New Jersey MD Kills Himself in Jail While Awaiting Trial For His Wife's Murder
The New Jersey physician arrested earlier this month for hiring a contract killer to shoot his wife 6 years ago, has apparently committed suicide in the Hudson County Jail in the city of Kearney.
Doctor James Kauffman was found dead in his cell by a staff member just before 9:30 Friday morning. A jail spokesman said Kauffman had choked himself to death by tying an unspecified material around his neck and then lying face-down on his bed. A lengthy six-page 'letter of intent' was found nearby.
The Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office reported that they were contacted by authorities in Hudson County that Kauffman was found dead in his cell of an apparent suicide.
Kauffman's 47-year-old wife April, a South Jersey talk radio celebrity on WBIG radio station in Ocean City, was found shot to death in the bedroom of her Linwood home in 2012. Investigators needed 6 years to gather the evidence that her husband had arranged for her murder.
Investigators believe the doctor had his wife killed because she threatened to tell police he was running a prescription drug ring out of his clinic.
Prosecutors had built the case that Kauffman conspired with members of the Pagan Outlaw Motorcycle Gang to use his medical practice to illegally distribute drugs, in the years before his wife's death. The hitman - Francis Mulholland - shot April Kauffman twice, and died of a drug overdose before he could be arrested.
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