Sex-change doctor guilty of second-degree murder
SAN DIEGO (AP) -- A doctor whose license was suspended 22 years
ago for performing shoddy sex-change operations has been
convicted of second-degree murder in the death of a man who had
a healthy leg amputated to satisfy a sexual fetish.
John Ronald Brown could face life imprisonment.
Brown, 77, amputated the leg of Philip Bondy, a New York man
who paid Brown $10,000 for the operation in May 1998. Bondy,
79, died of gangrene poisoning in a suburban San Diego hotel
two days after the operation.
New York psychologist Gregg Furth testified during the two-week
trial that he and Bondy contacted Brown as a last resort to
fulfill lifelong desires to amputate their legs. They shared a
fetish known as apotemnophilia, getting sexual gratification
from the removal of a limb.
Furth paid Brown to amputate one of his legs last year but
changed his mind, in part, because he saw a Mexican doctor who
was to assist in the surgery walk into the clinic carrying a
butcher knife.
Defense attorney Sheldon Sherman argued that Brown was guilty
only of operating on the fringe and providing "help for the
weirdos" because traditional doctors wouldn't.
"No one would deal with these transsexuals. They are a cancer
and a plague on society. We don't want to deal with them. John
Brown was willing to deal with them," Sherman said.
But prosecutor Stacy Running said Brown "just chopped off"
Bondy's leg below the knee and then dumped him at a hotel to
recuperate alone while he buried the leg in the desert to hide
the evidence from Mexican clinic inspectors.
Bondy called Brown the next day, complaining that he was
bleeding and oozing from the stump, Running said. Brown
returned to the hotel, rewrapped the leg and suggested Bondy
take more pain medications.
Brown did not perform a preoperative examination on Bondy,
which would have revealed pneumonia and past heart operations,
Running said. Coupled with Bondy's age, he was a risky
candidate for surgery, she said.
Brown, who lost his medical license in 1977, was convicted in
1989 in San Francisco for an unsuccessful scalp surgery to
shift the hairline of a man during a sex-change operation.
Brown served three years and then moved to San Ysidro at the
U.S.-Mexico border to start his underground medical practice
again.
He conducted business from his home and operated at clinics in
Tijuana, Mexico, Running said
