Wieder sentenced to 12 months of house arrest Former forensic investigator also pays state $70,000

BRENTWOOD, N.H. — The former chief forensic investigator with the state medical examiner's office will spend 12 months under house arrest for reaping thousands of dollars in unearned fees from area funeral homes. Kathrine Wieder also paid the state more than $70,000 for money she collected illegally.

Wieder's guilty plea yesterday capped a 4-year-old case pursued by Rockingham County prosecutors that set off a broad inquiry into the funeral and cremation business in New Hampshire.

The investigation into Wieder of Newburyport and a former subordinate, Geno Nigro of Raymond, N.H., developed into an unrelated larger investigation into Bayview Crematorium, a Seabrook, N.H., business that operated illegally for years unbeknownst to state health officials.

Neither Wieder nor Nigro was associated with Bayview, but the discovery of their criminal acts sparked the state attorney general's office to revamp its protocols and oversight of medical examiners. Nigro spent nearly three years in state prison for stealing prescription drugs from bodies he was assigned to inspect.

Yesterday in court, Wieder, 52, admitted she diverted fees from area funeral homes usually paid to assistant deputy medical examiners charged with viewing bodies before they are cremated.

Instead of performing those site visits and examining bodies, prosecutors said, Wieder simply provided funeral homes, including ones in Salem and Derry, with paperwork she already approved with her signature.

Even if she conducted the inspections properly, prosecutors said, the money she collected should have been given to the state because Wieder was a salaried employee.

Wieder earned an annual salary of $57,000. Yet, in one year, she collected another $22,000 from one crematorium alone. Another business paid her $7,000 in a single year, prosecutors said.

As part of her plea agreement, she wrote a check in court to the state attorney general's office for $70,035, an estimate of the money she collected through the 1990s until her departure in 2004.

Deputy County Attorney Tom Reid said Wieder's actions put funeral homes, including the Peabody Funeral Home in Derry, N.H., in an untenable position. If they didn't follow her instructions to use pre-signed forms, they could not get the state approval needed for a cremation, which could essentially put them out of business.

"We have statements from them about the pressure they felt from her," Reid said. "The Peabody brothers were told they could use Kathy (Wieder) or Geno Nigro. She did not want to lose the business. It was all about keeping as much as business as possible."

Wieder had faced more than 50 charges across three counties — Rockingham, Merrimack and Hillsborough — that could have landed her in state prison for years had she been convicted at trial.

She pleaded guilty to 35 charges yesterday, which included felony theft by deception, fraudulent handling of recordable writing, and misdemeanor charges of criminal solicitation and official oppression.

Defense lawyer Paul McDonough cast his client as someone who had been mischaracterized by county prosecutors and who had a long record of helping people. That help included going to New York City to identify bodies from the Sept. 11 attacks and to the West Warwick, R.I., nightclub fire, he said.

"She did provide a long and valued service to the state of New Hampshire," McDonough said. "She did it working long hours ... in a business that can only be described as gruesome."

A major stumbling block in Wieder's case, which left it tied up in the court system for years, came largely from a debate about her health. Wieder attempted to claim she was incompetent to stand trial because she was battling a re-emerging bout of multiple sclerosis.

She has come to court in a wheelchair with feeding tubes and sometimes an oxygen tank. Yesterday, she spoke softly from the defense table, sitting beside her husband and legal guardian, Dr. Stephen Wieder, a Newburyport psychiatrist. He smirked throughout yesterday's hearing, occasionally looking toward the court gallery.

Wieder spent months resisting the state's efforts to review her medical records. McDonough said the contents were too personal and should not be aired in public. Judge Tina Nadeau eventually ordered Wieder to provide the records to state experts, who concluded she may have been fabricating some of her ailments.

That prompted prosecutors to call for an MRI to determine whether she was battling multiple sclerosis. Wieder attempted to take the MRI earlier this year, but said it proved to be too excruciatingly painful for her to go through with it.

Yesterday's debate veered toward whether Wieder should be free from probation and electronic monitoring during her house arrest. McDonough said Wieder's skin takes months to repair itself and a bracelet would only add to her long list of health problems.

"Her skin is friable; it's like parchment," he said. "It's like the skin of someone's 85-year-old grandmother."

Reid said Wieder spent years duping her co-workers at the medical examiner's office into believing she suffered from a variety of ailments, including thyroid cancer and leukemia. She would get special treatment in exchange and used it to her advantage both with her supervisors and people within the funeral industry, he said.

"She does want to be the center of attention. She is flamboyant," Reid said. "One of the things we hear from people: One day she is in the wheelchair and another she is fine."

McDonough said after the hearing, he hopes Wieder can now focus on her health. Her sentence will leave her on probation for the next 10 years, with a 31/2- to 7-year state prison sentence hanging over her if she has another brush with the law during that period.

It's unknown if the guilty plea will have any effect on the $5 million civil lawsuit the Wieders have filed against the state medical examiner's office. The lawsuit, filed in Essex County Superior Court, claims Kathrine Wieder was unfairly treated in her job, and that the police investigation hurt Stephen Wieder's business, Wieder Psychiatric Services.

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