The retired doctor who was arrested after police found drugs, guns, and alleged sex workers on his 80-foot yacht in Nantucket Harbor last week has late-stage cancer, his attorney said in a recent hearing. A judge ruled last Thursday that Scott Burke, 69, was not a danger to the community, and would not be held in what might have been a lengthy pre-trial detention. His lawyer, Henry Brennan, had argued before the judge that Burke—who he said is afflicted with stage-4 terminal cancer—does not have long to live. “To have this man potentially spend the rest of his life waiting for a case in jail, to me, would be very, very tragic,” Brennan said, according to the Nantucket Current. The attorney did not say what kind of cancer Burke is battling. A harbor captain told the New York Post that he had given a lift to two people delivering what he called “cancer medication” to Burke’s yacht last Wednesday, the day after his arrest. The pair seemed to return with “more stuff than they went out with,” the captain said, without elaborating.
