Coroner Stories

With Sherry’s permission, here are three emails she sent to me after I responded to her original question in the post “Violent and Unnatural.�? I’ve also included my responses.

Thanks for the clarification. Makes sense. First reasonable explanation I have received in 15 years since his passing. Yes, the puzzling part is that it was classified an accidental death yet the police report remain sealed and classified a suspicious death. Took me 7 years to get the police report and when I did most information was blacked out including a suspects name. Yet police never resolved the case.

Dad had a 2-1/2″ by 3/4″ hole in the back of his head on the left side. I raised many questions during that period of time. Coroner told me he didn’t know what the weapon was except it was a hammer. I thought the same as you about the gun. It was no accident I am positive of that.

What do you make of this one?

Again, thank you.

Sincerely,

Sherry

I’m sure that if I were in your shoes, I would find it alarming that one agency determined the manner as accidental while another agency maintained the death was suspicious. It seems incomprehensible that two separate agencies with two distinct groups of professionals specifically trained in their roles couldn’t come to some agreement.

It’s been my experience that medicolegal agencies and law enforcement agencies almost always reach the same conclusion at the end of the case. To a certain extent there is a symbiotic relationship between the two agencies. The medicolegal agency needs the investigative work of law enforcement and law enforcement needs the pathological diagnosis of the medicolegal agency.

That’s not to say there can’t be disagreement between the two. Law enforcement may suspect foul play in a child death, but if there is no evidence to confirm their suspicion, no self-respecting forensic pathologist is going to manufacture findings just to help law enforcement build a case.

Different agencies also have different departmental policies. A medical examiner system may classify alcohol related fatalities as accidents while a law enforcement agency or district attorney’s office may classify them as homicides.

I can’t offer any insight into the police report you received. Where I work, all of the details contained in our report are public record and available to anyone who requests a copy.

God bless you for taking your precious time to help me understand that miserable medical examiner’s report. I am blessed to have your comments. I have sent you an additional e-mail. Maybe some day you can answer that as well. Not one day in 15 years have I stopped that about that day my sweet Dad died and all the un-answered questions no one would provide. I’m no medical examiner or coroner but only an idiot would have believed the BS version they handed me.

Additionally, I had the foresight to collect and preserve evidence at the scene and have submitted it for forensic testing. Thank God for scientists and decent, honest professionals like you. In 1990 I had one sample tested and all I could get was that the DNA at that time belonged to only 9% of the population. Wasn’t my father’s as he belonged to 37.5% of the population. New age, new technology today, and my finger’s are crossed. Makes me want to get into forensics and pathology field.

Thanks again, my friend.

God Bless You Always.

Sincerely,

Sherry

I can’t imagine it serves as any consolation, but even in cases where the suspected events and motives are very cut and dried, family and friends are often still faced with numerous unanswered questions that can haunt them for the rest of their lives. I’ve dealt with a lot of family members (both satisfied and dissatisfied) and it appears to me that the best anyone can do is continue living their life with a strong belief that they are right no matter what anyone else says. That’s not to say that such a belief should consume your life, but hopefully will allow you to move on past the point that you feel everyone else must agree with you in order for you to have closure.

As for DNA, here is all I know about the subject, and all I ever plan to know—I know it exists, and I know there exists people that understand it so that I don’t have to. As such, I can’t shed a lot of light on any DNA issues other than G to C and A to T. That’s about the only detail I’ve retained from the seemingly numerous presentations on the subject I’ve endured.

My mind is racing from your comments and I thank you. The head injury I described to you is that consistent with a gunshot wound to the head? There are so many unanswered questions. Cops didn’t care, medical examiner didn’t care, and there wasn’t even an accurate time of death. Time of death was when they put him on the gurney and took him to the morgue. How ridiculous.

My dad deserved so much respect. He was a good, kind, decent, respectable businessman in our community. And, the best father in the world. Everyone always wanted my parents for their own. I could go on and on but I know you are very busy. Thanks for your help.

God Bless.

Sherry

As a general rule, I’ve long since avoided commenting on trauma that I didn’t examine first hand. Reason #1 is that I feel I’d be grossly misrepresenting my abilities if I were to do so. Reason #2 is that I feel anyone who doesn’t abide by Reason #1 has just ventured onto the path of becoming a medicolegal prostitute, also known as a “paid whore.�? This is the kind of forensic “expert�? who either blatantly manufactures findings or simply sees things a certain way for monetary or professional gain.

I may be missing something in the details you provided, but I’m curious as to what would lead the coroner to state “he didn’t know what the weapon was except it was a hammer.�? I can only assume that the hole you described was the only hole in the head and that no projectile was discovered within. I can also only assume that there were no deposits from the weapon such as gunshot residue, powder burns, or stippling around the wound or signs of stellate tearing that would suggest that a weapon was involved. As you can see, there is a lot of room for assumption—another reason I don’t like to comment on things I haven’t witnessed myself or listen to anyone who does.

Among the countless ways that crime scene dramas misinform the general public, “time of death�? is perhaps the most misleading. In most cases there simply aren’t enough solid physiological markers to establish an accurate time of death, and the longer someone has been dead, the more difficult it is to be as accurate as Hollywood portrays. As such, it is not uncommon for a person’s “time of death�? to be listed as the time that they were found. The time of the original call to 911 is usually the first documented time and serves as a solid “found�? time. Please refer to my post on “Postmortem Interval�? for more information on the subject.

Good luck to you…

A Douglas

On my dads autopsy report it stated violent, unatural
death, means/weapon. What does this mean? It was
classified an accidential death. However, the above
description does not make me feel that way. Please
comment.

Thank you.

Sherry

Sherry:

Autopsy reports generally contain the same “matter of fact” terminology that is commonly found on death certificates–very literal terms that refer to broad classifications. In your father’s case, “violent” and “unnatural” are the literal but broad terms (and fairly redundant as “violent” essentially implies the death was “unnatural.” The primary reason these terms are used is that they need to be “codeable” or placed into broad categories for the purpose of generating statistical data at a later date. As such, these terms are helpful to the poor soul who enters death info all day, but they can be very confusing to family members.

For families, it is usually best to focus on the pathologist’s conclusion at the end of the autopsy report (may be titled differently, but serves the same purpose). It is in this summation that the pathologist gives their reason for determining the cause and manner of death and consequently selecting the categories used when certifying the death.

Keep in mind, the “cause of death” is the precipitating factor that leads to the death and the “manner of death” is how the cause is classified. For example, a common cause of death is “Gunshot Wound to the Head.” Based on the circumstances of how the shooting occurred, the manner of death could be homicide, suicide, accident, or unknown.

Based on what you’ve written, the words “violent, unnatural death” says to me that the death wasn’t natural. Such a statement requires a certain degree of specification–in this case a weapon is listed as the means. If your father had died in a car crash, the report would likely have read “violent, unnatural death, means/vehicle” classified as an accidental death. At any rate, neither of these abbreviated explanations offers much detail as to how the individual became injured. That’s why I encourage you–as I have others–to focus on the pathologist’s conclusion when trying to understand the logic they used in classifying the death.

Upon reading “violent, unnatural death, means/weapon” I assume that the weapon was a firearm. That’s understandable and fairly common. The only curious thing that jumps out at me is that the death was classified “accidental.” Please note I said “curious” and not “inaccurate”–I certainly don’t know enough to argue one way or the other. It’s just that (in my experience) accidental firearm deaths are fairly rare. That said, I am forced to assume there was some fairly concrete evidence that the shooting was truly accidental (such as statements from more than one witness).

Also keep in mind that the logic of the pathologist or jurisdictional policy may play a role in any manner of death determination. Here’s a somewhat timely example:

Let’s say Vice President Dick Cheney actually had shot and killed his hunting partner. In some jurisdictions, the death of the hunting partner would be classified as an accident by the coroner/medical examiner. That seems reasonable enough as the Vice President didn’t intentionally shoot and kill the man. The District Attorney’s office could still prosecute the case as a negligent homicide if they so chose.

In other jurisdictions, the death could be classified as a homicide by the certifying office. Some jurisdictions don’t get involved in the argument of “intent” when one person kills another. When one person takes the life of another, they call that a homicide regardless of whether the assailant intentionally killed the deceased. The District Attorney’s office could elect not to prosecute such an act based on the circumstances even though a death resulted.

It’s a little tricky to explain that words appearing to be so exact are in actuality fairly vague to those seeking answers or closure. I hope I’ve answered your question instead of confusing you more.

A Douglas

I’ve spent the better part of the holidays and the first part of January catching up on e-mails. They seem to take up a lot more time than I’d ever anticipated. I apologize to those that have been waiting for me to get back to writing actual “stories.” Based on my recent posts, a more accurate title for this site would be “AsktheCoroner.com.” I hope to have a real story written very soon. In the meantime, here’s a posted comment I received recently along with my response.

Hi, I’m having a terrible time with residual odor in my apartment after a death in neighboring apartment in mid-December. The body went undiscovered for between 10-14 days. The apartment was below mine on the ground floor sharing a wall with a deli. Now the deli, my apartment and another apartment adjoining mine, all have a terrible odor.

The neighbors had been reporting an odor since December 16th and were told a rat/mouse had died in the wall. The smell of decay was awful by the 23rd, it had invaded the lobby and hallways. The body was removed on December 26th. According to the apartment owner, the police came into the apartment and placed some type of “pellets” there that were supposed to absorb the decomposition odor around New Year’s Day. While the owner was advised the pellets may have an odor of their own, they nor the advanced decompostion, were supposed to have a negative impact on the neighbors affected by the odor.

I had been away for the holidays at the time the body was discovered and arrived home on the 29th to find my apartment unlivable. The smell is so overwhelming the deli resorted to burning wood fires to cover the odor (of course the fire department was called and they were cited appropriately). The smell is acrid and almost ammonia-like…not like the odor of decay reported before Christmas.

The odor is causing my eyes, throat and nose to burn as well as causing nausea, fatigue and headaches. I spoke with several air quality experts who suggested I move out until the source apartment is cleaned and that I try ventilation (as much as possible when the apartment is vacant) and possibly an air purifier designed to handle gaseous odor removal. I also have tttropical fish and my fish tanks have become unmanageable…the gas fumes are driving the ph levels off the charts and seem to be putting bacteria in the water.

I’ve moved in with my parents in NJ, purchased a $1000 IQ multi-gas air-purifier (running on max 24 hours a day) but my apartment is still toxic. The odor is coming up through the hardwood floors, under the kitchen sink, and is also quite strong in the bathroom. The odor increases dramatically when the heat comes on. I have been driving into the City every toher day to check on my apartment and things are not improving.

The The Co-op board and building management haven’t accepted any responsibility for clean-up and the unit owner is grieving and trying to clean the unit a bit at a time herself with family/friends. She has not employed professionals and has not taken any precautions or chemically neutralized any surfaces. For that matter, the deceased’s mattress is standing in the building courtyard…when I complained about possible contamination, they cut the larger stains off and left it there. They now plan to paint th walls with sealer as a remedy.

I have tried contacting the Board of Health and gotten no response, tried the Public Advocate only to find that he can’t help a Co-op building. I don’t know where to turn, but I need to get rid of the odor and move home.

Do you have any suggestions for odor removal? Could you tell me what the “pellets” were that the police put in the apartment?

Also, do you have any suggestions on who I might contact for help at this point…I don’t have a lot of money to hire a lawyer to fight this and I don’t want it to drag on forever. I just want to breathe decent quality air in my own home.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Best,

C

C,

The only effective remedies I’ve ever known are ventilation and time. Of course it’s harder to ventilate a house in the winter when one has to worry about pipes freezing. While the odor is extremely repugnant, I personally have never experienced respiratory burning, eye irritation, or headaches—even after hours of exposure to the smell in a confined space.

I’ll admit that when I first started there were some nauseating effects, but in retrospect it seems to have been more of a psychosomatic effect of knowing the origin of the stench. Now I find that the longer I’m around the odor, the more my olfactory senses become “acclimated.�? Sort of like walking into a public restroom after someone has fouled up the atmosphere—multiplied by 100 of course. The smell doesn’t go away, the nose just gets used to it.

That said, the odor you describe (“acrid and almost ammonia-like�?) and its persistence long after the death makes me think you are actually smelling someone’s failed attempt to clean or cover up the smell. It sounds like the symptoms and situation you describe are more likely to result from exposure to a meth lab than to a dead body. I’m not suggesting that as a possibility—it just sounds awfully familiar.

Smells are like smoke—where there’s smoke, there’s a source. If the smell doesn’t go away, then there is likely biological contamination in the carpet, padding, or ventilation that will have to be removed before the smell will go away. My money is on the ventilation system as the intensity increases when the heat comes on.

I myself wouldn’t worry about exposure related issues unless I came into physical, unprotected contact with biological fluids. I suppose airborne pathogens are a remote possibility, but not after this amount of time.

Keep in mind that the persons most at risk are those that handled the body within close proximity to the time of death. People moved him, examined him, transported him, and prepared him for disposition and most likely managed to do so without any short-term or long-term consequences. If there are long-term hidden effects of dealing with dead people, I’m screwed.

Please don’t think I’m making light of your concerns. I’m only trying to emphasize that people have been dying for centuries without adversely affecting the living—excluding the Black Plague of course. Unless you have a problem with biting rodents, I wouldn’t worry about health effects.

I’m curious as to what pellets the police used myself. I’m not aware of any sort of product. I know many fire departments have a solution that they apply to contaminated sections of pavement after motor vehicle fatalities, but I doubt that would benefit you since your problem seems to be smell.

I’m most curious that the police would’ve been concerned about the smell at all. Ordinarily, the clean up of any mess created by the deceased has always been the responsibility of the property owner. The logic being that the taxpayers shouldn’t be held responsible for the expense or effort required to clean up a scene.

My only knowledge of co-op boards was gleaned from watching reruns of Frasier. As for legal issues apart from criminal or civil cases involving death, I know even less. I’m afraid I haven’t been much help, but I hope some of what I’ve written proves to be of use. I plan to use your comment as the subject of a post in hopes that someone else might be able to offer you some useful advice. The only comfort I can offer is that there are thousands of residences across the country that have contained decomposing bodies that are inhabited today, and I’m sure yours will be too.

Good luck to you.

A Douglas

Apologies for the delay since my last post. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks trying to catch up on emails and responding to comments. I’ve included one comment in particular (along with my response) that dealt with some issues I haven’t discussed before that may be of interest.

I found this article very interesting. I am looking into the death of my son, who died of an accidental overdose of morphine 2% ug/ml and codeine ug/ml. The corners’ report states he died between 0500 of 9/6 and 1320 9/7.

Liver mortis as positioned fixed; rigor mortis full body. There is as a statement of skin slippage. Dark gray discoloration around his neck.

He checked into a hotel, but had no identification.

There is more information if this would help assist in determining just what happened. You see he died in 1995 with no one in his family being notified. He was not married. And had left my home on 9/1/95 over 1200 miles from where he died.

Thank you for you response.

J

J:

Based on what you included in your email, there are a few basic observations I can make. I’m reluctant to speak with too much authority on the circumstances since obviously I wasn’t involved in the entire investigation. If I did, it would be a gross misrepresentation of my abilities, if not downright fraudulent.

Most coroners rely heavily on the particular amount of a substance in someone’s system when it comes to classifying the manner of death. A level that is classified as accidental is typically a range that is considered by the toxicological professional community as a level that is just above a recreational/therapeutic level. These levels are typically seen in those individuals with an extended history of substance abuse.

Suicidal or homicidal levels are generally considered to be those levels that are much higher than accidental levels. In those cases, the person dispensing the amount of the substance necessary to precipitate death wants to be sure they administer enough to “get the job done.”

As far as the “time of death” is concerned, it’s not uncommon for there to be a very large window of time in which the death is stated to have occurred. I would assume that your son was found at 1320 on 9/7 and last known alive around 0500 on 9/6 when he was last seen by another person or possibly that was the time he checked in. As such, the coroner is only able to state positively that the death occurred within that time frame.

Television dramas tend to give the impression that coroners are able to pinpoint time of death with great accuracy and in reality that simply isn’t the case. The most accurate “time of death” is when a doctor or nurse is present at the exact moment death is pronounced or when someone dies instantly in a witnessed event like a car crash or a shooting. Beyond that, most estimations of time of death are based on observations and experience and become more speculative the longer the person has been deceased. For more on the difficulty of establishing an exact time of death, please refer to my post “Postmortem Interval�?.

The notations of rigor and livor may help narrow this window somewhat, but their value depends on when they were observed. If they are observed at the scene, they are very relevant. If they aren’t observed until the body is seen at the morgue by the coroner, they are of very little value considering it may be the next day or the body may have spent time in the cooler before the coroner sees it. As such, the time lapse and the cooler temperature can affect the relevance of postmortem changes.

I’m afraid I haven’t been much help or added anything worthwhile, but I at least wanted to provide you with some insight. As you continue your search for answers, please keep in mind that autopsy reports are very effective for determining the cause of death but are very ineffective when it comes to answering the “why” and “how” questions that the living desperately seek answers to when coping with the loss of a loved one.

Personally, I haven’t been in the very unfortunate position that you have been placed in. I have however had the opportunity to work with countless family members in your position with questions that are difficult—and in some cases impossible—to answer. Good luck to you.

A Douglas

Shannon writes:

Recently, a man died in the apartment above mine. He was dead for several days - at first we thought his refrigerator died, and contacted our landlord. But, the next day, when blood and bodily fluids started dripping from our bathroom and kitchen ceiling - we telephoned the police.

A Hazmat team is currently working on removing the contaminated bits of the house, while we stay in a hotel.

Once they are finished, how concerned should we be that that awful smell will return - say, when the heat is cranked, or on a hot summer day?

Shannon:

Thanks for sharing your unique experience. I may have stood in pools of body fluids and have been dripped on by the same on numerous occasions, but I can’t imagine how revolting it would be if it happened in my own home.

I’ve always been amazed at how often it happens that someone isn’t discovered dead until the person in the adjoining apartment notices a foul smell. I’m equally amazed at how long that person can tolerate the smell before notifying anyone. I’ve worked scenes where the neighbor had put up with the smell for weeks. From my point of view, it seems to happen all the time. I suppose it’s so common because there are so many single people who live in apartments. It’s been my experience that there are many of these single folk living in relative isolation from the rest of the world. Virtually no one calls them or visits, so no one discovers them until they’ve been dead for quite some time. Ordinarily it’s the apartment manager who discovers them when the neighbors begin to complain.

“Crime Scene�? clean up services and the like will generally remove all of the biohazardous material that is present. Pools of blood and other bodily fluids will be cleaned up. Bloodstains will be washed off of surfaces like walls and floors and those that are soaked into surfaces like carpet, padding, bedding, and furniture will simply be removed from the premises entirely and disposed of.

Of course, not every contaminated article can be removed from the scene. In your case, floor joists and such are likely stained but cannot be removed without great effort and expense. The stains on those will likely just be chemically neutralized so that there is no immediate contact threat.

As for the smell, I wouldn’t expect there to be any down the road unless some of the fluid made it’s way into your heating and air system and went undiscovered during the clean up. The smell might linger even after the offending by-products of human decomposition have been removed, but the only truly effective way to remove smell is time. Exposure to air circulation and scented candles can certainly speed up the process though.

Thanks again for the comment. I hope that answers your question.

A Douglas