Former HMS Professor Convicted

A former Harvard Medical School (HMS) faculty member, whose case has drawn national attention because of his hidden life as a cross-dresser, was found guilty on Tuesday of the July 2000 killing of his estranged wife. The verdict came despite his claim that he was clinically insane at the time of the murder.

Dr. Richard Sharpe, 47, had been a part-time HMS clinical instructor affiliated with Beth Israel Hospital from 1993 to June 2000. He also completed his dermatology residency at Harvard in the late 1980s.

HMS spokesperson John Lacey yesterday emphasized that Sharpe was no longer a faculty member at the time of his wife’s death. The school had dropped Sharpe as an instructor after deciding he had not spent enough time on HMS-related duties.

“It would be inappropriate for the school to comment on the verdict,” he said.

During the trial, Sharpe’s attorneys claimed that years of physical and verbal abuse at the hands of his father had led to Sharpe developing six mental illnesses, including depression, borderline personality disorder and intermittent explosive disorder. Defense witnesses, including Sharpe’s siblings, testified to his childhood abuse.

However, prosecutors argued that Sharpe’s murder of his 44-year-old wife Karen was a calculated and planned response to his wife’s refusal to hand over $3 million she had received as part of their divorce settlement. They argued that Sharpe had made efforts to disguise his premeditation and that he later faked symptoms of mental illness to impress psychiatrists and the jury.

When he took the stand in his own defense, Sharpe claimed to have few memories from the night of the killing.

“I heard the gun go off,” Sharpe said in his testimony. “I think the noise sort of woke me up a little bit. I heard the noise and I left.”

After three weeks of testimony, the Essex County jury deliberated for 10 hours over two days before delivering its guilty verdict in the trial.

The conviction means Sharpe will likely be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Sentencing will be determined today.

One of the prosecutors expressed satisfaction after the jury returned the guilty verdict.

“It’s clear [they] paid close attention to the evidence and they disregarded what the government felt was a fabrication of an insanity defense,” said Assistant District Attorney Robert Weiner in a post-trial press conference reported in The Boston Globe.

In addition to his work at Beth Israel, Sharpe also ran a cosmetic hair removal business and an Internet business that developed medical software and lasers.

The initial arrest surprised many of those who knew Sharpe at HMS.

Dr. Joseph Kvedar, a HMS assistant professor of dermatology who was finishing his residency when Sharpe was just beginning his own, remembered Sharp as “a quiet man who didn’t socialize much.”

While Kvedar said he did not want to comment on the conviction without knowing all the facts in the case, he said that Sharpe “did not give any impression that he was a criminal.”

Early in the investigation, various media outlets published reports of Sharpe’s cross-dressing. The national news media published photographs of Sharpe wearing slinky dresses and fishnet stockings—surprising HMS colleagues who knew him only professionally.

Lack of knowledge about a colleague’s personal life is part of the larger tragedy of the situation, according to Dr. Steven Shama, a clinical instructor in medicine at HMS.

Shama said he had known Sharpe professionally for years and called him one of the most generous donors to dermatological research in the state. Yet Shama said he had no knowledge of Sharpe’s life outside the office.

“Sometimes it can be after 20 years that you finally find out someone you work with even has a family or kids,” he said.

—Material from the Associated Press was used in the compilation of this article.