Insulin death an accident, in-laws say
By Jim O’Neal
The Gazette
CEDAR RAPIDS – Kimberly Ann Chiavetta loved her husband dearly and had no intention of harming him when she gave him the dose of insulin that caused his death last week, her sister and her mother said Saturday.
“This was a simple accident,” said Chiavetta’s sister, Kathy Carle of Iowa City. “She gave him the medication. That’s all she did. She did not try to hurt him.”
Kim Chiavetta, 36, of Robins, was so distraught over the death of her husband, Frank Chiavetta, a week ago today that she attempted to kill herself Monday evening with an overdose of prescription medications, according to her family.
She was found unconscious in her home that evening by one of her 14-year-old twin daughters and was taken to St. Luke’s Hospital in Cedar Rapids, where she was placed on a respirator until Wednesday, by which time she was able to breathe on her own.
Chiavetta was arrested Friday at St. Luke’s and booked into Linn County Jail. She made her initial court appearance in Linn County District Court via closed-circuit television Saturday morning.
An assistant Linn County attorney read the charges against her – first-degree
murder and administering a harmful substance in the death of Frank Chiavetta. Magistrate Ross G. Hauser continued Kim Chiavetta’s cash-only $500,000 bond and set her preliminary hearing for 8:30 a.m. Aug. 6.
Kim Chiavetta, looking drawn and sleepy, told Hauser she could not afford an attorney. Hauser assigned the case to the Linn County Public Defender’s Office.
Kim Chiavetta, a nurse employed by St. Luke’s, is accused of killing her husband by injecting him with two doses of insulin early the morning of July 8.
Frank Chiavetta, who was diabetic, fell into a coma at the couple’s home at 95 Front St. He was taken to St. Luke’s Hospital in Cedar Rapids on Thursday afternoon. He died at 7:40 a.m. Sunday, July 11, of insulin shock aggravated by aspiration pneumonia – contamination of the lungs with inhaled vomit. He was 60.
Kim Chiavetta’s mother, Margaret Shaffer of Coralville, said her daughter told her Wednesday that she gave her husband a dose of insulin when he woke her up in the night and asked her to do so.
She told her mother that she had forgotten, in the confusion of half-sleep, that she had already given him a dose that night.
Shaffer said her daughter was overwrought by the knowledge that her actions caused her husband’s death.
“She started getting hysterical and saying she killed him,” Shaffer said in a telephone interview. “She said, ‘I didn’t mean for this to happen. It was all a terrible accident.’ She gave him too much insulin, I guess. She said she just wanted to give him some sleep.”
Shaffer said she was confident her daughter had no intention of killing her husband.
“She loved him eternally,” she said. “She said she missed him so bad already, and she was so sorry everything had happened.”
Shaffer said her daughter had been on antidepressants for years.
In recent months, Kim appeared run-down from the strain of providing for her family and caring for her husband, who suffered from painful arthritis and chronic insomnia as well as diabetes, Shaffer said.
Frank Chiavetta, a retired nurse, met Kim Chiavetta in 1996 when both were working at Lantern Park Nursing and Rehab Center in Coralville, Shaffer said.
Both later went to work for St. Luke’s, with Frank Chiavetta retiring in January 2003.
Some friends and family members had reservations about Kim getting involved with a man 24 years her senior, but Kim brushed off those concerns, Shaffer said, adding that she herself had no objection.
“She was so much in love I couldn’t argue,” Shaffer said.
The couple married in 1999.
Carle, too, said her sister’s deep feelings for her husband were plain to all who knew the couple.
“My sister and Frank were so in love,” she said. “These two had a wonderful relationship. They were always holding hands. They were always sitting on each other’s laps, even though he had arthritis. They were so happy together.
“You never saw one without the other. Most people would be envious of that relationship because most people don’t have that.”
Speaking to reporters after the hearing, Carle said she was certain her sister acted without malice.
“My sister is the kindest woman you could ever want to meet,” she said. “She was not wanting her husband to die. My sister tried to kill herself because she couldn’t live with what happened.”
Carle said she was greatly relieved that her sister survived the suicide attempt and voiced hope that she would get the care she needs to avoid making another attempt.
Carle, trembling and fighting back tears, said her brother-in-law’s death and her sister’s arrest were devastating to her family.
Kim Chiavetta has a young daughter, Samantha, by her late husband; Carle said Samantha is 4, but Frank Chiavetta’s obituary put her age at 3.
Kim Chiavetta has four teenage daughters by her previous marriage to Daniel Miller, 40, of West Branch. And Frank Chiavetta is survived by four adult sons from a previous marriage.
Samantha is being cared for by Darrell Chiavetta of Marion, one of Frank Chiavetta’s sons, Carle and Miller said.
Miller, who also attended Saturday’s hearing, said he believed his former wife was incapable of murder.
“She would have never done this – ever,” Miller said of the woman he was married to from 1985 to 1997. “The only way it possibly could be is if he wanted it.”
Assistant Linn County Attorney Russell Keast, who is prosecuting the case, said Friday that assisted suicide, a Class C felony in Iowa, was not among the charges filed against Kim Chiavetta.
Keast said the second insulin injection “was done solely for the purpose of killing.”
This story ran in The Gazette of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, Iowa, on July 18, 2004.
Caption:
Kathy Carle
Kimberly and Frank Chiavetta are pictured shortly after their marriage in 1999. He died July 11, and she has been charged in his death. She made her initial court appearance Saturday. Kathy Carle, Kimberly Chiavetta’s sister Margaret Shaffer, Kimberly Chiavetta’s mother Kimberly and Frank Chiavetta are pictured shortly after their marriage in 1999. He died July 11, and she has been charged in his death. She made her initial court appearance Saturday. Kathy Carle, Kimberly Chiavetta’s sister Margaret Shaffer, Kimberly Chiavetta’s mother