Families say disgraced pharmacist shouldn’t leave prison early after learning he’s up for transfer

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (KCTV) - Disgraced pharmacist Robert Courtney is set to be transferred to a halfway house in Springfield, Missouri on June 22, 2024.

Courtney admitted to diluting chemotherapy drugs that were used to treat 4,200 cancer patients during a plea bargain sentence deal negotiated in 2002. His sentence was 30 years in prison, and he is scheduled to be released on May 2, 2026.

Eric Carrott lost Sheri Carrott, his wife, to lymphoma cancer when she was only 33 years old. She was one of Courtney’s patients.

“He’s destroyed lives. I mean, he’s killed people. Whether or not they know how much he did – we know that he did it,” Carrott said. “We shouldn’t even be having this conversation, he should never get out.”

Carrott began raising his daughter, Santana Cummings, alone when she was 11-years-old, but he never forgot about what he lost.

“I still talk to her, I ain’t gonna lie,” Eric Carrott said. “It was greed, I mean it was almost the perfect crime because so many people were gonna die over it, but you gotta give people a chance, I mean – you just – he ain’t God. He don’t get to make up who’s gonna die and and who’s gonna live, and that’s basically what he did.”

Doctors believed Sherri Carrott’s cancer was treatable – the family said the prognosis was seven treatments and she’d be cancer-free. Her daughter went on to get married and start a family, but the pain of losing a loved one to cancer, and then the doubt behind her treatment leaves the wound of loss uncovered.

“I don’t feel like time heals that, my kids will never know her laugh, they will never see her smile, her face,” Cummings said. “He showed no remorse in front of all of us when we were in court, that is part of the reason that I feel like he should serve -- like he didn’t seem like he was sorry or upset -- he was just upset that he got caught.”

A few years ago there was a chance Courtney could be released early from prison, but it was ultimately denied, and the courts said he would serve his full term in prison.

Melissa Osborne was a former FBI Special Agent who worked on the case against Courtney.

They investigated him after Dr. Verda Hunter notified them of the potential crime. The FBI uncovered that 4,200 patients had been given improper dosage. The scope affected 98,000 prescriptions and 72 medications.

Courtney held just under $19 million in assets when he was arrested, and was ultimately ordered to pay $10.4 million in restitution.

“He had no remorse for what he did. In some cases, he would make these IVs, and he would actually go into the infusion room, and sit down and talk to these people knowing that he didn’t put medication into their life-saving IV to beat cancer,” Osborne said. “I think it’s two-fold – it was very much greed, and another one – he had no regard for life, and he’s basically a sociopath.”

The Carrott family has created a Change link in hopes to change the outcome of Courtney’s planned move.

Copyright 2024 KCTV. All rights reserved.