Last month, just days before Joyce Brannon was to testify before a federal grand jury investigating Medicare fraud, Dr. Ronald Mikos, a podiatrist who was the target of the probe, called Brannon and tried to talk her out of cooperating with authorities, officials say.
Mikos expressed fear that his family and medical practice would be ruined, but Brannon insisted she had to do what was right and the doctor would have to live with the consequences, authorities said.
Three days later, Brannon, a handicapped church caretaker, was sitting in her home when she was fatally shot six times in the head and back at close range. When her body was discovered, Chicago police found the federal subpoena nearby.
On Wednesday, Mikos, who had been under investigation for Medicare fraud for more than a year, suddenly found himself in the middle of a murder investigation.
The veteran podiatrist was arrested Tuesday and charged with obstructing justice for allegedly attempting to dissuade Brannon from testifying, but U.S. Atty. Patrick J. Fitzgerald made it clear additional charges could be forthcoming and that Mikos is under investigation in connection with Brannon’s murder.
“At this point, [Dr.] Mikos is certainly a suspect in the murder,” said FBI spokesman Frank Bochte.
Fitzgerald called the murder of a federal witness “unheard of in a Medicare fraud case” and promised: “When anything like this happens, we’re going to be all over it.”
Mikos was under investigation for billing Medicare for more than 600 surgeries for just six patients, including 87 surgeries alone for Brannon.
Before her death, Brannon had told authorities that Mikos had performed only two minor procedures on her, Fitzgerald told reporters.
A judge ordered Mikos, 53, held pending a hearing on Monday. Prosecutors want him held without bond, describing him as a danger and a risk to flee.
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Mikos’ lawyer, John Beal, said the doctor had “an unusual billing system,” but he defended the many foot surgeries as legitimate. Beal said the doctor’s patients were mostly elderly and that the surgeries were simple procedures that had to be repeated numerous times. Each time, Mikos billed it as a surgery, he said.
Medicare payments to Mikos had been suspended in late 2000, according to the criminal complaint. Faced with mounting financial problems, the doctor had to vacate his office on Chicago’s Northwest Side in the last month, Beal said. Over the years Mikos has been the subject of numerous lawsuits, many for the collection of debts.
According to court records, Mikos received treatment for drug addiction in the mid-1980s and agreed to drug treatment to settle a lawsuit in 1997.
Fitzgerald said forensic evidence shows Brannon had been shot with a .22-caliber revolver.
On Jan. 24, the day Brannon rebuffed Mikos’ alleged efforts to stop her testimony, Skokie police said they returned seven handguns to Mikos, including a .22-caliber revolver, that had been seized from the home of a former girlfriend during a domestic disturbance last month.
A search of a storage unit rented by Mikos turned up numerous weapons and an empty holster for a .22-caliber revolver, authorities said, adding the revolver was never found.
Authorities said that in 1989, Chicago police seized an assortment of weapons from Mikos, including a crossbow, bombmaking materials and a book on booby traps, but he was never charged in that case.
The new charges allege Mikos called Brannon and several other patients after they had been subpoenaed in early January to testify before the federal grand jury.
At least two witnesses subsequently tried to back out of testifying, the charges allege, and authorities hinted a third patient may have been paid $25,000 to buy his silence.
Authorities said they have learned from subsequent calls Brannon made to a relative and a friend that she had refused Mikos’ telephoned plea on Jan. 24 for her not to testify.
She was killed Jan. 27. Her grand jury appearance had been scheduled for Jan. 31.
Brannon, 54, who used canes or a wheelchair to get around because of severe asthma, lived and worked at Bethany Lutheran Church in the Edgewater neighborhood on Chicago’s North Side.
Barbara Strauss, a friend of Brannon’s for 25 years, said that Brannon had mentioned being subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury but that she didn’t appear worried.
“She had a very strong moral character and she would do the right thing,” Strauss said. “There was probably some justifiable anger at somebody getting away with something in the system. . . . “