St. Petersburg Times (Florida)

September 19, 2000, Tuesday, 0 South Pinellas Edition

Case closed

BYLINE: KATHERINE GAZELLA

SECTION: FLORIDIAN; Pg. 1D

The accused was a psychiatrist. The strangling victim, his former patient and lover, prosecutors said. When Dr. Louis Tsavaris died last week, he was still trying to erase the stain of the conviction.
Considering that the charge was murder in the first degree, the prosecutor found it odd that the defendant kept approaching him during breaks in the trial. But this was no ordinary defendant.
“You’re trying to put me in the electric chair,” Dr. Louis J. Tsavaris told the prosecutor. “But Tampa Electric doesn’t have enough power to kill me.”
Other times, Tsavaris shot the breeze with the prosecutors like a guy asking a neighbor if he saw the game last night.
“He had a very cavalier attitude,” recalled prosecutor Mark Ober. “He would come up to me and engage in very friendly conversation, when I was probably the worst adversary of his entire life.”
It was typical of Tsavaris, a high-profile psychiatrist charged with strangling a former patient who prosecutors said was his lover.
The 1981 trial had it all: a psychiatrist who catered to Tampa’s upper crust, tales of exotic sexual practices, a pathologist flown in from Scotland Yard to testify, even a jar containing the victim’s larynx that was set before the jury.
It featured some of the biggest names in Tampa jurisprudence: Harry Lee Coe III, then a judge and later the controversial state attorney who committed suicide; Ober, then a 30-year-old lawyer and now a candidate for Hillsborough state attorney; Paul Antinori, the former state attorney who led Tsavaris’ defense team; and, consulting for the defense team, Frank Ragano, a lawyer associated with Mafia figures, who was suspended from practicing law at the time.
“It definitely was the highest profile case of its time,” Antinori said.
At the center was Tsavaris, whose professional life unraveled as the case progressed. For nearly two decades afterward, he tried every way imaginable to have his license restored so he could practice psychiatry again.
Last week, at age 70, he died in a bizarre accident. Visiting a construction site along the Anclote River where his cousin’s company was building seven houses, Tsavaris stopped his 1988 Volvo station wagon but left the gearshift in drive instead of putting it in park. He walked in front of the car, which moved forward at about 2 mph, with his third wife, Irene, in the passenger seat.
The car ran over him, and the front wheel axle pinned his head to the ground. A construction worker ran to the car and put it in park, but Tsavaris was trapped underneath until firefighters lifted the car with a backhoe. He died at Helen Ellis Memorial Hospital shortly afterward.
As his attorney, John D. Middleton, put it, “This is an ironic finish to a star-crossed life.”
Louis Tsavaris, a Tarpon Springs native, left the area to study at Harvard and the University of Miami. He returned in 1962 to practice psychiatry in Tampa.
“He made it good, and everybody was happy for him,” said George Billiris, a sponge merchant based in Tarpon Springs who knew Tsavaris in high school.
Tsavaris made a name for himself as a psychiatrist serving some of the wealthiest people in the area. His group therapy sessions, which were considered groundbreaking at the time, were renowned.
So were his parties. He held grandiose gatherings, often in honor of Greek holidays. Antinori remembers one at the Tampa Convention Center, probably in the early 1970s, where Tsavaris held court at the gathering of high-profile people.
“He was the centerpiece,” Antinori said.
Behind the scenes, prosecutors said, he lived a troubled life. He was involved romantically with Cassandra “Sally” Burton, a 24-year-old legal secretary and his former patient. Their relationship grew rocky when Burton discovered she was pregnant and Tsavaris took her to have an abortion, according to court testimony. Tsavaris denied that ever happened.
On April 19, 1975, Tsavaris went to Burton’s apartment in the Town ‘N Country neighborhood of Tampa. Prosecutors said he either strangled her purposely or, possibly, went a little too far during an exotic sexual encounter in which he held her throat to cut off blood flow to her head.
Tsavaris called for help. Paramedics found Burton dead, wearing only a nightgown, Tsavaris at her side.
He said she had called him that night, sounding urgent, and he went to her apartment.
On the way to the home of a former patient who needed help, he said, he made one stop. He went to an ice cream parlor and waited while the chocolate ice cream machine was repaired.
He was indicted in June 1975. It took six years for the case to go to trial.
In the meantime, Tsavaris ran into more trouble. In Sarasota in 1979, Tsavaris’ 24-year-old girlfriend was hospitalized with a bruised eye, bloody mouth and sore ribs. She told police Tsavaris threatened her life, held her down, raped her and kept her prisoner in her own home.
Tsavaris denied it. A circuit judge dismissed the charges, ruling the case had not come to trial within the 180 days required by Florida’s speedy-trial law.
The trial for Burton’s death began in 1981, the courtroom packed every day. Prosecutors talked of the abortion and said Tsavaris had grown tired of the relationship. There was testimony about Tsavaris’ sperm count and whether he could have had sex with Burton the day she died.
Hillsborough medical examiner John Feegel testified that her death resulted from “soft strangulation,” which left no marks on her neck. He said the strangulation could have occurred accidentally if someone held her neck during sex in an effort to heighten her sexual pleasure.
The defense countered that Burton was a drug user who was once hospitalized for suicidal tendencies. They said she was diabetic and epileptic.
Dr. Joan Wood, who later became the medical examiner in Pinellas County, testified for the defense. Wearing white surgical gloves, she reached into a jar containing watery green liquid and removed a specimen. She placed the object on coarse paper towels, giving jurors a first-hand look at Burton’s well-preserved neck.
“That brought a gasp from just about everyone in the jury,” Antinori said.
Feegel had testified that the inner neck bore “extensive” hemorrhage marks, which led him to conclude Burton was strangled. But Wood said the injuries may have been caused by intubation during efforts to revive Burton.
The defense also flew in Sir Keith Mant, a pathologist from Scotland Yard. Judge Coe called him “Sherlock.” Like Wood, Mant contradicted Feegel’s findings.
Tsavaris did not take the witness stand. “Strategically, it would have been a very bad move,” Antinori said. He would not elaborate.
But Tsavaris was plenty talkative. Free on bail, he moved throughout the courtroom, chatting with lawyers and family members. He acted carefree, Antinori and Ober said. He had lunch in the same delis and restaurants where the prosecutors ate.
Antinori said his client didn’t seem to believe that he, a prominent psychologist, was on trial for murder. “It was almost like his entire existence was in denial,” he said.
In the end, the jury convicted Tsavaris of manslaughter. Jurors who spoke about their deliberations said they based their decision, in part, on the fact that Tsavaris stopped for an ice cream cone on the way to Burton’s apartment.
“We deemed it a great victory,” Antinori said.
Tsavaris spent the next 19 years of his life trying to erase the effects of the great victory.
Tsavaris appealed the decision and remained free on bail. Though he had been convicted of manslaughter in the death of a former patient, Tsavaris continued to see patients at his psychiatry practice.
An appeals court upheld the conviction in 1982, based in part on testimony from Feegel that Burton was strangled and that her death might have occurred during an exotic sexual encounter.
“There was some indication that appellant was familiar with this technique, and there was some testimony that he had once said he knew how to strangle a person without leaving marks,” Judge Edward F. Boardman wrote.
Hours after the decision was announced, Tsavaris, who had heard about the ruling, boarded an Eastern Airlines plane headed for Washington, D.C. Sheriff’s deputies pulled him off the plane and took him into custody.
Defense attorneys said he was going there on business, but prosecutors had their doubts. “If you wanted to get a passport quick, where would you go?” assistant state attorney Tom Davidson said at the time.
Tsavaris went to jail and lost his license to practice psychiatry in 1982, seven years after Burton’s death. He served 2 1/2 years of a 15-year sentence.
While Tsavaris was in prison, Feegel, the medical examiner, received a call from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The FDLE had gotten word that a contract had been put out on Feegel’s life – by Tsavaris.
Nothing ever came of it. But for two months, Feegel carried a .38-caliber handgun.
The day he died, a book sat on the back seat of Tsavaris’ Volvo. The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus tells the story of a French man convicted of treason who professed his innocence.
For years, Tsavaris told friends and relatives he was innocent, and they say they believe he was wronged.
“There was a lot of misinformation in the trial,” said John Tsavaris, his cousin and godson.
Unlike Dreyfus, who eventually was cleared of all charges, Louis Tsavaris failed in his repeated efforts to clear his name. For years, his lawyers filed appeals and petitions. Each time, the result was the same.
To keep up with his bills, Tsavaris worked in construction and as a medical consultant for lawyers. He visited Antinori a few years ago and told his former attorney about plans to ask the governor for a pardon. Antinori advised against it.
“Louis, get on with your life. Try to pick up the pieces,” Antinori told him.
Tsavaris didn’t listen.
In 1996, he asked then-Gov. Lawton Chiles to pardon him. Two former jurors came forward to say they didn’t think Tsavaris was guilty. Norman Cannella, who was Hillsborough’s chief assistant state attorney when Tsavaris was indicted for murder, said he didn’t think Tsavaris committed the killing.
The governor and the Cabinet denied the request.
Though many people believe Tsavaris’ quest was based on the desire to restore his good name, Antinori doesn’t think it was that simple. He believes his former client was more interested in practicing psychiatry again than in proclaiming his innocence. Having the conviction overturned was simply the means for having his license restored.
“His stature in society had been reduced . . . because he couldn’t open an office and have patients coming to him,” Antinori said. “He was a man in anguish.”
On the last day of his life, a motion was pending in Hillsborough Circuit Court. Middleton, Tsavaris’ latest attorney, had presented new evidence and asked the court to overturn the conviction.
Middleton said the evidence indicated Burton’s body was moved after her death, which could have caused damage to her throat that Feegel attributed to strangulation. The motion also asserted that some jurors committed misconduct.
In light of his client’s death, Middleton doesn’t know what will happen with the motion. Whatever the outcome, he said, it is disappointing that Tsavaris won’t be around to see what happens.
After all these years, Tsavaris was still trying, still waiting.
“He was a very persistent fellow,” Antinori said. “That’s the saga of Dr. Tsavaris.”
Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
+++Louis Tsavaris, left, and defense lawyer Michael A. Kinney listen during jury selection in Tsavaris’ 1981 trial. He was accused of strangling a woman prosecutors said was his former patient and lover.
Hillsborough County medical examiner John Feegel, who performed the autopsy on Cassandra Burton, testifies in the 1981 trial against Louis Tsavaris, who was accused of strangling Burton in 1975.
Tsavaris gets a hug from his daughter, Tia, in the courtroom after the jury convicts him of manslaughter.
Louis Tsavaris bows his head as he is sentenced to 15 years in prison for manslaughter in 1981.
Tom Davidson, left, and Mark Ober prosecuted Dr. Louis Tsavaris. Ober recalls that for someone on trial for his life, Tsavaris was unusually friendly.
(1985) In 1995, Louis Tsavaris asked the governor and Cabinet for a full pardon of his conviction in the 1975 strangulation of a former patient. It was denied.