Former Slipknot bassist Paul Gray‘s final weeks were spent in a blur of drug abuse, which neither his doctor nor his bandmates would help battle, according to testimony from Gray’s widow in Polk County District Court in Iowa on Tuesday.
An Iowa-based doctor, Daniel Baldi, is currently standing trial for manslaughter over his part in Gray’s death in 2010 and the deaths of eight other patients. It is claimed Baldi over-prescribed medication to Gray despite his history of addiction to anti-anxiety drugs.
The Des Moines Register reports Brenna Gray testified that her husband had relapsed into drug addiction in about 2008 and that she tried to raise concerns about why his doctor, Baldi, continued prescribing the anti-anxiety drug Xanax, which her husband had a history of abusing.
“I just knew it was his drug of choice, that he’d struggled with it. So I just wasn’t really sure why he was on it, why he needed it along with the medication he was taking for addiction,” Brenna Gray told the court.
She testified that she took pictures of her husband passed out and shared them with Baldi as well as telling him of hypodermic needles she had found in the house. She also said that she and other family members had staged an intervention for her husband in the days prior to his death, raising concerns about his heavy drug use.
He left their Johnston house and went to a hotel, she said, and two days later he was found dead. Brenna also claimed that she tried to reach out to her husband’s Slipknot bandmates but they were unwilling to help. “One was playing golf two minutes away from our house but couldn’t come,” she testified. “Nobody else cared, nobody was involved. They told me it was my problem.”
Brenna Gray says she did not contact the authorities for fear of being arrested for drugs that were kept in the house and that their as-yet unborn child would be taken away from them. Baldi is facing nine counts of involuntary manslaughter in the deaths of Gray and eight other patients.
Prosecutors claim the deaths resulted from Baldi’s careless prescriptions, a claim he denies. His attorney contends that Baldi didn’t prescribe the drugs that ultimately caused Paul Gray’s death. He also pointed out that Baldi had tapered down Gray’s Xanax prescription prior to his death.
Gray’s Slipknot bandmates Corey Taylor and Shawn Crahan are listed as potential witnesses in the trial. If convicted, Baldi could face up to 18 years in prison.
