The Attempted Poisoning of Selwyn Rabinowitz is a past crime recounted through a newspaper report and detectives’ review of Michael Ferris Burke’s history. Rabinowitz survived after taking only a sip of poisoned coffee, but the case established a serious, unresolved suspicion against Burke: a physician accused of using medical knowledge to try to kill a former supervisor, then gone when police sought to question him.

Background and Motive

At the time of the incident, Rabinowitz chaired the Department of Emergency Medicine at Unitas Critical Care Center in Rochester, New York. Burke, a 38-year-old emergency-room physician, had recently been suspended by Rabinowitz over what the newspaper described as questionable medical practices. The report also said Burke had made veiled threats against his superior. Those circumstances supplied a possible motive, but they did not by themselves establish that Burke had poisoned him.

The incident came to light for Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis through a news item dated fifteen months earlier and filed from Buffalo, New York. Its headline, Doctor Suspected in Attempted Murder, announced an accusation rather than a conviction. The article said police were seeking Burke in connection with an alleged attempt to lace Rabinowitz’s drink with a lethal combination of toxic materials. In the detectives’ later discussion, the suspected poison was identified as cyanide.

The Poisoning

Rabinowitz drank one sip of the doctored coffee and became ill almost immediately. The speed of his reaction made the danger plain, but he survived. The original report described him as hospitalized in stable condition; the later account supplied a fuller measure of the aftermath, stating that he spent a month in hospital despite having swallowed only a small amount. The attempt failed, but it was not a harmless or merely speculative threat: it left Rabinowitz seriously ill and under medical care for weeks.

The poisoning was linked to Burke through a chain of circumstances. He was the last person known to have been near Rabinowitz’s coffee cup, apart from Rabinowitz’s secretary, who passed a polygraph. Burke had already been suspended and had reportedly threatened his superior. When local police tried to question him and administer a polygraph, he had left town. Taken together, the timing, the prior conflict, and his absence gave investigators grounds for suspicion, but the account does not describe a direct witness to the poisoning or a definitive forensic finding placing the act in his hands.

Evidence and Uncertainty

The evidence involving syringes and a penicillin ampule was especially suggestive—and qualified. The newspaper reported that several syringes and vials had been recovered from a locker in the physicians’ lounge, while noting that police would not say whether they belonged to Burke. In the later discussion, investigators specified that needles and a penicillin ampule were found in another doctor’s locker, with traces of cyanide in the ampule. That colleague had been at home with stomach flu, had not left the house, and had witnesses supporting the alibi; suspicion that he too had been poisoned proved unfounded. The discovery therefore pointed toward cyanide in the hospital setting without establishing that Burke owned the materials or that the other doctor was involved.

Leimert Fusco characterized the poisoning case as circumstantial. Its force lay in the convergence of Burke’s conflict with Rabinowitz, the victim’s sudden illness, Burke’s proximity to the coffee, and his departure before questioning. Its weakness was equally important: the reported physical evidence was found in a colleague’s locker, and the account supplied no direct proof that Burke had prepared or administered the poison. The distinction prevents suspicion from being mistaken for a settled finding.

Place in the Wider Investigation

The attempted poisoning matters to the later inquiry because it makes Burke a suspect with an earlier history of alleged medical violence, not because it proves that he committed the subsequent crimes under investigation. Fusco also directs attention to Roger Sharveneau, a certified respiratory technician who had worked at Unitas for three months during the same period as Burke. Sharveneau mentioned Burke; a week later, Sharveneau was dead. Buffalo police had not investigated Sharveneau’s account of Burke. The timing makes the neglected lead consequential, but it does not establish that the poisoning and Sharveneau’s death had the same perpetrator or cause.

In this way, the case functions as both a warning and an evidentiary limit. Burke’s professional access to medical materials and the reported attempt on Rabinowitz invite investigators to consider a pattern, while the unresolved details resist a simple verdict. The episode sharpens the question of what Burke may have done without answering it: an old accusation becomes newly significant when another witness who spoke of him is found dead, yet the connection still requires proof.