The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office has pulled the death certificates of two Riverside women found dead in a hot tub at a Countryside hotel, saying the circumstances of those deaths are being reevaluated.

On April 26, 63-year-old Nancy DeLise and 68-year-old Karen Lee were found unresponsive in the hot tub at the Holiday Inn at 6201 Joliet Road in Countryside. The Cook County Medical Examiners Office ruled the deaths suicide by drowning, a judgment that outraged the families of both women. That determination was a rush to judgment and unsupported by any evidence, say the families.

“Everybody jumped at it, and no one questioned the validity,” said Mariano DeLise, the husband of Nancy DeLise. “This rush to judgment has hurt too many people. The bottom line is that it was a tragic accident, and the whole thing is something they did not want to happen.”

Dr. Joseph Cogan, who performed the autopsies on the two women and determined the cause of death as suicide, said yesterday morning that the original death certificates had been pulled and that new ones had been issued stating that the cause of death was unknown “pending further study.” Cogan said he had no idea how long that investigation might take.

“The police have to do more work and we’ve got to do more work,” Cogan said. “It will be revealed in the future.”

Cogan said his initial determination was made in part due to the unusual circumstances of the deaths. But family members said no one had talked to them or even asked them to identify the bodies before officials made their ruling.

If they had talked to family members, officials would have heard a different perspective.

Both women had been suffering from multiple sclerosis, a disease that affects the central nervous system. However, neither woman was debilitated by the disease and had plenty to live for, according to family members.

Kim Fedorski, the daughter of Karen Lee, said she had talked to her mother on the morning of her death. Lee told her daughter that she and DeLise were going to the hotel to use the hot tub for treatment and were going shopping afterwards. Fedorski said that it was her mother’s first try at hot tub therapy, but that DeLise had used the treatments previously.

“She was not extensively ill,” said Fedorski, who added that her mother enjoyed weekly shopping trips to the Oakbrook Mall. “She was doing wonderfully and her spirits were up.”

Mariano DeLise confirmed that his wife had been using hot tub treatments for two years, and had tried many other experimental approaches to treating her MS, after finding traditional approaches were ineffective.

“She had been trying to find alternative treatments, because doctors had all but condemned her,” said Mariano DeLise. “This shows they were fighting for life, not ending it.”

Mr. DeLise said that he and his wife had just returned home from an extended vacation and were looking forward to another vacation in Alaska. Mrs. DeLise had been active in many local organizations, including the Frederick Law Olmsted Society, the Riverside Chapter of the Lyric Opera and the Fillmore Center in Berwyn.

If the suicide ruling wasn’t infuriating enough to the families, the women’s bodies were reportedly misidentified at LaGrange Memorial Hospital, where they had been pronounced dead.

As a result, when Mr. DeLise arrived at Williams-Kampp Funeral Home in Wheaton on Saturday, April 28, he learned that the wrong body had been delivered to the funeral home.

Thomas Williams of Williams-Kampp said April 28 at 4:30 p.m. at his funeral home was the first time a family member had done any sort of positive ID. According to Williams, the mix-up resulted from hospital personnel mis-tagging the bodies.

“When the bodies arrived at the medical examiner’s office they were tagged that way,” Williams said. “No one had ID’d the bodies.”