Crime & Safety

Wife of Suspected Pharmacy Killer Details Health Problems, Pain Pill Use on Website

Melinda Brady was an accomplice in Medford pharmacy slayings, police say.

Her favorite shows growing up included Charles in Charge and Saved by the Bell.

She loves children and wants to have two or three of them.

Most of the posts Melinda Brady made on LIWeddings.com under the handle “2009wedding” over a nearly two and a half year period stand out if only because they seem shockingly normal for a woman now being charged as an accomplice to one of the area’s deadliest crimes in years. 

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They were signs, though, on the popular wedding chat board that Brady, 29, was struggling with health problems and a dependence on painkillers more than a year before she married the suspected gunman in Sunday’s quadruple at a Medford pharmacy, David Laffer.

“I just had work done on my teeth and I am in so much pain today I didn't even go to work,” Brady wrote in a November 2007 post.  “I am swollen and have switches [sic] in my mouth. The Vicodins made me get sick this morning which hurt me even more.”

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In a June 2008 entry she entitled “I have been so down lately,” Brady wrote: “I am never like this. This only stared [sic] when I started having surgery on my teeth. I am usually a very happy and fun person to be around…I have been on pills after pills for this infection and it won’t go away.”

After Brady shared that she was on three different painkillers at the time, a fellow poster became concerned, writing: “Warning: DO not take any pills!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! you are already on so many pain killers and antibiotics.”

Police have said robbery was the motive in Sunday’s shootings at Haven Drugs as Laffer, according to police, filled a backpack with painkillers after the murders. 

Brady’s feelings toward Laffer, 33, span from “He is my best friend and my soul mate” to “I am so mad at him right now I could scream” over the course of the 849 posts she posted on the Long Island Weddings site from December 2006 to May 2009. 

Brady’s account on the site was deactivated after she and Laffer were Wednesday at their Medford home, but her posts can still be accessed in the archives. Brady was especially proud of Laffer’s proposal, which took place at an Islanders hockey game in November 2006.

“One of the ice girls said my fiance, and my family can help me answer the trivia question,” Brady wrote, referring to what she thought was typical arena game. “Then they told me to look up at the scoreboard, and my trivia question will appear. I looked up, and the question appeared VERY SLOWLY!!! The scoreboard read: "Melinda will you marry me? Love, David". I was so shocked and so happy. I couldn't believe that this was happening and how romantic it was how he proposed.”

Things were not going well for the couple, though, as their Jan. 2, 2009 wedding at Giorgio's in Baiting Hollow approached.

“We never fought this much and my health was never this bad,” Brady wrote in a Dec. 21, 2009 post.

After a honeymoon in Las Vegas, Brady’s activity on the wedding site began to wind down. In her final post on May 6, 2009, she asks for help in finding a new dentist for her and Laffer. 

“Please help us,” she wrote. “My husband my [sic] have TMJ so he needs to be seen asap he can’t really open his mouth. I have a few teeth that are hurting me. Any help would be very helpful to us. Thank you ladies.”


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