Vicious cop drove outstanding physician to suicide

Adapted from an Associated Press wire story.

Bramwell, West Virginia - A distinguished pediatrician, Ralph Haynes, shot himself as police arrived on his doorstep to serve 21 "child, molestation" charges. Ohio authorities traveled to Haynes' southern West Virginia hometown June 18th to arrest the bespectacled, white-haired, 62-year-old doctor on ten counts of "gross sexual imposition," ten counts of "corruption of a minor," and one count of "rape." The doctor walked onto his from porch to greet the cars coming up the drive, then bolted back inside the house when he saw one was a West Virginia state police cruiser. Seconds later, three shots echoed from Haynes' basement. With three .38-caliber bullet holes in his heart, the doctor was pronounced dead at the scene.

Haynes specialized in infectious childhood diseases and joined a research team working with encephalitis cases. In 1981, his students at Wright State University Medical School in Dayton, Ohio voted him Outstanding Faculty Member of the Year. But his boss, Dr. Maurice Kogut, director of Children's Medical Center, affiliated with Wright State, said he confronted Haynes in October 1981 about allegations of homosexual activity with teenage boys, and the doctor admitted being bisexual and submitted his resignation. Nevertheless, Kogut did not report the allegations to Ohio's medical board, as required by state law. The criminal charges that police were trying to serve involved fewer than 10 boys, none of them patients. Authorities believe they could prove as many as 170 counts against the doctor in incidents occurring from 1979 to 1986. The teens' parents turned the doctor in when one of the boys finally told them what had happened. Dayton police detective Steven Fritz said the youths involved had kept quiet because, as one reportedly told him, "There are certain people you are brought up to respect." "Dr. Haynes was good to them. He took them to ball games, to King's Island {an amusement park}, bought them things," Fritz said. "He had video games, so they would come over and play those. Everyone I talked to said nothing was said because 'he was good to me and treated my family good.'" Haynes returned to Dayton on Memorial Day, and it was there, in the home of one of the youths, that the teenager confronted the doctor about what had happened, Fritz said. Police secretly videotaped the episode as Haynes, desperate to avoid discovery, pleaded with the young man to keep his secret. "We got Dr. Haynes on his knees three times begging this kid not to tell anybody," Fritz said. "He said he was planning to go straight."

In 1966 Haynes was hired at Ohio State University in Columbus. In 1978, he joined Wright State's medical facility. Three years later, Dr. Emanuel Kauder, the former chief executive at Children's Medical Center, became concerned that Haynes was spending too much time with a patient, taking the youth to outside activities. When Kauder confronted Haynes, the pediatrician resigned and retreated to the family homestead outside Bramwell, where his father, a coal hauler and later a Sunday school teacher, had raised three daughters and six sons, with Haynes in the middle. In Bramwell, Haynes befriended a local high school youth, according to Mayor Glenn Scott, who said the doctor took the boy to baseball games and bought him clothes. Scott said residents admired the quiet, almost shy doctor for his church work and turned their eyes from all else. "I think a lot of us were aware of the problem ... but you didn't say anything about it," Scott said. "I knew he had some affairs with some boys here, since he came back." "Maybe we as citizens are all guilty," Scott said. "He was so good to the kids. In some cases it seemed he was just good-hearted. He was very compassionate." At the end, some Bramwell residents were contemptuous of the Ohio families who reported Haynes, Scott said, criticizing them for accepting his gifts and then, years later, turning on him. "It's kind of weird," Scott said. "They knew this and they accepted him and looked on him with respect."

source: Article 'Vicious Cop Drove Outstanding Physician to Suicide'; NAMBLA Bulletin, vol. 8, no. 7; September 1987