PITTSBURGH — A University of Pittsburgh researcher charged in the cyanide poisoning death of his wife last year was convicted Friday of first-degree murder.
Dr. Robert Ferrante faces
a mandatory life sentence in the April 2013 death of Dr. Autumn Klein, a 41-year-old neurologist.
The jury agreed with Allegheny County prosecutors who accused Ferrante of lacing his wife’s creatine energy drink with cyanide that he bought through his lab using a university-issued credit card two days before she fell ill.
The 66-year-old Ferrante denied poisoning his wife. His lawyers tried to make the case that she might not have been poisoned at all, citing three defense experts who said that couldn’t be conclusively proved.
Ferrante said the cyanide he bought was for stem cell experiments he was conducting on Lou Gehrig’s disease .