The Saga of Dr. Jean-Claude Dominique

This blog is much different than most. It is one of those cases in which you cannot tell the story of one crime without telling the story of another. Actually in this case there are at least three crimes involved, all committed at different times. In fact, they were all committed in different decades!

Jean-Claude Dominique grew up in Haiti. In the late 1970's a nurse named Eliette, who lived in the states sponsored Jean-Claude with the Immigration Service. Jean-Claude and Eliette would marry in 1980 while Eliette helped pay to put her husband through medical school. They took an apartment in Brooklyn and lived there with their two children, a son (born in 1982) and a daughter (born in 1984) until about 1993 when they moved to Long Island. By then Jean-Claude was an established and well liked doctor and Eliette worked as an intensive care nurse. From the outside, and even from the inside, at least to Eliette, the couple had it all. They had decided to keep their apartment in Brooklyn because it was closer to the hospital in which Jean-Claude worked. There were nights that he did not come home due to his schedule but sometimes would tell Eliette he was staying at the apartment because he was tired and did not want to risk falling asleep driving all the way home.

There was one report that claimed that Eliette received a phone call from a woman in 1986 claiming she had a child with Jean-Claude. Allegedly she confronted him with this information and he admitted to having the child and claimed that he would be visiting the child. However, I cannot say for certain that this happened, or if it did exactly who the person was. With all of the information I was able to gather later this just does not seem to fit into things well.

But, things seemed to be going wonderful for Jean-Claude and Eliette until the night of March 22, 1999. It was then that the forty-nine year old doctor was apparently walking near the Brooklyn apartment when he was hit by a car that would then later leave the scene. The car would eventually be found and discovered to have been stolen but it has never been discovered who was driving the car at the time. Jean-Claude would remain in a coma for more than thirty days before he would succumb to his injuries on April 30, 1999. By the time that he died Jean-Claude's secrets had been revealed and let us just say that if he could hear the things that were going on he may have willed himself to die.

It all seemingly began on the night of the accident in the emergency room at the hospital. Eliette would rush to her husband's side when she heard of the accident. It is not clear if Eliette was already there when a woman named Marie, better known as Betsy, showed up or if Betsy was at the hospital first. Regardless of who was at the hospital first, once both women were there the turmoil would begin. Each of the women would ask the other who she was and why she was at the hospital and each woman would claim that the man laying in the bed was her husband. It seems that Eliette had never heard of Betsy, but Betsy had heard of Eliette. Betsy knew that her husband had once been married to Eliette but she was certain that the two had divorced, in fact she had seen and had a copy of their divorce. It is not clear whether Betsy knew of the two children Jean-Claude and Eliette had together.

Jean-Claude had met Betsy in his home country of Haiti. Most information states that Betsy followed him to America but I cannot say that is a certainty. Jean-Claude and Betsy had been childhood sweethearts. Jean-Claude and Betsy would marry in 1982 and they too would have two children, a son and a daughter, just like Jean-Claude had with Eliette. While Eliette was living in Brooklyn and then Long Island with her children, Betsy and her children were living just across the state line in New Jersey. For his part Jean-Claude was living with both of them and still keeping the Brooklyn apartment. Lord knows he probably needed that place to get a break from the two lives he was living.

Doctors and administrators at the hospital were confused and quite frankly not sure what to do. The same could be said for a law firm who had approached Eliette at the hospital about filing a law suit against owners of the stolen car. She signed papers with them and they filed them with the courts. However, now there was a question as to which wife was the legitimate wife and who had the right to make medical decisions as well as legal ones. When Betsy was able to produce at divorce degree for Jean-Claude and Eliette as well as a marriage certificate for herself and Jean-Claude, both the doctors and the lawyers decided she was the rightful wife. Eliette was devastated.

While the hospital and the injury lawyer had determined Betsy as the rightful wife, the courts were yet to decide and that became even more complicated. It appears that Jean-Claude's family knew all about Betsy and according to at least one of his siblings, a brother named Aly, Betsy was the “true” wife and he even attempted to forbade Eliette from going to her husband's funeral. In July of 1999 a New Jersey court appointed Betsy the executor of Jean-Claude's estate. However, the following month a New York court did the same for Eliette. Clearly this was not going to work.

Eliette had gone to the Brooklyn apartment and it was there in which she found the alleged divorce papers. They had been filed in 1982 and while Eliette knew she had not signed them, she also knew that someone had signed her name to them. The divorce was listed as non-contested and seemed simple enough on paper. Several months later, in that same year Jean-Claude had married Betsy. For the next seventeen years Jean-Claude had continued the charade with both wives and it seems that neither wife was the wiser. Although Betsy did apparently know about Eliette but by all accounts she believed they had divorced.

It is for this reason that I question about the alleged phone call that Eliette was said to have received in 1986 from the woman alleging to have a child with Jean-Claude. The few reports that state it seem almost to have copied each other so it appears that it may have just come from one source. It was thought to have been Betsy that called but I just find this to be odd. It would later be determined that the signature on the divorce papers did not belong to Eliette and it was thought that an “impostor” had posed as her to obtain the divorce. This impostor was never revealed and nothing indicated that it could have been Betsy. It seems unlikely that Betsy would have posed as the impostor for the divorce and then lived a lie for the next seventeen years. But, for the sake of argument even if we believe she was the impostor AND she called Eliette in 1986 that would indicate that she knew Jean-Claude was still with her and the phone call would have been made in an attempt to sever those ties. Even though it did not obviously work, there never seemed to be another attempt made. It is completely possible that Betsy was in on the deception all along and as a “dutiful” wife who did not want to lose her husband she played along, but it just does not seem to fit well.

The issue of who would be the rightful wife and the executor of Jean-Claude's estate was finally settled in July of 2000 when the courts ruled that Eliette's signature had been forged on the divorce document. Therefore Jean-Claude's marriage to Betsy was deemed not to be legal and Eliette was given control of the vast estate. Of course by now there had been some bitter blood spilled. There was an indication that Eliette gave Betsy the home that she shared with Jean-Claude in New Jersey but pretty much refused much beyond that. Whether she gave any monies to the children Jean-Claude shared with Betsy is unknown.

In early November 2000 Eliette was leaving her Long Island home headed to work around five in the morning. She stepped out her door and while heading to hear car gunshots rang out. Two men had fired at her while she struggled to crawl back to her front door. The shots awoke her then nineteen and twenty year old children. Eliette was struck three times. One bullet had grazed her head and while it did cause an injury it could have been much worse than it was. The two gunmen took off from the scene and Eliette was rushed to the hospital where she would survive her injuries.

Within days police had arrested three people for the shooting. The shooters were nineteen year old Alexander Exama and twenty year old Marvin Gedin. They alleged that they were hired to kill not just Eliette but both of her children, by none other than high school chemistry teacher and brother in law to Eliette, Aly Dominique.

Most reports say that Aly's motive behind the attempted murder was to gain control of Jean-Claude's very hefty estate. There were a few reports that just simply indicated that Aly thought Betsy and her children deserved the money from the estate and not Eliette and her children. Regardless, according to Exama and Gedin between the two they were to receive about $10,000. It would be said that after his arrest Aly's attorney proclaimed his innocence but that this attorney was not the same one he would have at his trial in February of 2002 and there seemed to be little to no information on what the new attorney thought.

Alexander Exama and Marvin Gedin would both plead guilty to attempted murder in the second degree. Exama would receive a sentence of twelve years. He was released from prison in December of 2011 and remained on supervised release until February of 2016. Marvin Gedin would receive a nineteen year sentence likely because he had a criminal background. He was released in September of 2017. Aly Dominique would take his case to trial where he was convicted on charges of conspiracy to commit murder and second degree attempted murder. He would receive a sentence of 21-25 years. His earliest chance to get out of prison comes in 2022 but he cannot be held longer than October of 2025. It is unclear whether he continues to maintain his innocence. I did not see an appeal on file for him.

So, I've now told you about three crimes... the crime of bigamy, the crime of hit and run resulting in death, and the crime of an attempted murder. There is still yet another crime that was committed through this saga, but admittedly it does not rise to the level of the previously mentioned crimes. I suppose this is less of a crime as it was something that went against legal proceedings. However, I have to admit that I found it not just interesting but also a bit entertaining. I have often stated throughout these blogs that it is the justice system and the legal issues that often interest me the most. I guess you could say that the next bit was a bit of karma against a “slimy” legal “professional.”

I told you earlier about the law firm that had met up with Eliette at the hospital and had her sign papers for them to file a law suit. From my understanding while they never determined who was driving the car that hit Jean-Claude, they had determined that it was stolen. A law suit was brought against the insurance company Allstate for medical bills incurred as well as likely for suffering. By all descriptions I have to say that the this “batch” of lawyers quite honestly sounded like “ambulance chasers.” Those are the “slimeballs” who sit at hospitals waiting for trauma's to come in and then convince loved ones to retain them to sue someone for... well, whatever they can come up with. This firm got Eliette to sign and they filed a law suit on her behalf. However, they soon learned of the dispute between Eliette and Betsy as to who was the legal wife. Because Betsy was the first to produce a divorce decree for Eliette's marriage and a certificate for her own the law firm decided that Betsy had the standing to sue the insurance company. In fairness, they could have been given a pass for coming to this decision, even if it would later be proven to be the wrong one. However, it was the actions that they took later that really got them in trouble. First, they simply called Eliette and terminated their agreement with her. They let her know that they were no longer representing her and in turn they filed the paperwork again, only this time listing Betsy. In the meantime Eliette found herself a new attorney, presumably to fight the issue involving the bigamy who also then filed a claim against the insurance company.

Eventually as we know Eliette was found to be the rightful heir and it was through her attorney that a settlement was made with the insurance company. When that was done the attorney was given a portion of the the settlement for his work on the case. It is not completely clear how much work the original law firm did on the case for Betsy but they would later take Eliette's attorney to court claiming they deserved a portion of the monies he had received from the settlement as they had done work on the case.

While the judge did admit that he case was quite confusing and it would not have been unreasonable at the time for the original firm to believe Betsy to be the legal heir, he ruled that they were entitled to nothing. The judge did believe that all of the important “leg work” had been done by Eliette's attorney but even if the original firm had done much of the work the judge ruled they were still entitled to no compensation. The original firm had broken two rules in the Code of Professional Conduct that is to be followed by all attorney's. First, they had a legal contract with Eliette. Making a simple phone call to her to announce they were no longer going to represent her did not cancel the legal bond they had with her. It was not even clear if the firm had given Eliette a reason for ending their relationship, but the way it was done was not the correct way. Their first duty was to Eliette until their contract was no longer legally binding. In addition to this the Code of Professional Conduct prevented them from then representing Betsy in the exact same law suit and yet, they attempted to do just that. It clearly states in these rules that when they are violated, regardless of any work that was done the attorney's are not entitled to any monies involved.

I might have felt bad for the original law firm if they had only ever represented Betsy and thought by the paperwork she presented that she was the legal heir of Jean-Claude's. However, according to the rules even if they had done a lot of work for Betsy and then discovered that Eliette was the rightful heir they could not have then represented her. That does not mean that they could not have made a deal with her attorney for some sort of payment but instead they did it all in a shady manner. In the end they got what they deserved.