On January 28th of this year, 52-year old Dr. Gilbert was gunned down outside his office at a Newport Beach medical facility. The suspect, 75-year old Stanwood Elkus, confessed to the crime of shooting the doctor multiple times but denied that he planned the attack and had actually waited for him to exit the building to carry out the murder offense.
In an interview from his jail cell, Elkus told a reporter from the Los Angeles Times that he knows that what he did was a terrible thing but that he was not in a normal state of mind at the time. He claims that Dr. Gilbert botched a surgery on the prostate gland 21 years ago and he was very angry about the mistakes that had been made.
According to the lawyer for the Gilbert family, Elkus had never been treated by the urologist. It is true that he was treated at the same hospital where the doctor worked but that he was not a patient of Dr. Gilbert. He stated that it is quite possible that one of the doctor’s associates was the surgeon that performed the procedure.
In addition to the trial for murder charges, Elkus is being sued by the Gilbert family for wrongful death and fraud. In an effort to prevent Elkus from being able to transfer his assets to a relative, the judge froze his bank accounts and put a lien on his property.
In the interview with the reporter, Elkus claimed that after he was arrested as a suspect in the crime, his neighbors made derogatory comments about him to the media. He feels that these comments will have a detrimental effect on his case.
The records of the medical facility do show that Elkus did request treatment but it is unclear as to which of the doctors of the Orange Coast Urology Group he saw. There were three urologists practicing here at the time. What is clear is that he was not a patient of the murder victim, Dr. Gilbert.