Family wants to delay woman's burial

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 20 (UPI) -- A Massachusetts veterinarian's family has asked a court to delay her burial because they doubt her husband's story that she killed herself in a Caribbean hotel.

Dr. Joan Baruffaldi, 45, died in early November in St. John in the Virgin Islands. A coroner there ruled her death a suicide by hanging.

Her family wants a second autopsy performed, the Boston Herald reported.

"They have grave, grave doubts," the family's lawyer, Donald McNamee, said.

Baruffaldi, owner of the North Reading Veterinary Clinic, had been married for three years to Robert Harris, 47, an IBM employee.

McNamee filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against Harris in Middlesex County this week. The major object is to prevent him from cremating or burying his wife's body.

Baruffaldi had ordered her husband to leave their home in Lynnfield and obtained a temporary restraining order not long before they left for the Caribbean, where she was attending a conference, court papers show. She said she had discovered he was having an affair.

But she let the restraining order lapse and invited him to accompany her to St. John.