BY ALISON GENDAR, NICOLE BODE and ADAM LISBERG
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
The embittered doctor who blew up his East Side townhouse rather than sell it died yesterday of injuries he suffered in the blast, a law enforcement source said.
Dr. Nicholas Bartha, 66, had lingered in a medically induced coma at Weill Cornell Medical Center since Monday's explosion. He had allegedly rigged a gas line in the basement so the building would blow up with him in it - a bit of twisted revenge on his ex-wife. But when firefighters found him in the rubble, he said, "Could you help me?"
He was not charged with a crime for the blast, which injured four pedestrians and 11 firefighters and damaged nearby buildings. Bartha had worked in emergency rooms all over New York, but he never let on that his bitter divorce and his growing despair were about to become an explosive combination.
"Who would have predicted something like this would happen? There were no signs," said Dr. Emil Nigro, director of emergency medicine at Phelps Memorial Hospital Center in Westchester, where Bartha worked from 1999 to 2004. "If he had gotten proper intervention, maybe it could have prevented all of this."
The destruction of 34 E. 62nd St. capped a sad transformation for the doctor, who came to America as a newlywed immigrant full of promise and drive, but withered into a cold, friendless man who withdrew into his job and his home.
"He was one of the most solitary people I've ever met in my life," said his divorce attorney, Ira Garr.
Bartha was born in Romania at the start of World War II. Studying medicine in Rome in 1973, he met Dutch student Cordula Hahn. The next year, the young couple moved with his parents to Rego Park, Queens, where they married and had two daughters.
Bartha and his parents pooled their money to buy the brownstone, proud to live in one of Manhattan's most exclusive areas. But his parents died, his marriage soured, and by 2003, Bartha found himself alone and despondent - and on the hook for a $1.2 million settlement to Cordula.
He appealed the ruling and won a procedural victory, but lost interest in the case and ignored the new trial - letting his wife win a $4 million default judgment.
The Friday before the explosion, Bartha was served with legal papers so the sheriff could evict him. On Monday, he finished writing a 14-page screed that concluded: "Life passed me by, and I could not achieve everything I planed [sic]."
When he sent it to former acquaintances that morning, some who read it got worried and called police - but it was too late.
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