NY Medical Conduct Board Declines to Reinstate Psychiatrist Richard Karpf

April 6, 2018

On January 4, 2018, the Commission of the New York State Education Department Office of Professional Discipline denied psychiatrist Richard Karpf’s petition to have his medical license restored.

On July 1, 2004, Karpf entered into an agreement with the State Board for Professional Medical Conduct (“Board”) to surrender his license. This surrender was coincident with Karpf’s July 1^st guilty plea for Criminal Possession of a Weapon in the Third Degree—an armed felony.

He gave up his license in a plea agreement to avoid going to jail; he faced 25 years.

The Board’s Statement of Charges states that Karpf “inappropriately involved a patient of his psychiatric practice in the procurement of a weapon.” According to later news reports, Karpf told the patient that he needed the gun to kill some of his patients. The patient notified the police, and agreed to cooperate with a sting operation.  The patient, wearing a hidden recording device, recorded his next meetings with Karpf, in which the psychiatrist discussed his plan to kill the people, and how he would dispose of their bodies, by dismembering them, placing body parts in heavy-duty plastic bags, renting a boat and dumping the bags into the shark-infested areas of the Atlantic Ocean. Karpf was arrested upon purchasing a handgun and silencer from an undercover police officer, to whom he’d confided that he wanted to shoot his victims at point blank range in the heart and the head.

Even before his February 2003 grand jury indictment on weapons charges and conspiracy to commit murder, news stories appeared in the New York Post and elsewhere which indicated that one of the patients Karpf allegedly wanted to murder was a female with whom he’d carried on a sexual relationship and that he’d been driven to “a murderous rage when [the] affair went sour.”

Attorney Ruth Bernstein, representing an unnamed female client (and former Karpf patient), stated in a Post story that Karpf “engaged in improper sexual contact with a sick patient who came to him for help.” She stated that her client “was manipulated and abused by him…. He led her to believe that this [sexual contact] was going to be therapeutic.”

Source: “Predator Shrink,” New York Post, Jan. 11, 2003; “Great Neck Psychiatrist Indicted on Conspiracy Charges,” Newsday.com, Feb. 20, 2003, “In the Matter of Richard James Karpf, M.D.” Surrender Order, New Yok State Board for Professional Medical Conduct,” Jul 16, 2004 and “Re: Application for Restoration” [denial of reinstatement], State Education Dept./University of New York Office of Professional Discipline, Feb. 16, 2018.