An amended complaint filed Friday cites the recent suicide of widow Robin Melton as an example of the emotional damage to relatives caused by unauthorized photographs in the county morgue.

        The amended complaint was filed in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court in a class-action lawsuit against the county and photographer Thomas Condon.

        The suit also names as a defendant Jonathan Tobias, the deputy coroner accused of helping Mr. Condon.

        Both men have been charged with gross abuse of a corpse and are involved in criminal prosecutions.

        Mr. Condon took photographs of 12 corpses in various stages of autopsy over a six-month period. Investigators have said the pictures showed corpses posed with objects such as a book, an old photograph and other props.

        One of the bodies in the pictures was Perry Melton, killed Nov. 9 in a work-related accident in Evendale.

        His wife, Robin, a North College Hill resident, hanged herself April 18 while she was hospitalized at Mercy Franciscan Hosptial-Mount Airy after a previous suicide attempt.

        Stan Chesley, the attorney for the couple's survivors, said Friday that the trauma of Mr. Melton's death coupled with the added pain of knowing that his body had been photographed contributed to Mrs. Melton's decision to kill herself.

        “I'm not saying this caused her death, don't misunderstand me,” said Mr. Chesley. “This is a contributing factor. There were a lot of factors — her husband's death — that whole trauma. But this was potentially the straw that broke the camel's back.”

        The suit also includes an excerpt from a note written by Mrs. Melton before her death.

        “They had no right to do what they did, nobody does,” she wrote. “(Those who) would be remotely responsible for this to happen need to be punished.”

        Attorneys for Mr. Condon and Dr. Tobias contend there is no reason to link Mrs. Melton's death to this case.

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