‘DEPRESSED’ Doc Charged In Slaying Of Her Parents, Is She Bad Or Mad?

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HARVARD-EDUCATED Idella Kathleen Hagen was once a pioneer in the field of urology, but left medicine to help her husband pursue a dream of managing a successful villa in the Caribbean.

But years of misfortune, depression and hopelessness may have led her to do the unthinkable and smother her elderly parents in their Chatham Township, N.J., home.

Hagen, 54, was arraigned on $2.5 million bail and is being held in the Morris County correctional facility on charges she murdered James, 86, and Idella F. Hagen, 92. The couple was found dead in their bedroom, dressed in their nightclothes, according to the Morris County Prosecutor’s Office.

Hagen, the couple’s only child, appeared for the first time in Morris County Court yesterday.

Wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, Hagen kept her head low and made no eye contact. She had stringy blond hair and appeared despondent. Her feet and hands were shackled.

When Hagen was arrested, a condition of her bail was that she’d surrender her passport and undergo a psychological evaluation. The defense declined to ask for a bail reduction, and the court adjourned until Sept. 5.

After the arraignment, Hagen’s defense attorney, Gerard Hanlon of Morristown, said she had suffered from bouts of depression for years and will likely plead insanity.

“She offered no explanation for what happened,” he said. “She’s frail and worn out. I didn’t see any emotion from her, except confusion.”

Hanlon said a number of taxing events may have led up to the attacks:

“It was a culmination of things coming to a head – her divorce, her loss of business and other things.”

The elderly couple appeared to have been asphyxiated and left in their separate beds untouched for several days, said Capt. Christopher Linne of the county prosecutor’s office.

He said Hagen continued living in the house with the bodies for several days before calling police Saturday. She was disheveled and was wearing an unwashed nightgown when police arrived. Prosecutors wouldn’t reveal what could have led her allegedly to kill her parents, but sources gave The Post a glimpse into the woman’s world of extreme highs and lows – going from female pioneer in the field of urology to a failed, twice-divorced businesswoman.

FOR the past two months, Hagen had cared for her parents in their dank home in the exclusive suburb of Chatham, 25 miles southwest of Manhattan.

She recently moved back to New Jersey from St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where she and her second husband, William Tyrrell, ran the West Indies Inn, a quaint, four-acre waterfront villa with spectacular views of the Charlotte Amalie Harbor.

“They came in here with a dream of owning a small hotel in the Caribbean and they left here brokenhearted,” said Richard Doumeng, whose family rented the small guest villa with bungalow accommodations to the couple.

Doumeng said the couple seemed happy during his brief meetings with them, although Kathleen Tyrrell, as Hagen was known, seemed to live in her husband’s shadow. It was Bill Tyrrell who fronted the business and whose vision it was to operate and renovate the guest houses.

Doumeng said the couple rented the former Villa Olga from his family around 1987 and soon changed the name to the West Indies Inn. They spent thousands of dollars on renovations, believing they would ride a wave of tourism prosperity in the Caribbean.

“They came right at the best of times here,” said Doumeng, who is general manager of the Bolongo Bay Beach Club in St. Thomas and president of the St. Thomas-St. John Hotel and Tourism Association.

The couple’s business was prosperous for a short while until Hurricane Hugo ravaged the island in 1989. The economy never bounced back. The small inns and guest houses, such as those run by the Tyrrells, were hit hardest.

With chain hotels knocking down their prices to cater to tourists after the devastation, it was extremely hard for the smaller businesses to build back up, Doumeng said.

The couple broke their lease in 1992 under good terms with Doumeng and with each other.

“They came here a married couple and they left a married couple,” Doumeng said.

“There were no bankruptcy issues, no foreclosures, they always paid their rent on time. They were wonderful tenants. And when they left, they left us a much nicer place then we gave them.”

The Tyrrells moved back to the States that same year and into an exclusive waterfront house in Rumson, N.J., home to Bruce Springsteen and formerly to Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora. At the time, Tyrrell was a prosperous executive with a Monmouth County company.

THEN, tragedy struck. Tyrrell was involved in a motorcycle accident that cost him his leg. Before long, the couple’s marriage fell apart, sources said.

By all accounts, Hagen buckled under the pressures of life.

In October 1996, she filed for divorce, charging desertion, according to Hagen’s divorce attorney, and was granted an unusual alimony in their July 1997 settlement. She would be paid $65,000 annually for three years, and each would be tested four times a year for sexually transmitted diseases.

Attorney Bernard Hoffman of Red Bank said the clause in the settlement was “not typical” but understandable.

“Our client was a doctor with a specialty in urology. She may have had reason to believe he was involved with others,” he told The Post.

Hoffman also said it was agreed that Hagen would be covered under her husband’s health insurance for three years, which appeared to be ending sometime this month. It was unclear whether that added to the woman’s woes.

Hagen moved out of their Rumson home in August 1997 and lived in other areas of New Jersey before making her way back to her home in Chatham, an affluent town of tree-lined streets with Colonial and Victorian homes, millionaires and soccer moms.

There, Hagen cared for her elderly parents, who were inactive but not terminally ill, prosecutors said.

For three days before the discovery of the bodies, neighbors didn’t see Hagen, whom they often noticed coming and going from the house.

“We’d usually see her. She’d always wave and smile,” said a neighbor who lives adjacent to the Hagens’ Fairmont Avenue home. “But then it seemed the door stopped opening.”

Although Chatham was her hometown, the fallen medic was a bit of a mystery to her neighbors.

“I only knew she was a doctor and that they were nice people,” said a woman who has lived on the block for several years. “They did nothing to stand out from the rest of us.”

But Hagen did stand out at one point in her life.

In 1973, she graduated from Harvard Medical School and undertook a six-year residency in urology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. She was the first woman accepted into the urology program.

In 1982, Hagen took a position at Rutgers Medical School, which is now a division of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, as an associate professor of surgery and chief of urology. She was acclaimed in the press for being the first woman appointed chief of urology at an American medical school.

Hagen was also named chief of urology at Middlesex General Hospital in New Brunswick, also in 1982, according to the Parsippany Daily Record.

It is unclear why she left medicine, prosecutors said. She hadn’t practiced since the mid-80s.

In 1969, she wed Peter Alexander Cook, and they were married for 10 years. Details of their marriage were sketchy, and Cook did not wish to discuss the marriage when The Post reached him at his home.

But in an interview with the Star-Ledger, Cook, who now resides in New Hampshire, said he had talked to Hagen several months ago and that she was seemingly depressed about her split from her second husband, her father’s failing health and not having a job.

“I encouraged her not to be overwhelmed with things,” he said. “It sounds as if she got totally overwhelmed.”

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You did the right thing.