8/14/2011

Seattle: Former Duke doc now facing aggravated murder charges in deaths of his gay partner and their adopted 2 year old son

Please scroll down for a second Sunday post: basketball team departs for China, Dubai. Whoopie.

The following was updated at 10 30 PM Saturday

✔✔✔✔ A judge in Seattle has determined there is probable cause to hold Dr. Louis C. Chen -- who left Duke in July for a new job in Washington State -- for aggravated murder in the deaths of his longtime gay partner and their two year old adopted son.

Dan Donohoe, spokesman for the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office, said documents in the case would be released Monday.

Chen, under police guard in a hospital, now has his family from Taiwan at his side. They are arranging for a lawyer.

Updated at 8 AM Saturday

✔✔✔ A Duke doctor who moved to Seattle in July has been found stabbed and seriously wounded in the living room of his 17th floor apartment in the expensive First Hill neighborhood. The doctor's long-time gay partner, who apparently moved out shortly after arriving in Seattle and returned to Durham, was found stabbed to death. And in the bathroom, police found the couple's adopted two year old son, who also had been stabbed to death.

Seattle Police -- after initially withholding names -- on Saturday identified the doctor as Dr. Louis C. Chen, 39. His long-time partner was identified as Eric Cooper, 29. Seattle Police -- saying they are not looking for suspects at the moment -- will have no further information until Monday.

The doctor is in the Intensive Care Unit at Harborview Medical Center, a hospital spokesman said. Police said his injuries do not appear life-threatening.

The Seattle Times says the boy had been adopted "out of some pretty bad circumstances" in SouthEast Asia.

✔ The crime was discovered after a representative of Virginia Mason Medical Center, a group practice of 400 doctors, several regional offices and a hospital, went to Dr. Chen's home when he failed to show up for a two day orientation prior to joining the medical staff on Monday. The initial 911 call asked police to check inside the apartment; moments later another call reported the stabbings.

The Seattle Times says one of the men -- doctor or partner -- talked to the officers before falling unconscious. We do not know which one.

✔ Here's what we know about the Duke doctor: graduated from the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine in 2000, where he and his companion, 10 years younger, also shared a home. It's unclear if the doctor was a resident at Duke, or if he had a post doc fellowship.

Dr. Mark Feinglos, the Duke chief of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Nutrition, told the Seattle Times newspaper he oversaw the doctor for three years, a period that ended this spring.

"He was here and he was just outstanding. A really good guy," Feinglos said. "I'm shocked by this news, really. It's just appalling."

The doctor recently got a grant to study diabetes patients with gastric problems.

Rick Jones, who lives down the hall from the men, said he didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

"We didn't have a lot of interaction; just a few conversations in the elevator was the extent of it," Jones said. "But nothing seemed weird."

WTVD television in Durham is reporting police went to the home the doctor and his partner shared on July 6, 2010 because of a disturbance call, but no report was written by the responding officers.

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