He became a doctor to help people heal. Now, Cayce police say he killed a man

When Adam Lazzarini was a teenager, a car wreck changed his life, according to his father.

Although he wasn’t involved in the wreck, Adam immediately stopped to see if any of the victims needed help. The experience ultimately led him to a career devoted to healing people.

“He said, ‘This is what I need to do,’” his father, Robert Lazzarini, recalled last week. “He followed that. … He always had a love of helping people. He would give the shirt off his back. He was that type of kid.”

The description of Lazzarini matched what several friends and former colleagues told The State about the 46-year-old Cayce orthopedic surgeon. But those views contrast with accusations made by Cayce police, who say Lazzarini shot and killed a man inside his home in October and then lied about what happened.

Earlier this month, Lazzarini’s wife, Vanessa Biery, also was found dead inside their home, and police say her death is suspicious. The deaths are related, they said.

“I can’t imagine him doing anything close to what happened,” said Lissa Flynn, a former medical assistant who worked with Lazzarini for four years when he practiced in California.

In an interview with The State, Robert Lazzarini’s voice was unwavering despite the criminal charges against his son.

He said that after the car accident, his son became an emergency medical technician, then a doctor specializing in orthopedic medicine. He was working at Saint Vincent’s medical center in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, and, in the days that followed, treated first responders and workers injured after the terrorist attacks that day, according to WIS-TV.

A good doctor

Lazzarini, who spent his childhood in California, earned a bachelor’s degree in physiology from the University of California-Davis. He then received a medical degree from New York Medical College, and after finishing his residency at Westchester Medical Center, he stayed on to teach other medical students at the college. He became a specialist in hip replacement surgery.

“He was always there trying to do the right thing,” his father says. “His care was helping people. That’s what we talked about — his family, friends, and people.”

Lazzarini met Biery, better known as V to her friends, on the day after Thanksgiving 2004 in New York City, according to their wedding announcement in The East Hampton Press. Biery was a former stage actress who worked in the financial industry after graduating from college.

The couple moved to California in 2006 and married in October 2008 in East Hampton, N.Y., during a ceremony on the beach, according to the wedding announcement. Lazzarini practiced at Muir Orthopedic Specialists in Walnut Creek, Calif., before the couple moved to New York in late 2008.

Flynn, Lazzarini’s former medical assistant in California, said he was a serious person who could also be humorous. What stood out to her was that he was accommodating and giving.

“I was pregnant most of the time I worked with him, and his wife would bring me whatever I was craving,” she recalls, “... or he would go get it himself.”

Flynn became friends with Lazzarini and Biery, traveling for extended visits with the couple after she no longer worked with the doctor.

“They were a fun loving couple, a doting family,” Flynn says. “There was no indication that anything was wrong.”

Colleen Farley came to know the couple after Lazzarini and Biery moved back to New York. Farley worked as an administrative assistant with Lazzarini for seven years.

“He was compassionate with his patients, and his friends,” Farley says. “If you ever needed something he’d do whatever he could to get it done for you.”

The couple had “a great marriage,” Farley said. “They did everything together.”

Move to South Carolina

The couple, with their daughter Brooke, moved to South Carolina in 2016 when Lazzarini joined Southeastern Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine, which is affiliated with Lexington Medical Center’s physician practice on the hospital campus in West Columbia. At the time, Lexington Medical Center called Lazzarini “an expert in hip arthroscopy” who specializes in “using the most advanced surgical techniques to perform complex [joint surgeries].”

In Cayce, the couple became friends with Leslie O’Brien Newton and her family.

“They were always kind, always giving,” she says. “They were good people with an unfortunate situation that happened.”

On Oct. 9, Lazzarini traveled to Georgia on business with William Player Holland, a sales representative for CrossLink Orthopaedics/Stryker. That evening, he was shot and killed in a bedroom at Lazzarini’s house. A Cayce police report says police were called at 7:19 p.m., and Player was found on the bedroom floor.

The Cayce Department of Public Safety initially said the death appeared to be an accident.

Seven months later, on May 1, paramedics were called to Lazzarini’s home, where they found his wife — Vanessa Biery — unresponsive. They were unable to revive her.

The coroner’s office has not said how Biery died.

While investigating Biery’s death, authorities say they uncovered evidence that Lazzarini had lied about the Holland case and that the two deaths in the home were related.

Police say Lazzarini was under the influence of alcohol when he pointed a handgun at Holland’s chest and fired, according to warrants. He later lied to police investigators, the warrants said. He was charged with involuntary manslaughter and obstruction of justice.

After Holland’s death in the couple’s home, one neighbor noticed a change in the couple. Stefan Sturkie and his family moved into the Hunters Mill neighborhood of Cayce at about the same time as Lazzarini, his wife and daughter. That gave them a certain connection. They were waving neighbors — not beer drinking buddies, but friendly.

“My stepson’s name is River and his daughter’s name is Brooke. He [Lazzarini] found that kind of interesting,” Sturkie says.

Being retired, Sturkie saw a lot of what happened in the neighborhood. He’d say hello when the couple walked with their daughter.

“After that one guy got shot, I noticed they weren’t outside as much,” Sturkie says. “When Holland got killed I didn’t see them as much anymore.”

When he did occasionally see them, Sturkie said he noticed that Biery didn’t look as healthy. He can’t say why exactly. But she didn’t look as well as before the death in the house.

To Lazzarini’s father, the portrayal of his son as a killer and the spectre that’s surrounding the case paint an unjust portrait.

Robert said he was also a father-figure to Biery, whose father had died when she was young. She was straight up with him, Robert Lazzarini says. Marital problems never came up in their conversations, even after Holland was killed.

“They just recently moved to make a better life,” Farley says. “And their whole life’s taken away.”

Conflict about Holland

It’s unclear why Holland and Lazzarini were traveling together on Oct. 9. People also have given different views of their relationship.

Tem Miles, the lawyer for the Holland family, told WACH the two were solely professional acquaintances.

“Any salesperson who has a client that they’re trying to foster a relationship with is going to have, to some extent, a personal relationship with them,” Miles said to WACH. “Of there being a close relationship with them, I’m not aware of that. The family’s not aware of that. There’s no evidence to support that.”

Robert Lazzarini says his son and Holland were friends. On Oct. 9, Holland was at Lazzarini’s home for a dinner that his wife cooked, according to Lazzarini’s father. It was fun moment for them, the father says — “everybody was happy.”

“He just loved him [Holland],” Lazzarini’s father says. “A great deal of admiration and respect [was] there. … I know after the tragic accident, Adam was just devastated by that.”

To Lazzarini’s father, even with his son staring down potential imprisonment, the harsher penalty, one being lived out by Adam Lazzarini, is that so much pain surrounds someone dedicated to healing others.

“If you could imagine what it’d be like when you spent your life trying to take care of people then something like this happens,” Lazzarini’s father says. “Some people say, ‘Things just happen.’ Adam’s not that type of guy.”

This story was originally published May 13, 2018 at 4:37 PM with the headline "He became a doctor to help people heal. Now, Cayce police say he killed a man."