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Dr. David Cornbleet, left, is seen here with his son Jon Cornbleet. David was killed by Hans Peterson Oct. 24, 2006.
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The death of Dr. David Cornbleet came as quite a shock to his only son.
Jon Cornbleet saw his father every week, putting in time every Saturday on top of his regular job to help the Chicago dermatologist get caught up with paperwork. At 64 years of age, the doctor still saw 125 patients a week, though he was well past the time he could have retired comfortably.
Hans Peterson, a former Roseburg man, reportedly confessed to his murder Aug. 6.
The last time Jon saw his father alive was just like any other October Saturday. After they finished their work around 2:30 p.m., Jon, 32, bought a Subway sandwich for them to split, and they talked politics.
“I remember it vividly.” Cornbleet said. “Ironically, we were talking about Obama, about his chances in the presidential election.”
The following Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2006, Dr. Cornbleet didn’t come home at his usual time. He didn’t call his wife of 40 years, Aileen Cornbleet, either.
Jon said it was his worried sister who first came upon the murder scene at around 8 p.m. After what looked like quite a struggle, Dr. Cornbleet succumbed to more than 20 stab wounds.
“We buried him that Friday. I was the last one to leave the grave site,” Jon Cornbleet said. “I made a promise to him right there that I wasn’t going to back down. As his son, as his best friend ... I’m going to make sure that justice is served for my father.”
Jon Cornbleet saw his father every week, putting in time every Saturday on top of his regular job to help the Chicago dermatologist get caught up with paperwork. At 64 years of age, the doctor still saw 125 patients a week, though he was well past the time he could have retired comfortably.
Hans Peterson, a former Roseburg man, reportedly confessed to his murder Aug. 6.
The last time Jon saw his father alive was just like any other October Saturday. After they finished their work around 2:30 p.m., Jon, 32, bought a Subway sandwich for them to split, and they talked politics.
“I remember it vividly.” Cornbleet said. “Ironically, we were talking about Obama, about his chances in the presidential election.”
The following Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2006, Dr. Cornbleet didn’t come home at his usual time. He didn’t call his wife of 40 years, Aileen Cornbleet, either.
Jon said it was his worried sister who first came upon the murder scene at around 8 p.m. After what looked like quite a struggle, Dr. Cornbleet succumbed to more than 20 stab wounds.
“We buried him that Friday. I was the last one to leave the grave site,” Jon Cornbleet said. “I made a promise to him right there that I wasn’t going to back down. As his son, as his best friend ... I’m going to make sure that justice is served for my father.”
In a new letter to Illinois Sens. Barack Obama and Dick Durbin, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner indicated that Peterson, arrested on the French island of St. Martin, will face 22 years to life under French law for “the crime of murder accompanied, preceded or following acts of torture or barbarism.”
Peterson, 29, grew up in Roseburg and graduated from Roseburg High School in 1996. The News-Review learned that the confessed killer was a local man after readers were able to identify Peterson on the television program “America’s Most Wanted” several weeks ago.
Peterson, 29, grew up in Roseburg and graduated from Roseburg High School in 1996. The News-Review learned that the confessed killer was a local man after readers were able to identify Peterson on the television program “America’s Most Wanted” several weeks ago.
Jon Cornbleet has been at the forefront of his father’s case to aggressively bring the killer to justice. He has used a MySpace.com page to help speed along the investigation and judicial process:
www.myspace.com/dr_david_cornbleet_murder |
<b>SENATORS’ APPEAL</b>
The latest news came after repeated requests by the Illinois senators that the French extradite Peterson, a French national who was born in Oregon but whose mother is French.
On Tuesday, the U.S. State Department announced it would continue to pressure the French to extradite him to the United States.
Kouchner expressed his condolences to the people of Illinois, but he claimed French law would not allow his extradition to the United States.
“They’re extremely upset with Hans Peterson,” Cornbleet said of the senators.
“One of (Durbin’s) staff members was seeing Dr. Cornbleet as a doctor,” said Christina Mulka, Durbin’s press secretary. She said Durbin had spoken personally with Cornbleet and the French ambassador, Jean-David Levitte, about the case.
<b>ONE-TIME PATIENT</b>
The fates of Dr. Cornbleet and Peterson were tied one day in April 2002.
Peterson came into Cornbleet’s office on the 12th floor, which looked over Millennium Park and Lake Michigan. He complained of a mild case of acne, and the doctor prescribed him Accutane at a dose of 80 milligrams a day.
Cornbleet never heard from Peterson again until the day he died.
According to Peterson’s father, Dr. Thomas D. Peterson of Eugene, Hans Peterson’s whole personality changed after taking Accutane.
“He was shy and intelligent and gentle,” Dr. Peterson said.
Hans Peterson wrote on an online Accutane forum that he only took the pills for two days because he couldn’t stand the side effects.
“I stopped right away. I thought that I was safe having only taken a few pills,” he wrote on June 16, 2002. “However, about 5 days later, I got really depressed and couldn't sleep. My ears started to ring around this time, and a lot of hair around my hairline began to fall out.”
For the next five years, Peterson fixated on Cornbleet’s prescription, railing against the judicial system and the Food and Drug Administration and drawing a comparison between his plight and the Jewish Holocaust.
“Before the concentration camps were discovered, many doubted their existence, and felt that nothing like that could ever happen. After their horrific discovery, the world has gone to great lengths to ensure that nothing like it ever happens again. Perhaps what we are attempting to do is similar to this. People doubt the existence of serious, permanent side effects associated with Accutane,” Peterson wrote in a post on May 14, 2004.
In an e-mail sent Tuesday to The News-Review, Dr. Peterson wrote, “Given Hans Peterson's personal and family history (he and his mother and a sibling had all been treated for clinical depression) he was particularly susceptible to Accutane's serious adverse psychiatric effects. This explains how an apparently normal young man was transformed into a psychotic murderer.”
<b>NOTHING TO FEAR</b>
The Web site drugs.com does list some serious side effects to isotretinoin, sold under the trade name Accutane, including: depression, change of behavior, suicidal thoughts, blurred vision, hearing loss, seizures and severe stomach pain.
But Jon Cornbleet said Accutane was an “extremely popular” drug for treating acne, and the ailments Hans Peterson has described on the online forums — among them loss of sexual sensation even four years after taking a small dose — cannot be attributed to Accutane. He said his father had been very careful.
“He warned people profusely about it,” Cornbleet said.
Before the murder, Cornbleet said his father had seldom received complaints, let alone threats, and he had no reason to be afraid of someone like Peterson.
“In 28 years of practice we never had one lawsuit filed against us or one malpractice filed against us,” he said.
A month before Peterson turned himself in, he was still posting to the online Accutane forum.
In his penultimate posting, on July 2, he wrote: “Justice will not be found through the legal system. ... Would taking some of their money even be justice? Their lives would go on, just with a little less money. Our lives will never be the same.”
• You can reach reporter Chris Gray at 957-4218 or by e-mail at cgray@newsreview.info.
The latest news came after repeated requests by the Illinois senators that the French extradite Peterson, a French national who was born in Oregon but whose mother is French.
On Tuesday, the U.S. State Department announced it would continue to pressure the French to extradite him to the United States.
Kouchner expressed his condolences to the people of Illinois, but he claimed French law would not allow his extradition to the United States.
“They’re extremely upset with Hans Peterson,” Cornbleet said of the senators.
“One of (Durbin’s) staff members was seeing Dr. Cornbleet as a doctor,” said Christina Mulka, Durbin’s press secretary. She said Durbin had spoken personally with Cornbleet and the French ambassador, Jean-David Levitte, about the case.
<b>ONE-TIME PATIENT</b>
The fates of Dr. Cornbleet and Peterson were tied one day in April 2002.
Peterson came into Cornbleet’s office on the 12th floor, which looked over Millennium Park and Lake Michigan. He complained of a mild case of acne, and the doctor prescribed him Accutane at a dose of 80 milligrams a day.
Cornbleet never heard from Peterson again until the day he died.
According to Peterson’s father, Dr. Thomas D. Peterson of Eugene, Hans Peterson’s whole personality changed after taking Accutane.
“He was shy and intelligent and gentle,” Dr. Peterson said.
Hans Peterson wrote on an online Accutane forum that he only took the pills for two days because he couldn’t stand the side effects.
“I stopped right away. I thought that I was safe having only taken a few pills,” he wrote on June 16, 2002. “However, about 5 days later, I got really depressed and couldn't sleep. My ears started to ring around this time, and a lot of hair around my hairline began to fall out.”
For the next five years, Peterson fixated on Cornbleet’s prescription, railing against the judicial system and the Food and Drug Administration and drawing a comparison between his plight and the Jewish Holocaust.
“Before the concentration camps were discovered, many doubted their existence, and felt that nothing like that could ever happen. After their horrific discovery, the world has gone to great lengths to ensure that nothing like it ever happens again. Perhaps what we are attempting to do is similar to this. People doubt the existence of serious, permanent side effects associated with Accutane,” Peterson wrote in a post on May 14, 2004.
In an e-mail sent Tuesday to The News-Review, Dr. Peterson wrote, “Given Hans Peterson's personal and family history (he and his mother and a sibling had all been treated for clinical depression) he was particularly susceptible to Accutane's serious adverse psychiatric effects. This explains how an apparently normal young man was transformed into a psychotic murderer.”
<b>NOTHING TO FEAR</b>
The Web site drugs.com does list some serious side effects to isotretinoin, sold under the trade name Accutane, including: depression, change of behavior, suicidal thoughts, blurred vision, hearing loss, seizures and severe stomach pain.
But Jon Cornbleet said Accutane was an “extremely popular” drug for treating acne, and the ailments Hans Peterson has described on the online forums — among them loss of sexual sensation even four years after taking a small dose — cannot be attributed to Accutane. He said his father had been very careful.
“He warned people profusely about it,” Cornbleet said.
Before the murder, Cornbleet said his father had seldom received complaints, let alone threats, and he had no reason to be afraid of someone like Peterson.
“In 28 years of practice we never had one lawsuit filed against us or one malpractice filed against us,” he said.
A month before Peterson turned himself in, he was still posting to the online Accutane forum.
In his penultimate posting, on July 2, he wrote: “Justice will not be found through the legal system. ... Would taking some of their money even be justice? Their lives would go on, just with a little less money. Our lives will never be the same.”
• You can reach reporter Chris Gray at 957-4218 or by e-mail at cgray@newsreview.info.
