Officials Charge Two With Kidnapping, Killing Doctor

ROCHESTER HILLS, Mich. â€”  More than seven months after a locally prominent doctor was slain, two people were charged Wednesday with robbing, kidnapping and killing her.

Oakland County District Judge James Sheehy entered not guilty pleas for Anitra Lynn Coomer and McConnell Adams Jr., 21-year-olds who lived together in Clawson, Mich., and ordered them held without bond.

Dr. Deborah Iverson, 38, who ran an eye care institute at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich., disappeared May 16 after leaving her psychiatrist’s office in the wealthy suburb of Birmingham. Her body was found the next morning in the back seat of her vehicle. She had been strangled.

Assistant Prosecutor Jennifer Stout said both suspects had given confessions.

“I was struck at how young they are. . . . It’s a tragedy all the way around, isn’t it?� said Iverson’s widower, Dr. Robert Iverson.

“This fills in the gaps. There were no names, no faces, no reasons, or whether they even knew her,� he said. He had offered a $500,000 reward for information leading to a conviction.

An informant’s tip led investigators to the couple on Monday. Authorities wouldn’t say anything about the tipster.

Iverson, the mother of two young children, was abducted from a parking lot as she got into her Toyota Land Cruiser, said Sheriff’s Lt. William Kucyk.

Investigators believe that the suspects forced her into the back seat, equipped with child locks so she couldn’t open the doors, then drove her to a bank to cash one of her checks.

Another of her checks, this one bearing a forged signature, was also cashed, Kucyk said.

Robert Iverson was ruled out as a suspect, authorities had said in October, but he said that until this week, there were still “whispers and innuendoes. That’s only human nature, I think.�