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 NEW YORK (AP) - When Basdeo Somaipersaud's body was found in his favorite park in 1998, his family assumed he cracked his head during one of his drinking binges. But an autopsy detected small puncture wounds on his torso, and a sedative sometimes used to treat schizophrenia in his system.
Authorities now say Somaipersaud was injected with lethal doses of the sedative chlorpormazine while he was in a defenseless, drunken stupor — and then his killers tried to cash in on his life insurance policy.
Two men from Somaipersaud's tight-knit Guyanese community in Queens face trial Wednesday on federal murder charges. They are accused of killing four people, but investigators have said several more may have died in a scheme to collect more than $1 million from life insurance policies the victims never knew about.
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