He did not take charts or patients from Schwartz’s office, but with Schwartz’s practice shuttered and his addiction now disclosed, patients quickly followed Stidham, Cohen said. Stidham, meanwhile, had gone into practice for himself. For 10 months before the charges were resolved, he was unable to practice medicine at all, and only recently had he gone back to work. But he was humiliated, forced to check in with probation officers and submit to drug testing. Last December, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy. He was also sued for malpractice, accused of disfiguring patients while under the influence. Lopez, then a county prosecutor, was also indicted. Schwartz went into drug rehab and was indicted on federal charges of illegally prescribing thousands of doses of Ritalin and generic Vicodin for his own use. Just as Stidham was settling in, Schwartz’s life began to come apart. “He was one of the gentlest human beings you would encounter, so it was just a perfect match for him to be taking care of children,” Cohen said. He came to Tucson from Houston to work for Schwartz because he was looking for a slower pace of life and a place where he could enjoy the outdoors, Cohen said. Stidham was soft-spoken and cautious, according to Lopez. But he was no longer interested in pediatrics. By 2002, he was the most successful pediatric ophthalmologist in town, “the king of the hill,” Cohen said. He was “quick and reactive,” even when a diagnosis was tricky, said former girlfriend Lourdes Lopez. Both were in their 30s, married fathers and specialists in pediatric ophthalmology, but otherwise they were an odd couple. Steven Cohen, a Tucson ophthalmologist and Stidham’s friend, “but nobody thought he had the ability or the instability to take it to that level - to take it to the level of murder.” Schwartz and Stidham began working together in 2002. “A lot of people understood that Brad Schwartz was unstable to some degree,” said Dr. Around Tucson, where most ophthalmologists know one another, members of the medical community are stunned. Prosecutors said they have not decided whether to seek the death penalty. Schwartz, 39, and the patient he allegedly hired to carry out the October slaying, 39-year-old Ronald “Bruce” Bigger, are jailed on murder charges and have pleaded innocent. According to interviews, court papers and investigators’ reports, Schwartz had seethed for months over his downfall and had talked constantly about wanting to kill Stidham. Bradley Schwartz had had a falling-out after Schwartz’s career was nearly destroyed by drug charges and Stidham went off to form his own practice. The alleged motive: professional jealousy. Instead, they say, it was a hit set up by another doctor with whom Stidham was once in practice. Was it robbery? A carjacking? Nothing that ordinary, investigators say.
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