A Physician Deliberately Gives His Ex-Lover HIV
(‘Shot of Vengeance,’ Forensic Files)
Forensic Files usually allows viewers to extract at least a little levity from crime stories: “My name’s Ed Post and I’m going for a jog,” Jason Funk‘s signing his own name to a stolen credit card receipt, and “Let’s go after that bitch,” to name a few.
The attempted murder of Janice Trahan, however, is just plain grim all around. She had a turbulent relationship with a charming physician who deliberately infected her with HIV and hepatitis C.
Richard Schmidt, M.D., was jealous when Janice moved on with her life, and he wanted to ruin it — and then end it.
Nagging problems. I’ve been putting off writing about “A Shot of Vengeance” because the episode is so sad. But after sucking it up and doing some research, I found that, while there’s still nothing amusing about the case, there was ultimately some justice and gratification for the victim.
So let’s get going on the recap of “Shot of Vengeance” along with extra information from internet research:
In 1994, Janice Trahan was a 30ish divorced nurse living in Lafayette, Louisiana, with two young sons. She sought medical attention for some persistent ills including eye pain, body aches, and swollen lymph nodes. Her gynecologist. Wayne Daigle, discovered she was pregnant.
And HIV positive.
Trash talk. Janice worked at Lafayette General Hospital, so perhaps she contracted it from a patient there.
Married doctor Richard Schmidt, who had a decade-long, off-and-on affair with Janice, told colleagues that she probably picked up the virus from some random guy. She was a barfly who slept around, he said.
In what must have been mortifying for Janice and frightening for them, the hospital asked her seven former boyfriends since 1984 to take AIDS tests.
They all came out negative.
Mr. Wonderful. Janice told police she suspected that Richard Schmidt had intentionally injected her with HIV. It seemed farfetched to them, especially because of the gastroenterologist’s highly esteemed reputation.
Richard certainly seemed like a great guy to Janice when they first met, right after the attractive 20-year-old Louisiana native finished nursing school and got a job as a licensed practical nurse at Lafayette General.
Janice admired Richard, then 35, for his intelligence and kind treatment of his patients. His colleagues appreciated him too and vice versa. He kept a closet full of wine that he gave as holiday gifts to other physicians, according to author Stephen Michaud’s book The Vengeful Heart and Other Stories: A True Crime Casebook, excerpted on the Crime Library.
Serial rescinder. The charismatic doctor instigated the affair with Janice after he began hanging around the section of the hospital where she worked. One night, Richard, who had three children with wife Barbara, invited Janice to his office for a beverage. He kissed her, saying he’d wanted to do that for a long time.
Toward the beginning of their relationship, they decided they would leave their spouses and marry each other. She divorced her husband, but Richard stayed with his wife.
As if things weren’t complicated enough, Richard impregnated Janice. She had stopped taking oral contraceptives because of migraines, and Richard didn’t like to use condoms. She wasn’t sure what to do, but Richard went rogue and called Janice’s mother to tell her about the pregnancy. He persuaded Janice to have the baby, promising again to leave his wife.
More slander. But Richard reneged and obliged Janice to remove the surname “Schmidt” from their baby son’s birth certificate. Richard ended up paying $300 to $500 a month in child support.
Janice tried to break up with Richard, but he threatened to derail her career and annihilate her reputation. By this time, Janice had risen up the hospital ladder, becoming director of the medicine intensive care unit. Richard said he would put nude photos of her on the hospital’s bulletin board. At some point, he began saying that Janice cheated on a nursing exam at the University of Southwestern Louisiana.
When Janice started seeing other men, Richard stalked them. He threatened to kill at least one, and was physically abusive to Janice, she told the Daily Advertiser. She said that Richard told her that he would fix things so that no other man would want her.
Odd visit. Janice was finally able to leave Richard for good after dropping him as her physician.
Nonetheless, on the night of August 4, 1994, Richard called to ask if he could stop by. He gave Janice, who had been sleeping and was groggy, what he said was a shot of Vitamin B-12. It was something he had regularly administered to her in the past; she would later testify that he suggested the shots to combat fatigue so that she would have more time to devote to him.
This shot, however, was different from the others. It “radiated down my arm,” Janice told the Daily Advertiser. “It never hurt like that before.” After the injection, Richard hurried away, saying the hospital needed him.
Months later, Janice’s health began declining.
Surprise guests. The police started looking into her case. Phone records attested to Janice’s claim of the late-night call.
Richard’s wife, Barbara Schmidt, would later recall coming home one day to find plainclothes police officers inside her husband’s study. They said they were looking for “evidence of B-12.”
When police showed up at Richard’s office at work, he told them that Janice was his girlfriend, not his patient, and that their romance took place over a couple of years and he’d thrown away any mementos of it, according to The Vengeful Heart.
Denials disproven. But police found photocopies of sexually revealing pictures of Janice in an old pocket calendar belonging to Richard.
And when they looked under “T” in his file drawer, they discovered a thick medical file on Janice Trahan.
Police Captain Richard Craft reminded Richard that he and Janice had a child together. Contrary to Richard’s portrayal of it, his relationship with Janice was a highly consequential matter.
Potent parcel. Then, investigators hit more pay dirt in a hidden box of medical records. A list of blood samples drawn from patients on the day before the late-night injection showed that all of the dozen or so blood vials from that day were sent for lab analysis except for two, from patients Donald McClelland and Leslie Louviere.
Police went to see McClelland, a junior high teacher, to ask whether he had HIV.
“HIV positive?” McClelland said. “Hell, I’ve got full-blown AIDS.” They also found out that Richard Schmidt had specifically asked McClelland to take an unplanned blood test that day. Likewise with hepatitis C patient Leslie Louviere, who usually had her blood drawn at a different hospital for insurance reasons, according to The Vengeful Heart; Richard told her he wanted to use her blood for research.
Loyal love. It appeared that Richard had somehow combined the two patients’ blood in one syringe, which he gave to Janice on that fateful night.
“Richard made a lot of promises to me that he did not keep,” Janice told Forensic Files. “But he did keep one, and that would be that he would kill me. And I feel like that’s a death sentence that I have.”
Fortunately, Janice’s boyfriend, Jerry Allen, stuck by her and they married in 1996. (It was his baby she was pregnant with at the time of her AIDS diagnosis. She had an abortion because she feared passing along the illness.)
Global sensation. Police charged Richard with attempted second-degree murder.
Media outlets from the U.S. and beyond trumpeted the story of the doctor who deliberately gave his lover HIV. London’s Evening Standard called it the ultimate fatal attraction. Many headlines referred to Richard as “AIDS Doctor.” Ranker would judge “Shot of Vengeance” as one of the 12 most WTF episodes of Forensic Files.
Still, it would be a hard case to prove. Prosecutor Keith Stutes told the Daily Advertiser that he probably lost 15 pounds while working at it.
Funny follicles. Janice would later say that she was terrified about exposing her personal life but that she hoped her story would help someone else.
As far as the court of hospital-employee opinion, most of the doctors sided with Richard.
The nurses were faithful to Janice. “Some were openly derisive about Dr. Schmidt’s comb-over haircut,” according to The Vengeful Heart. “Others used ‘creep’ to describe Schmidt to reporters.”
New tech. Meanwhile, Barbara Schmidt defended her husband. “He is not capable of doing this,” she said. “People won’t know all of the good he has done, and now this. He is ruined.” She said that on the night of the alleged injection, Richard was in the house with her when she started taking a bath and was right there in the bedroom when she finished it.
The prosecutors forged ahead, building a case that Richard — as he claimed — had spent the evening with his wife. But Barbara’s bath gave him a 20-minute window to stop by Janice’s place and inject her.
Phylogenetic testing, a new forensic technology, showed a relationship between the type of HIV found in Janice Trahan’s and Donald McClelland’s blood.
Subpoena snag. Furthermore, when Janice’s gynecologist told Richard about the HIV diagnosis, Richard didn’t seem worried for his own health and didn’t mention anything about getting a test.
The Associated Press described the trial as “played out as a soap opera-style drama.”
The defense implied that Janice dated other men to make Richard jealous. His lawyers won a small victory when, despite that Janice contracted hepatitis C, the judge would not allow related evidence in court, because the subpoena for Leslie Louviere’s medical records was improper, the Dallas Morning News reported.
Good kind of shock. Nonetheless, on October 23, 1998, Richard Schmidt was convicted of attempted second-degree murder and sentenced to 50 years of hard labor.
After hearing the guilty verdict, he showed no emotion and embraced his wife, who “collapsed in tears.” Barbara somehow stayed loyal to her husband despite that he admitted during his testimony that he had another extramarital affair after Janice ended theirs.
Janice clasped her husband’s hand, cried, and then fainted, according to the Daily Advertiser. Concerned courtgoers gathered around Janice and began fanning her; she left in a wheelchair.
How are you? District Attorney Michael Harson said that if Janice died, he would pursue a murder charge against Richard Schmidt.
The two patients whose blood Richard used to infect Janice filed civil suits against him. Don McClelland based his complaint on having been outed for having AIDS and also for the defense’s implication that he gave Janice hepatitis C. He had indeed had hepatitis, but it was a different form and he had recovered from it before the doctor drew his blood, the Dallas Morning News reported.
After the 1998 trial, Janice opened up to the Daily Advertiser about her life:
Everybody wants to know how I feel, how’s my health. HIV positive and hepatitis C is a deadly combination. I take 15 pills daily, which helps to keep the HIV under control. I have continuing problems with the hepatitis and particularly with the side effects of the medication.
She also thanked the DA’s office for believing in her.
Not in my vision. After taking a break from Lafayette General amid the trial, Janice returned to work but switched to an administrative role.
In 1999, the TV news-magazine series 20/20 made an episode about the case with journalist Cynthia McFadden reporting. Janice declined the ABC network show’s invitation to appear, noting that the trial was over and her family desired privacy. “There is no room in my heart or life for hatred or bitterness,” she wrote in a letter to 20/20. She called her current husband, Jerry Allen, a gift from God.
Richard Schmidt chose to appear on the 20/20 episode. He admitted to an affair with Janice but denied trying to kill her. McFadden skewered Richard by asking why, if Janice got HIV from someone other than him, he never got an HIV test. She also needled him about the test-cheating accusation he made against Janice; he couldn’t provide any basis for it. Richard, who cried during his interview, said he didn’t remember confronting one of Janice’s former boyfriends.
Denied in duplicate. Janice would later sue Richard as well as media outlets when they reported his claim that she stalked him. The circumstances and outcome of the lawsuit aren’t clear from the circuitously written court papers on the lawsuit.
Meanwhile, Leslie Louviere recovered from hepatitis and became an executive who works with healthcare organizations.
Donald McClelland died at age 54 in 2010.
After Janice testified at a 2015 parole hearing, the board rejected Richard’s application. In 2022, federal Judge Robert R Summerhays denied a petition for a second federal review of his case.
Plan backfired. While Richard sat in prison, Janice went on to have a full life with Jerry, her sons, and many friends. On a social media account, she noted Richard Schmidt’s death, on February 12, 2023. He passed away while serving his sentence at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center at the time.
“The target of his germ warfare attack outlived him,” the NY Daily News wrote.
Even if it was only figuratively, Janice got the last laugh.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
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