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The probe reportedly began after the author of the best seller "A Brief History of Time" was left stranded in his wheelchair in the garden of his country home last summer on the hottest day of the year.

With a little tweaking, this scenario might be compared to Terri Schiavo. Anyone want to play along!!

Man "finds" Wife unconscious.

Man keeps Wife unconscious.

Man gets malpractice money for Wife.

Man wants Wife's money.

Man wants Wife dead so Man can have money.

Man gets Lawyer.

Lawyer is/was Hospice Board Member.

Lawyer promises Man that Wife will die at the Hospice...

Daily Telegraph - Hawking's nurses questioned over 'assaults'
By David Sapsted
(Filed: 20/01/2004)

A second inquiry has been launched into alleged assaults on the scientist Stephen Hawking.

Four years ago detectives investigated claims that the Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge had suffered similar attacks, resulting in minor cuts and bruising. But the inquiry was dropped after the millionaire scientist declined to discuss the matter with them.

Now a similar investigation by police is underway following an allegation that Prof Hawking, 62, who has suffered from motor neurone disease for the past 40 years, had been assaulted at his Cambridge home.

Detectives have interviewed nursing staff who provide him with 24-hour care but have yet to speak to Prof Hawking or his second wife, Elaine.

"It is one thing to receive a complaint of assault," a police source said yesterday, "but quite another to try to prove it if the alleged victim even refuses to substantiate that it has happened. Sometimes the very fact that the police are investigating can help resolve matters."

Cambridgeshire detectives had planned to interview the author of A Brief History of Time in December but were prevented from doing so when he was admitted to hospital suffering from an unrelated bronchial problem. They will now speak to him when he is eventually discharged from Addenbrooke's Hospital.

Prof Hawking's first wife, Jane, said the allegations were having a "devastating" effect on the couple's three grown-up children. "I'm very worried," she said from her Cambridge home. "We're all very worried. I'm particularly worried about the devastating effect on my children."

Officially, Cambridgeshire Police would only say: "We are investigating an allegation of assault on a 62-year-old Cambridge man." But it is understood that several of the medical team that nurses Prof Hawking have been spoken to by a team of detectives led by Det Supt Michael Campbell.

Elaine Hawking, the scientist's former nurse whom he married in 1995, said yesterday: "He's safe and well in hospital where he's suffering from pneumonia. He is better than he was."

Asked if she was aware of the police investigation, she said: "No."

Prof Hawking is planning to travel to the US in March as part of a continuing round of worldwide lectures that he delivers using a specially made computerised voice box.