On this day, Aug. 4, in 1994, Louisiana doctor Richard J. Schmidt began secretly injecting his former lover with HIV. He was convicted in 1998 for attempted murder. The case marked the first time in that viral DNA was used to prove a link in a criminal trial.
The doctor and his much younger, adoring assistant were lovers for a decade. She even bore the married Schmidt a son. But in 1994, when Janice Trahan Allen decided to break up, he injected her with blood from an AIDS patient. The doctor told Trahan he was giving her a vitamin B-12 shot. Six months later, she was diagnosed with HIV.
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