A high-profile doctor convicted of sexually abusing patients hanged himself in a Rikers Island jail early Monday, multiple sources confirmed to the Daily News.
Ricardo Cruciani, 67, was found dead in a common shower area 17 days after he was sent to Rikers July 29 when a Manhattan jury found him guilty of four counts of sexual abuse following damning testimony from six former patients.
During his trial, prosecutors said victims including a disabled woman told them Cruciani would threaten to kill himself if any of them came forward to disclose his crimes.
“Evil in a white coat,” was how prosecutor Shannon Lucey described him.
Before his conviction, Cruciani lived in a Westchester County mansion at the base of the famed Winged Foot Golf Club and had been out on $1 million bail.
Now, his death has raised questions about whether correction department officials properly vetted him for mental illness and suicidal thoughts and whether, given the high-profile nature of his crimes, he was properly housed.
Sources said Cruciani went into the shower area in the Eric M. Taylor Center just before 6:30 a.m. Monday, stood on a chair and used a sheet to hang himself.
Three sources told The News there was no floor officer walking the unit as required where Cruciani was assigned — raising the broader issue of how the ongoing problem of unstaffed posts in the jails affects on-the-ground events.
Instead, a security-booth officer who just happened to leave that post to check on breakfast found him in the shower, sources said. The vacant B post was one of several that were uncovered on Monday in that jail.
“At our request — and for quite understandable reasons — at the moment of Ricardo’s remand into custody on July 29, the Court directed that NYC Corrections place Ricardo in protective custody and under suicide watch,” Cruciani’s lawyer Frederick Sosinsky said in a statement to The News.
“Neither of these conditions were, to our knowledge, ever complied with,” added Sosinsky, who called for “an immediate and objective investigation into the actual circumstances of Ricardo’s death, including, most fundamentally, why in the world Corrections failed to follow the Court’s orders regarding placement of Ricardo.”
In May, the Board of Correction released a report concluding staffing breakdowns contributed to the deaths of three detainees earlier this year, including Herman Diaz, who choked to death on an orange with no floor officer present.
Correction Department Commissioner Louis Molina has repeatedly claimed staffing problems have subsided. But during the June 14 Board of Correction meeting, he acknowledged EMTC is having staffing problems.
“If I were a judge, I would have to think twice about sending someone to EMTC,” replied BOC member Bobby Cohen. “I think it’s too dangerous.”
In the July 12 BOC meeting, Molina said staff had been moved in “to help us alleviate a lot of the challenges to staffing at EMTC.”
A prominent detainee convicted of sex crimes like Cruciani could have been housed in protective custody or in a mental health unit. Instead, he was in a regular dorm setting, not subject to any additional oversight, the sources said.
Correction Department officials confirmed the death without identifying Cruciani or the cause of death. They said he died about 6:30 a.m.
An investigation is underway. Molina said in a statement he was “deeply saddened to learn of the death.”
Correction Department officials said in their statement it was the 11th death this year, not counting detainee Antonio Bradley, who hanged himself under DOC care in the Bronx courts on June 10 and died June 18 when he was taken off life support.
Cruciani’s death actually makes it the 12th in the city jails in 2022, following 16 in 2021 — a rate of mortality unprecedented in the modern era of jails.
“To find out not even after a week of the first anniversary of my son’s death that someone else has died in a shower cell is heartbreaking. Have they learned nothing?” said Tamara Carter, mother of Brandon Rodriguez, who hanged himself in a shower area Aug. 10, 2021.
“They’re showing us they don’t care about the 27 lives lost before today. This saddens me to the core. How can we start to heal when the deaths continue?”
Prosecutors alleged Cruciani, a neurologist, used his psychiatric training to manipulate his victims, plied them with heavy doses of painkillers and raped and molested them while making them watch him masturbate. He was slated to next appear in court Sept. 14.
The charges date back to 2013 when Cruciani was at Beth Israel near Union Square, a hospital now known as Mt. Sinai-Union Square. He left a trail of victims at medical facilities across multiple states, authorities say.
During his 35-year career, Cruciani, who had been facing federal charges, also worked at Capital Institute for Neurosciences in Hopewell Township, N.J., and was chairman of the neurology department at Drexel University in Philadelphia.
He died with an open federal case and 22 pending lawsuits alleging that hospital administrators ignored patients’ complaints and allowed his violent conduct to continue unchecked for years.
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In 2017, Cruciani pleaded guilty to indecent exposure and groping seven of his patients in Pennsylvania. He was ordered to forfeit his license and register as a low-level sex offender but did not have to serve any jail time.
In the federal case in Manhattan, Cruciani was charged with enticing and inducing five patients to travel from out of state to engage in illegal sexual activity.
The Manhattan federal case will soon be dismissed. When federal defendants die, prosecutors must file papers with the court to say they no longer contest the case.
The suicide bears some parallels to that of Jeffrey Epstein, who hanged himself inside Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Complex in August 2019 while awaiting trial for underage sex trafficking.
The Manhattan district attorney and the U.S. Attorney’s office did not immediately comment on Cruciani’s death.
For Hillary Tullin, one of his victims, his shocking demise robbed her and other victims of the chance to confront him at sentencing.
“It’s a real lack of closure. A real lack of finality,” she told The News. ”He cheated the system. He manipulated the system once again.”