Scott Anthony Burke, a retired physician, was arrested Tuesday on Nantucket on his yacht, where police said they found drugs, guns, and a possibly drug-impaired woman who wanted to leave the vessel.
Here’s what we know about Burke, a 69-year-old Key Largo, Fla., resident who was in Plymouth District Court Thursday for a detention hearing.
What is Burke charged with?
Burke has pleaded not guilty to charges of cocaine trafficking, possession to distribute a class A drug, possession of a gun without a license, possession of ammunition without a license, four counts of possession of a large capacity feeding device, and possession of a class B drug, according to court documents.
What did police find on his boat?
According to police reports, officers recovered more than 43 grams of cocaine, 14 grams of ketamine, two pistols, and various ammunition for both weapons. Burke told police he had a license to carry the weapons, but authorities determined that license, issued out of Florida, had expired last year, officials said.
Who was the woman on board?
Police initially boarded the vessel Tuesday morning after receiving a report of a woman on board who “did not want to be there, was under the influence of narcotics, and possibly [had] overdosed,” court documents said.
Burke led officers to the yacht’s main bedroom, where the woman “appeared to be under the influence of an unknown substance, [and] she also stated that she did not feel safe,” a police report said. The woman was given medical aid before being taken to Nantucket Cottage Hospital, officials said.
Neither her name nor her age were disclosed in court papers. The police reports didn’t indicate whether anyone else was on board the yacht when authorities arrived.
What is known about Burke’s background?
He was first licensed to practice medicine in Colorado in 1981 and his license expired in 2021, according to Colorado Board of Medicine records. There are no disciplinary or board actions against Burke on file, the records state.
The records say that Burke has done “charity medical work in Haiti” and graduated from the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine in 1980. The records list his specialty as “physical medicine and rehabilitation.”
The year he graduated, Burke received the prestigious Sandoz Award for “outstanding academic performance and impressive dedication to medicine,” the Morning Call newspaper in Pennsylvania reported.
In 2019, Burke indicated that he had no active affiliations or privileges with Colorado hospitals, according to state records.
In court Thursday, prosecutor Michael Preble said Burke has no ties to Massachusetts and, though his current address is in Florida, his yacht is “ultimately” where he resides.
So where did he practice in Colorado?
About 20 years ago, Burke founded a Denver-based company called Injury Finance, described on its website as “the industry leader in medical funding” that was created “to serve an uninsured and under-insured population in need of medical treatment.”
When he founded the company, Burke was “devastated” by a change in state law that “left hundreds of thousands of individuals unable to secure the medical treatment they needed to recover from injuries sustained in automobile collisions caused by another negligent driver,” according to the company’s website.
“Dr. Burke knew that he needed to act,” the site states. “On a white board in the back of his busy medical office, he spent countless hours figuring out how to bring quality health care from a vast number of healthcare organizations to those injured through no fault of their own. They developed a plan for a business that would focus on building relationships that aligned the interests of individuals involved in personal injury cases, the law firms that represent them, and the medical providers that treat them.”
The company said Wednesday that Burke has “no affiliation” with it.
Burke had also previously founded a company called Denver Spine and Rehab, according to his LinkedIn page.
“Dr. Burke was Founder and Owner of Denver Spine and Rehab since 1985,” the page says. “Physicians were spine, rehab and pain specialists.”
What sort of work did he do in Haiti?
In January 2010, Burke spoke to Westword, a Colorado publication, about his aid work in Haiti after it was hit by a devastating earthquake that month.
He told the paper he spent a week performing emergency amputations in a makeshift operating room in Port-au-Prince, and that it was frustrating to see surgical tents and other medical supplies sitting idle at the airport. He also recounted seeing dozens of people die for lack of blood transfusions and other normally routine procedures.
“It was appalling,” he told Westword. “If we had something as basic as a blood supply, we could have saved half of the ones who died in the hospital. But a lot of people never made it to the OR.”
Health issues
Burke’s lawyer, Hank Brennan, said in court Thursday that his client has also done medical relief work in Rwanda and has donated “an enormous” amount of his fortune to colleges and scholarship programs.
Brennan said Burke, a divorced father of two adult children, is suffering from late-stage cancer and likely won’t live long enough to see the case resolved.
Burke takes medication and meets regularly with a Miami doctor, but “it is conceded that he will not survive,” Brennan said.
Jeremiah Manion of the Globe Staff contributed to this report.
Travis Andersen can be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com.