A former Lafayette doctor convicted in 1998 of attempted murder for injecting his former mistress with HIV-tainted blood has died, our media partners at The Advocate report.
Ken Pastorick, spokesperson for the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, confirmed to the newspaper that Richard J. Schmidt, 74, died at a Baton Rouge hospital Feb. 12. Schmidt was still in Department of Corrections custody at the time of his death, serving a 50-year sentence at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel, Pastorick told The Advocate.
Schmidt was found guilty of attempted second-degree murder in 1998, after a jury concluded Schmidt injected his former mistress, Janice Trahan, with HIV-tainted blood, under the guise of giving her a B-12 vitamin injection.
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