Overdose Killed Jailed Suspect In Coin-Shot Killings -- Medicine Was For Blood Pressure

ANCHORAGE - A prisoner who died in his cell in October while fighting extradition to Montana in connection with a string of coin-shop slayings died of an overdose of blood-pressure medication, officials said.

A coroner's jury ruled Wednesday that Charles T. Sinclair's death at the Cook Inlet Pre-Trial Facility in Anchorage was an accident.

Sinclair, 44, collapsed in October. He was contesting extradition from Alaska as a suspect in the shooting deaths of two Billings, Mont., coin-shop workers.

The FBI became interested in Sinclair after he was arrested Aug. 13 at his Kenney Lake home near Valdez. Sinclair later became a suspect in 11 other coin-shop homicides in Washington, California, Indiana, Utah and Missouri.

Jurors deliberated more than an hour.

The cardiac arrest was caused by an accidental overdose of propranolol that Sinclair had been taking for high blood pressure, the jury said.

Sinclair had suffered a heart attack in 1989, his heart was enlarged, and he had hardened coronary arteries, state pathologist Donald Rogers said. An autopsy showed Sinclair had three times the amount of medicine in his blood than a normal dose would show, he said.

Sinclair collapsed about 5:45 a.m. on Oct. 30 in his jail cell. Records indicated that no medicine tablets were distributed to him that day, Rogers said.

The jail's nurses dispense medicine to inmates through a hole in closed doors, testified John Henley, the Alaska Department of Corrections doctor who was attending Sinclair. They watch the inmates take the drugs through a large window, he said.

``It would be against policy for it to be out of sight of the nurses,'' Henley said.

A doctor at another jail in Palmer, where Sinclair was first held, cut Sinclair's prescription in half, Henley said. The dosage was later increased.

``His only complaint was that one time he thought he was getting less medicine than he thought he should,'' Henley said.

After the coroner's verdict was announced, jurors criticized what they said was poor handling of medication by doctors and jailers at the prison.

The Alaska state troopers who investigated Sinclair's cell after his death found no indication he had stocked the drug for a suicide attempt. The jury ruled out either suicide or homicide in Sinclair's death.

Troopers said they did find a yellow note pad with a handwritten note from Sinclair.

``Why should (Sgt. Rick) Dray be bringing medicine to me instead of the nurses, they work all night,'' Sinclair wrote. The note was dated the same day he died.

Henley said he had no idea what the note meant.

``What bothered us, too, was that yellow tablet,'' said juror Michael Frost.

FBI officials had linked Sinclair with 11 homicides, two attempted murders and two rapes over a period of 10 years.

Police in different states said the coin-shop killings all had similar patterns. A man would go into a coin shop, often several times, and talk with the owners.

He would later return and shoot the workers in the head, usually taking rare coins worth thousands of dollars, police said.

Investigators from several states met in Montana shortly before Sinclair died to discuss the similarities and his extradition from Alaska.

Sinclair was born in Jal, N.M. When arrested last August he was using the alias J.C. Weir. His wife, Debbie, 40, was extradited to New Mexico last year in an embezzlement case.