Court told abortion doctor's coffee spiked

Jasmin Lill

THE de facto wife of a controversial Brisbane abortion doctor yesterday admitted in court that she daily spiked her partner's morning coffee with Prozac.

An inquest into the death of Dr Peter Bayliss, which re-opened in the Brisbane Coroner's Court yesterday, heard that his former de facto wife of more than 20 years, Claudia McEwan, had been addicted to prescription drugs and had done a stint at a New Farm rehabilitation clinic.

McEwan also told the court Dr Bayliss had injected her with drugs over a 20-year period, and that the injections had been on a daily basis over the last six months of his life.

She said she had become suspicious that Dr Bayliss had taken a lover in Tasmania after she found a number of Viagra scripts around the couple's New Farm home.

"He said, 'Princess, it's done. Gone. Over.'," she said. "I wasn't particularly annoyed."

Detective Senior-Sergeant Mark Ainsworth told the court yesterday that Dr Bayliss had a lover in Tasmania whom he visited every weekend and telephoned up to four times a day.

The court also heard he had bought a practice in Tasmania and planned to move there.

McEwan told the court her partner had no idea she was slipping the sedatives Prozac and occasionally Valium into his coffee.

McEwan said she believed Prozac was "a very benign substance" and said she only did it to control her de facto's rages.

McEwan � who worked with Dr Bayliss at the Fertility Control Clinic at Greenslopes � said some staff were aware she put Prozac in his coffee.

"It was very open. I never hid it," she said.

Dr Bayliss, 70, was found dead on a staircase in his New Farm home on March 30, 1999. An original inquest found in December 1999 that his death was accidental and due to a heart condition as a consequence of sleeping pill toxicity.

The inquiry reopened after Coroner Michael Halliday notified police his office had received new information about the death.

The hearing continues.