, whom he had married the day after Miss Ayres was buried.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.