LIVERPOOL, Nova Scotia, Feb 28, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Nova Scotia man who last week told The Chronicle Herald newspaper that he killed his terminally ill wife, then went to the local police detachment to turn himself in, is now saying he believes his wife’s doctor used him to administer pain relievers knowing they would kill her, according to a new report by The Herald.
“The Nova Scotia medical system euthanized my wife. Without my consent they gave her drugs that would kill her,” Stephan Bolton is reported to have said. “The Nova Scotia medical system needs to be charged for murder.”
Bolton went to The Herald on February 23 and told the newspaper he killed his terminally ill wife Barbara Jean Jollimore-Bolton on January 22 by giving her an injection of two medications, but he now says he was following a doctor’s instructions and did not intend to kill her.
Bolton told The Herald on February 25 that he blames an interaction between the morphine he usually gave her and a drug called Nozinan, saying he believes the doctor told him to inject her with the drug knowing it would react with the morphine and kill her.
“If I had known it would kill her, I wouldn’t have pushed that needle in. That’s what I have as my nightmare. Every night I’m in bed, I see her lying there asleep, composed and nice, and I see me hunched over her like Dr. Kevorkian driving that needle into her arm and killing her.”
However, Dr. Peter Vaughan, medical director at South Shore Health, told The Herald the two drugs in question have been used together for many years in treating palliative patients.
“That combination of medications has been in use for a long time,” Vaughan said of morphine and Nozinan, noting morphine is effective at controlling pain, while Nozinan has been used for about five decades to control nausea and also acts as a pain reliever.
“They would be used together,” Vaughan said. “We have no reason to believe at this point that anything out of the usual happened in this case.”
A spokesman for the RCMP said Barbara Jollimore-Bolton’s death is being treated as “a suspicious death,” and the police will continue the investigation to decide whether charges will be laid.
“We’re just trying to gather the facts and find out what we can toward the truth,” said Cpl. Grant Webber of Queens RCMP.