Boston doc admits to killing wife, weighing body down with rocks: officials
A renowned Boston surgeon has admitted to strangling his wife and then dumping her body in a pond — after making sure to weigh down her corpse by putting rocks in her pants, according to prosecutors and court records Monday.
Dr. Ingolf Tuerk, 58, a prominent local urologist, was charged with murdering his 45-year-old spouse, Kathleen McLean, on Saturday after he confessed to his heinous crime and told cops they could find her body in a pond near the couple’s home in the Boston suburb of Dover, the Boston Globe reported. McLean’s body was naked from the waist up when found.
At Tuerk’s arraignment Monday — where he pleaded not guilty and was ordered held without bail — prosecutors said the suspect had confessed to killing his wife in a fit of rage during a boozy fight Thursday night, according to the website MassLive.
Tuerk — who had been an alternate member of East Germany’s decathlon team at the 1980 Moscow Olympics — had allegedly been physically abusive to his wife in the past, and she wanted a divorce, at least at one point, the Globe reported. McLean had taken out a restraining order against Tuerk last month — only to have a change of heart and seek to rescind it.
But the day before her murder, her husband had been ordered by a judge to stay away from her, the Globe said.
Tuerk reported his Reiki-master wife missing Friday — and prosecutors said he was found the same day, unresponsive and holed up in a local hotel with cuts on his wrists, arms and legs and a syringe nearby, the local NBC-TV affiliate reported. He had to be revived with Narcan, the Globe said.
The doctor, whose specialty is robotic surgery, had been chief of urology at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Boston but was fired in February after settling state charges for medical billing fraud several months earlier with a $150,000 fine.
He and his wife were an item for more than two years before they eloped to Las Vegas in December, the Globe said.
Tuerk has two teenage sons from a previous marriage, while McLean separately had three children. All of the kids lived with the couple’s exes.