Twenty-seven-year-old Dr. Karenina Longe was a senior house officer at Heartlands Hospital in Birmingham, England. She had been living with her boyfriend, forty-year-old lab technician Andrew Gardner, for about five years, but in late January of 2000, she had broken up with him, allegedly after he became physically abusive.
A week after the separation, on February 5th, Karenina returned to the home they had formerly shared, perhaps to talk to Andrew or retrieve some of her belongings. What happened while she was there is not entirely clear.
Sometime after she arrived, her boyfriend called an ambulance and said that Karenina had accidentally drunk Liquid Plumr, which is mainly comprised of sulphuric acid. The dispatcher could hear the woman screaming in agony in the background of the phone call.
Reportedly, when paramedics arrived, Andrew Gardner sent his son to accompany Karenina in the ambulance, while he himself went off to the pub. Karenina languished in the hospital for several hours but died the following day.
It was subsequently discovered that Andrew had waited more than twenty minutes to call an ambulance after Karenina ingested the acid and that he had actually called a plumber before calling the paramedics. It was also found that he visited Karenina once in the hospital, but upon being told that she wouldn’t survive, he used her bank card to charge £800 at various pubs and nightclubs.
Three weeks after the incident, Gardner arrived at the hospital and told them he’d taken an overdose of paracetamol, but upon examination, this was found not to be the case. At this stage, police took him in for questioning.
As before, Gardner initially stated that his girlfriend drank the acid accidentally, but he later changed his story and said she had done it on purpose as a suicide attempt. She’s been under extreme stress at work, he said, and that coupled with the end of their relationship had driven her over the edge. Investigators, however, started to suspect that he had either forced or tricked his girlfriend into drinking the acid because he was angry about the breakup, and arrested him for her murder.
He was placed on trial in the autumn of 2000 but was ultimately acquitted, as there was no solid evidence to suggest that he had administered the acid. Dr. Longe’s family, though, still maintains that she would not have committed suicide.
The death of Dr. Karenina Longe, then, remains unresolved.
Crime Immemorial 