LIVINGSTON COUNTY (WWJ/AP) A Massachusetts pharmacist; charged with murder in the 2012 nationwide fungal meningitis outbreak that killed at least eleven Michigan residents; has agreed to plead no contest to involuntary manslaughter, according to an email sent to victims' families and obtained by the Associated Press.
The plea deal with Glenn Chin, 56 of Canton, Massachusetts, calls for a 7 1/2 year prison sentence, according to the email written by Johanna Delp of the State Attorney General Department. His prison sentence includes credit toward his 10 1/2 year federal prison sentence for racketeering, fraud and other crimes. He is unlikely to serve additional time in Michigan’s custody.
The state of Michigan charged him, and pharmacy owner, Barry Cadden , with 11 counts each of second degree murder for their alleged involvement in the outbreak . According to the email, Chin's upcoming November trial in Livingston County Circuit Court has been "scratched" as a result of the plea deal.
Chin was the supervising pharmacist at the New England Compounding Center (NECC) in Framingham, a suburb of Boston. He "disregarded sterility procedures in the compounding of sterile medications, created fraudulent cleaning records, and falsified scientific testing results," the Michigan Attorney General Department said.
“I am truly sorry that this ever occurred,” Chin said in a Boston courtroom during a 2017 trial.
The victims received the tainted epidural steroid injections (methylprednisolone), produced at the NECC, at the Michigan Pain Specialists Clinic in Livingston County 12 years ago. The injections infected their recipients with fungal meningitis.
Donna Kruzich, Paula Brent, Lyn Laperriere, Mary Plettl, Gayle Gipson, Patricia Malafouris, Emma Todd, Jennie Barth, Ruth Madouse, Salley Roe, and Karina Baxter lost their lives.
The outbreak sickened more than 700 people in more than 20 states, and dozens died as a result. Michigan was one of the hardest hit.
According to the Associated Press ; Michigan is the only state to prosecute Chin and Cadden, 57, for the deaths.
Cadden pleaded no contest to involuntary manslaughter in Michigan in early spring. A Livingston County judge sentenced him to 10 years to 15 years behind bars. It will be served at the same time as his federal prison sentence of 14 1/2 years on 57 criminal charges (including racketeering, conspiracy, mail fraud, and introduction of misbranded drugs into state commerce with the intent to defraud and mislead), and will not add any additional jail time.
A 60 Minutes investigation in 2013 took a closer look at the business practices of Chin, Cadden and their team; pinpointing a critical rule that prosecutors said they broke.
“Compounding pharmacies are bound by one rule,” Scott Pelley said during the report. “They must have a prescription for each individual patient. But NECC was shipping tens of thousands of vials from its lab called Clean Room One.”
The report from the United States Attorney General Office said that the NECC repeatedly shipped drugs without valid prescriptions-- using fake or celebrity names to cover themselves like "Michael Jackson", "Homer Simpson" or "Diana Ross.”
The lab’s Clean Room One, where pharmacists prepared the steroids, was "rife with mold, insects and cracks,” the Associated Press reported.
The NECC ultimately shipped steroid injections tainted with a black fungus all over the country, investigators said.
All it took was one shot to forever the change the lives of hundreds—causing immeasurable suffering for the victims, their loved ones and caregivers.
In a 2016 article by the Washington Post, William Mazure, of Jackson, described how the tainted shot altered him from a heavy-equipment operator who loved to hunt and fish to a man struggling on disability, his short-term memory “mostly gone.”
Julie Otto, also of Michigan, told Scott Pelley back in 2013: “I have been in the hospital seven times. A total of 75 days. I’ve missed Thanksgiving and Christmas, and my son’s birthday.”
George Cary, of Howell, told Pelley he lost his wife, Lilian, to the tainted steroid drug. Before they realized what had happened—he received the contaminated shot a few days after her death to take care of a “nagging pain in his back.”
“And then the fungus was inside him,” Pelley said in the report.
In a separate 2013 report by CBS News, Dawn Elliot of Indiana , said: “At times, I cried out and begged for God to help or take me.”
The victims were treated with a grueling regiment of high dose anti-fungal medications, that many compared to the brutality of chemotherapy, with similar side side effects like hair loss, weight loss, and severe pain that forced some to need morphine.
Traci Maccoux, of Minnesota, was only 23 when she received the tainted injections. In the same report, her mother wrote of her daughter's nightmare: "In the hospital, the hallucinations began from Voriconazole. She had to have spine surgery to remove a spacer she had because of the fungus. She was forced to drop out of college, could not drive for a year, spent 40 days in the hospital and nine months on Voriconazole...and has medical bills almost up to $500,000.”
She passed away last year at 32, and while it's not clear if her death was directly related to the fungal meningitis, her obituary lists the cause as “infection complications.”
The United States Attorney’s Office District of Massachusetts puts the death count at over 100 across the country, with more than 750 sickened—and the human toll perhaps impossible to measure.
Chin is due back in Livingston County court next Thursday.
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