However, Venkatapuram Reddy, an internist, who treated Wanda Darling for various ailments from September 1995 until she moved to Alaska from Mississippi in August 1997, told the court Wednesday that Propulcid had nothing to do with her symptoms.

“All her symptoms were related to anemia,” Reddy said.

Darling is charged with first-degree murder in the death of his wife, Wanda Darling, who died from injuries she suffered during a fall from a bluff near Homer on Aug. 24, 1997.

The trial began May 2. On Wednesday, Judge Richard Savell told jurors it was possible they would receive the case for deliberation before the week is over.

During Reddy’s care of Wanda Darling, he referred her to a gastroenterologist, after she complained of abdominal pain and rectal bleeding. In May 1996, the gastroenterologist diagnosed her with a hiatal hernia and prescribed Propulcid, which Reddy described as a medication that helps push food through the stomach.

In November 1996, Wanda Darling experienced severe shortness of breath and chest pain and was admitted to a hospital. Testing indicated she was anemic and Reddy referred her to a blood specialist.

“He said all her symptoms were from anemia,” Reddy told the court.

The specialist prescribed iron supplements.

When Wanda Darling’s symptoms persisted, Reddy referred her to a lung specialist. Thinking her dizziness might be related to the Propulcid, she was taken off the medication. However, her ailments continued until January 1997, when she was admitted to a hospital, where she was given a blood transfusion and began taking a series of iron injections, one a week for 10 weeks, to correct the anemia.

The next month, Wanda Darling was put back on Propulcid after she began experiencing indigestion and abdominal pain again. However, when she saw Reddy in March, she reported none of the previous symptoms.

“(Propulcid) had nothing to do with her dizziness,” Reddy told the court.

Reddy addressed another issue raised during the trial — whether Wanda Darling was afraid of heights. A family member and a friend have testified that her fear of falling caused her to avoid elevators and escalators. Her husband, however, said her fear did not stop her from enjoying their visit to Niagara Falls and other areas of high elevation.

Reddy told the court that while he and Wanda Darling, a registered nurse, were working together at the Haleyville, Ala., hospital, she refused to climb on a bed to help transfer a patient to the bed from a gurney. On another occasion, Reddy saw her back around a bed to avoid looking out the third-floor windows.

“After that, I called for someone else,” Reddy said of accommodating Wanda Darling’s discomfort.

Defense witnesses

In a murder trial, the job of the defense is to provide other potential reasons or causes for death.

In his opening statement, attorney James McComas said the defense had found a “critical missing piece” of the investigation and would bring an expert witness in to testify about it.

That missing piece, said McComas, was that Wanda Darling was taking Propulcid — a drug prescribed to combat acid reflux disease.

On Friday, Dr. James O’Donnell, a pharmacologist and nutritionist from Palatine, Ill., said the drug killed more than 103 people before being pulled from the shelves by its manufacturer in 2000.

Propulcid, when combined with other drugs Wanda Darling was taking at the time of her death, could cause someone to get dizzy or faint, O’Donnell said.

After going through hundreds of Wanda Darling’s medical records, O’Donnell found evidence on Dec. 31, 1996, that she had a predetermined heart condition, called right ventricular delay, that could be made worse by taking Propulcid.

“In my opinion she had an increased risk for dizziness, for losing balance. An increased risk for falling,” O’Donnell said.

On a chart in front of the jury, defense co-counsel Cynthia Strout compiled a list of 13 doctor and hospital visits Wanda Darling made from Nov. 29, 1996, to Jan. 14, 1997.

During those visits, Wanda Darling complained numerous times of chest pain, shortness of breath, passing out, vertigo, dizziness and anxiousness.

Those symptoms, O’Donnell pointed out, also are included among side effects for the drug Propulcid.

Wanda Darling also had numerous tests done to find a cause for her symptoms from Dec. 31, 1996, to Jan. 15, 1997.

Other than the electrocardiogram that found the right ventricular delay in December, all tests came back within normal limits.

On Dec. 26, 1996, one doctor said her symptoms might be related to taking Propolcid itself and she discontinued use for a period of time and started feeling better, O’Donnell said.

But she started using it again, and the drug was found in her bag at the time of her death.

Strout asked O’Donnell how many times he had taken the stand to testify and how long he had been a pharmacologist.

O’Donnell said over his 30 years in the field he had testified 250 times.

On cross examination, prosecutor Crandon Randell asked O’Donnell how much he was being paid to testify in this case.

“I’m not being paid for my testimony, just my research and time,” O’Donnell said.

Again Randell asked how much and O’Donnell said he was paid $10,500 for a four-day trip to Homer, plus expenses.

“This is how you make your money now, isn’t it?” Randell asked.

O’Donnell said it was, among other things, including writing books and working at a pharmacy.

Randell asked the next defense witness, Dr. Jon Nordby, a consultant in forensic science and forensic medicine, the same question on cross examination on Monday.

Nordby was paid roughly $10,000 to investigate the evidence and determine if Wanda Darling was wearing her clothes at the time of the fall, if they were removed from her body after she died or if someone threw them down afterward.

In his opening statement last week, Randell asked rhetorically why Wanda Darling was found at the bottom of the bluff wearing only her bra and panties. He asked why some of her clothes — a T-shirt, jeans, socks and shoes — were found higher up the bluff, and why her T-shirt hadn’t been turned inside out in the fall if she was wearing it at the time.

During questioning by the defense, Nordby said the clothes were torn off Wanda Darling as she fell.

When a body’s skeleton is broken in as many places as Wanda Darling’s was, Nordby said, the surrounding tissue can stretch, elongate and compress with force.

Jeans, no matter how tight, can tear off, as can shoes and socks, and T-shirts can pull off without turning inside out or suffering considerable damage themselves, he said.

“In my opinion the clothes came off during the mechanics of the fall,” Nordby said.

Nordby roughly estimated that it took Wanda Darling 25 seconds to travel the 1,000 feet to her death.

Clair Israelson, executive director of the Canadian Avalanche Center, testified that he has been involved in multiple recoveries of falling victims. In his experience, Israelson said, he has found clothing torn from bodies as a result of falls in approximately 20 percent of the cases.

Norman Thompson, the former state’s chief medical examiner, performed the autopsy of Wanda Darling’s body on Aug. 25, 1997. His conclusion was that she died from massive blunt force injuries sustained in a fall down a coastal cliff.

Among his descriptions of multiple injuries that occurred during the fall, Thompson used a photograph to illustrate a fabric imprint on the upper calf area of Wanda Darling that had a weave “almost identical” to that of the fabric in the jeans recovered from the bluff two days after her death. Thompson also described one significant penetrating injury that occurred near Wanda Darling’s hip and compared it to a tear pattern in the same area on the jeans.

“I believe my explanation with the evidence I’ve seen is that she was wearing clothing when she went off the cliff,” Thompson said under cross-examination.

The question of how and why Wanda Darling fell to her death remains a mystery to Thompson.

“There is insufficient evidence to consider this a homicide,” Thompson said, adding that there also is insufficient evidence to consider the death an accident.

“I have determined that there is an undetermined manner of death. … Based on what I know today, ‘undetermined’ is still the manner (of death) for the purpose of a death certificate.”

Jay Darling

Going straight to the heart of the matter with his first witness, defense attorney James McComas called Jay Darling to the stand May 11. “Mr. Darling, did you push Wanda Darling off the bluff in Homer here on Sunday, Aug. 24, 1997?” McComas asked.

“No I did not,” Darling said.

Between that question and when the defense rested its case Wednesday morning, the 15-member jury, which includes three alternates, listened to Darling describe his relationship with his wife, their move to Alaska from Mississippi in August 1997, a kayak accident that occurred near Jakalof Bay the day before her death, incidents the day of her death and his actions after that tragedy.

Asked by McComas to describe his feelings for his wife, whom he married in April 1997, Darling said he loved her and she loved him. Underscoring his comments, he read his wife’s handwritten note on a Valentine’s Day card she gave him in 1997: “I know I can always count on you to be there for me. You know me better than anyone else has known me for years. For the record, I do consider you my best friend.”

Theirs was a friendship, Darling told McComas, comparing it to the “very passionate” and “stormy” relationship he had with Lisa Eddins, whom he dated before marrying Wanda Darling. Eddins testified for the prosecution earlier in the trial about her knowledge of Darling’s plan to collect on life insurance money by faking his death in a kayaking accident. She also testified that Darling told her his marriage to Wanda Darling was an integral part of his plan. In 2003, Darling admitted to federal charges of a scheme to defraud insurance companies and was sentenced to 40 months.

In August 1997, Jay and Wanda Darling moved from Mississippi to Anchorage. A few days after their arrival, Darling purchased a two-person kayak and the couple drove to Homer to kayak in the same area in which Darling had kayaked with his friend Michael Rabb in May of that year.

On Aug. 23, 1997, while kayaking near Jakalof Bay, the couple’s kayak capsized, dumping them into the water.

“Did you physically do something to tip over?” McComas said.

“I don’t think so,” said Darling, who was able to re-enter the kayak, and towed his wife to shore, a distance he estimated as 30 yards. After reaching shore, Darling decided to search for a cabin where they might build a fire.

When Wanda Darling shot off a flare, people on a nearby fishing boat responded, and took the couple back to Jakalof Bay.

Throughout the day and after they returned to their hotel room, Darling said, he apologized to his wife for the kayaking accident.

“She was angry with me,” Darling told the court. “I apologized again and said I can’t do anything else. I messed up. We’re OK.”

When Wanda Darling continued to be upset, Darling said he told his wife, “If we can’t get past this, it will tear us apart.”

Hoping to shake her out of her mood, he said, he suggested the possibility of an annulment.

The following day, Wanda Darling was “somber, reflective, a little quieter than normal,” Darling said.

As they were leaving town to return to Anchorage that afternoon, the decision was made to take photos of each other with Kachemak Bay in the background. Darling said he saw the “Bluff Road” sign and thought it might offer good views for the photos. He said he noticed the “road closed” sign, but didn’t understand what it meant.

Under cross-examination, Randell asked Darling if he had seen a pull-out area along the highway for taking pictures.

Darling said he saw nothing with a sign that said “scenic viewpoint.”

Turning back toward the Sterling Highway, Darling said he noticed a place he wanted to check out for photos. He backed his vehicle off the road, and he and Wanda Darling walked to within two or three feet of the bluff’s edge, where she took a photo of him with a view of the bay in the background.

“We were glad we’d get some pictures, something to put in the photo album,” he said. “It seemed like she’d lightened up a little.”

Before he took a picture of his wife, Darling said he had to “use the bushes.”

“I got part of the way back up to her and she just fell off the bluff,” he said.

Looking over the edge, he said he saw his wife fall head first and her body flip and then slip down the cliff.

“I realized I was standing right on the edge, and I took two, three steps back,” he said. “Then I crept back, but the second time I didn’t see her.”

Darling said he ran to the home of Ron Hess, located at the end of Bluff Road, for help. Darling said Hess returned with him to the spot where his wife had fallen and waited with him until emergency personnel arrived.

Harold Smith, as emergency room doctor who was on duty at South Peninsula Hospital on Aug. 24, 1997, reported Darling was “extremely distraught,” “horribly depressed” and “saddened” when he saw him to the hospital later that day.