Levy originally resisted the request for an autopsy, saying in February that it was evident Wynette died of natural causes. But he announced in early April that he was reconsidering the request.
Her body was finally exhumed April 14 at the request of Richey, who said he wanted to "clarify for everyone how Tammy died so we can all move on. The lawsuit alleged that Richey ignored advice to take Wynette to a hospital when she became ill, and contributed to her addiction.
While the daughters agreed earlier this month to drop Richey from the suit, it's still filed against Marsh, whom the Wynette daughters accuse of malpractice in treating their mother with large amounts of narcotics. Marsh's lawyers say the suit has "no basis in fact," and have said in a past statement that her personal physician "provided extraordinary medical care to a person who suffered extraordinary medical problems.
Headline News brief. CNN networks. CNN programs. Responsible for disturbing her are those who say they loved her the most, her daughters.
Earlier this month, Georgette and two of her sisters - Jackie Daly, in whose modest Nashville home we sit now, and Tina Jones - filed a wrongful death suit against George Richey, Wynette's last and fifth husband and her personal manager, and Dr Wallis Marsh, a Pittsburgh- based doctor who alone had supervised her medical care since the late Eighties.
The filing forced the hand of Richey who, early on Wednesday, gave the city's medical examiner, Dr Bruce Levy, permission to exhume his wife's body. Thus the autopsy that the three women had been publicly agitating for for months finally went ahead. At the core of the suit are allegations that the two men botched Wynette's care over a long period Marsh, in part, because he was acting as her primary doctor even though his practice was hundreds of miles away in Pittsburgh ; that they reacted inadequately to her final and fatal crisis; and, more gravely, that over years they acted as conscious enablers of her addiction to pain-killing narcotics.
The suit also seeks to establish what occurred precisely on that night, just over a year ago, at the Tammy Wynette mansion. The story we have now, supplied mostly by Marsh and Richey and rehearsed in the suit, is that Wynette had complained to her husband on that day of feeling especially unwell, with a strange stinging in her legs. Richey apparently phoned Marsh for advice, who told him to "seek immediate medical attention".
The lawsuit contends that Richey instead gave her medication himself; a short while later Wynette died while asleep on the sofa.
It was many hours before Marsh arrived from Pittsburgh. He reported that Wynette had died from blood clots on the lung. She was buried; a memorial ceremony was held three days later at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium and broadcast live on CNN.
No autopsy was thought necessary. And people are beginning to take sides. In one camp are those who accuse the women of digging for money. They note that all of Wynette's estate was left in trust for her children, with income from it going to Richey, now 60, until he dies.
They also point out the singer stipulated in her will that anyone who challenges it will be automatically disinherited. With the lawsuit, the critics say, the daughters are circumventing a provision that was designed to forestall exactly this kind of public family brawl.
Others offer quiet sympathy for the women and share with them their suspicions about their mother's death. Wynette's health problems began with a hysterectomy shortly after the birth of Georgette, who is now What followed was an unremitting battle with crippling intestinal pain and blockages in the bowel. Wynette underwent multiple surgeries, but with each operation came more scar tissue.
Towards the end, Wynette's once piercing beauty had shrivelled, leaving her with the face of an old woman. She had a catheter in her side and took much of her food through intravenous tubes. Above all, however, her addiction to narcotics, which even a spell in at the Betty Ford Clinic failed to break, had continued to worsen. Georgette recalls her mother's plight. But here is the kind of mother she was: one of those times, we were all visiting Tammy and when I got up there she was in the kitchen making this huge breakfast for us all, all our favourite things to eat, even though food made her feel nauseous.
She remembers, too, the misgivings she felt for her step- father, Richey, who had been married to her mother for 20 years. According to Georgette, whose real father was Wynette's third husband, the country singer George Jones, Richey would grow jealous of friends who took up any of his wife's time and spin lies to turn her against them. If we went shopping and she bought us clothes, we would have to leave them in the trunk of her car and switch them to our cars when he wasn't looking.
Even Wynette occasionally acknowledged the strains in her marriage. He issued a statement last week denying any wrongdoing. Front Page. UK Politics. Talking Point. In Depth. On Air. Feedback Low Graphics Help.
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