Doctor's confessed killer stays just out of touch

Rob Stafford Correspondent • Profile

CHICAGO - "He always calls by 6:00 to 6:30 and he hadn't called," said Jon Cornbleet.

By 6:30 p.m. on a cool autumn evening, a Chicago doctor, who ran his life like clockwork, had not called home from his office on Michigan avenue.

"Your body is kind of numb," said the doctor's daughter, Jocelyn Cornbleet. "It's shaking. It's-- just it's on automatic pilot."

His family didn't know it yet, but dermatologist David Cornbleet had come face to face with a time bomb, an unlikely bundle of rage whose fuse had been lit long ago.

JON CORNBLEET: I still have nightmares about it.

ROB STAFFORD, CORRESPONDENT:What has your family been through in the past year?

JON CORNBLEET: Absolute hell.

It began with the stabbing death of a gentleman that was so brutal, it seemed personal. Who would have done it? And why? Desperate to solve the murder of this old-school doctor, his family went high-tech, employing MySpace, in a search that would lead overseas and into frustrating legal territory rarely charted before.

The mystery begins with a man many considered a model citizen. To his son, Jon, and daughter, Jocelyn, Dr. David Cornbleet was both a father and a friend.

JON CORNBLEET: He was an amazing father. In the last few years I considered him more to be like a best friend. We'd talk all the time. And I actually worked for him voluntarily for the last ten years. Every single Saturday I volunteered to help him out just because I enjoyed being around him.

To his patients, his family says, he was an old-fashioned doctor, a sole practitioner who worked alone in his office without nurses and in the last few years, not even a receptionist. He drove a Buick, lived in a modest house, and cared more about medicine than money.

JOCELYN CORNBLEET: He wouldn't charge people. If we had friends who couldn't afford it, he would see them and not charge them because he just wanted to get people well.

And he volunteered to help strangers as well. He treated burn victims in New York after 9/11 and patients in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.

JON CORNBLEET: He just loved to give. He loved life, very happy person, happy-go-lucky guy.

But he also very predictable when it came to time. The doctor woke at 4 a.m., walked his dogs, read several papers, showered, dressed, left home at 6:30 p.m., and arrived at the office at seven sharp. His son says he worked straight though the day before calling home between 6 and 6:30 p.m., and then driving back to the house for a home-cooked meal with his wife Aileen. They were married 38 years.

JON CORNBLEET: My dad is the most meticulous person in the world. I mean, he does everything basically at the same time. And I knew at that point there was something wrong with why he didn't call.

So Jon called Jocelyn to check on their dad because she lived closest to his downtown office. She arrived within 20 minutes, her fiance not far behind. She found the door to his 12th floor office unlocked,and quickly walked past his three examining rooms.

Dr. Cornbleet

JOCELYN CORNBLEET: The first two rooms, the doors were closed. The last one was open, so I went straight back into the last room and there was nothing in there. And I turned around, and as I was turning around, on the door to the second room, which was closed, there was blood across it. So I knew that he was in there and opened the door and saw him on the floor.

He was dead. Her father was dead. She immediately called 911.

JOCELYN CORNBLEET: I said, "I need an ambulance here. My father's been murdered."

Then she phoned her mother.

JOCELYN CORNBLEET: I said, "Dad's dead."She said "Oh my - oh my God!There was a lot of "Oh my Gods."

She also called her fiance, Dan Drucker, who arrived moments before the police and stopped at the first floor security desk.

DAN DRUCKER: I asked the security guard who was sitting there, "What floor is Dr. Cornbleet on?" And she goes, "The 12th floor." And I go, "I think he's just been murdered." And it was the reaction she gave was very kind of shocking. She was like. "Oh, my God - I can't believe it." Not so much like a shock of, like “What are you saying?”  But more of like “That explains it,”  'cause  it seemed like she knew something from before.

ROB STAFFORD: It seemed like she had seen something?

DAN DRUCKER: Yeah, she had seen something.

Turns out she had seen something - a man acting strange, with blood on him. Luckily, so had the building’s security cameras. Soon, the police would have this tape, which just might tell the whole story: Who was this man? And did he murder a beloved doctor?

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