Coroner Stories

I just found several comments that were somehow diverted into my “spam‿ folder. I’ve now posted all of them with the exception of a few that I’ll be responding to in “post‿ form here on the main page as soon as I can.

Kate asked:

Do you generally take photos from all angles when picking up a body, or just a few? I’ve often found them to be very useful, though they don’t always seem so right at first.

Kate:

We generally take quite a few photos of the decedent, the scene, and any obvious or suspected mechanism of death. Oftentimes the law enforcement agency working the death takes photos of the scene, but we still take our own photos because what we find to be of interest may differ from what they elect to photograph. If we rely on other agencies’ photos, then we risk not getting the photographic documentation we may need later on in our investigation. Plus, when working with some of the smaller agencies, our camera may be the only camera at the scene.

As for the body, we generally take distant photos that show the body in relationship to the overall scene. We then take a couple of photos of the body itself in full frame and an i.d. photo of the face.

If there is an obvious or suspected mechanism of death (firearm, ligature, pill bottles, aerosol cans, etc.) or other pertinent evidence present, then we photograph those as well. At minimum, we like to get a shot of the mechanism or evidence in relation to the body, an overall photo of the item, and a close up of any evidence on the article itself (such as blowback on a gun or vomitus containing macerated pills).

If there are any fatally traumatic injuries to the body, then we get a close up shot of the injury with an anatomical landmark for reference. Of course these injuries are photographed at the morgue as well, but taking photos of them at the scene ensures that they are documented prior to being disturbed during transport.

Thanks to digital photography, we’re able to take as many scene photos as we like without the added expense of developing and we are able to see the photographed image as we take them. When digital photos were first used at crime scenes, there were grumblings about their technical susceptibility to being altered, but we’ve found them to be just as admissible in court as the old 35mm photos. When it comes down to it, it is the testimony of the expert on the witness stand that “vouches‿ for the photos as an accurate representation of the actual scene.

These of course are just the broad strokes of how we document scenes photographically and should only be perceived as a thumbnail sketch of forensic photography.

A Douglas

For years I had occasion to drive around the city running errands or just getting from place to place never really paying attention to many of the buildings I would pass as I drove. It’s easy to recognize the locations of chain retailers and corporate offices by the logos on their buildings, but it wasn’t until I started working in this field that I realized how many of the buildings I routinely drove past were actually public housing.

I suppose every city has them. They tend to be non-descript, multi-story buildings with all the charm of a military base in the California desert or a severely neglected college dormitory. In some cases the buildings may look nice on the outside, but the only thing distinguishing them from a high rent high rise is the lack of a manicured landscape and the absence of leased luxury automobiles adorning the parking lot.

For many citizens, these facilities provide low-income (or no-income) housing to people that have limited resources or might otherwise be forced to live on the street. Based on my experiences with public housing, it seems that the majority of people who live in these facilities are baby boomers or older. Either there’s a minimum age limit or I only get called to the facilities where the residents are older and subsequently more likely to need my services.

As it turns out, when people have a limited income, one of the first “budget cuts‿ they are forced to make is health expenses. True, there are plenty of free clinics around the city, but not everyone is able to get to them. The end result is that they don’t go to the doctor to get diagnosed with potentially fatal illnesses. When they aren’t being treated for such an illness, there isn’t a physician to certify their death. That’s where the medical examiner/coroner steps in. As a public service, the state/county/city investigates and certifies the death.

The environment inside these facilities isn’t much more appealing than their exterior. The condition of the surroundings—the people, the structure, and the atmosphere—is a cross between a homeless shelter and a nursing home. Nobody really wants to be there, but there really aren’t any other alternatives.

Believe it or not, the point of all this prologue is to paint a mental picture for the story I’m about to tell—not to generalize every facility and every resident or to argue for socialized medicine.

On one of my earliest visits to one of these facilities, I worked a scene where the death that occurred wasn’t the most unusual aspect of the trip. After assisting the funeral home with loading the body, I offered to accompany the transporter in getting the cot out of the building. The officers left as we did, and when it came time to enter the fourth floor elevator they elected to take the stairs because the body smelled considerably worse than it did before we moved it.

As the elevator descended, it stopped on the third floor. The person waiting there started to enter as the door slid open and stopped so suddenly they almost fell forward anyway.

“I’ll catch the next one.‿

Again we descended and again we stopped. This time the doors didn’t open. I pressed the ground floor button again and nothing happened. After a few minutes of random button pushing, I opened the emergency call door and found the phone receiver had been removed—apparently forcibly. I then rang the alarm which sounded so much like a grade school fire alarm I had images of everyone in the building being evacuated into the street below.

After what seemed like several minutes, the alarm stopped, causing the previously silent transporter to remark, “Maybe the alarm broke too.‿

Not long after the alarm stopped, I heard a man’s voice on the other side of the door.

“Is anybody in there?‿

I answered back, and the man behind the voice began to attempt to force the door open. Every time he managed to get the door open an inch or two, it would snap back into place.

Now if I learned anything from watching “Speed,‿ it’s that Dennis Hopper plays “Dennis Hopper‿ really well and elevators function using cables. Still, I never fully understood how much side to side movement there was in an elevator until the man began jerking forcefully on the door. Psychologically speaking, it feels like six inches per floor of elevation.

Eventually the man invited me to assist him by pulling from the inside. Having personally witnessed the guillotine-like closing action of the elevator door as it slammed shut repeatedly in front of me, I declined his request.

“I’m not sticking my fingers in there!‿

After a lot more effort, he finally managed to pull the door open enough that it gave way and slid to the side. After about twenty total minutes, I learned we’d only descended about four feet. I was about to climb out of the elevator to lift up my end of the cot when the man offered…

“Just collapse your cot and pass it up. This happens all the time.‿

“Great,‿ I thought. “Something to look forward to.‿

Years ago I received a call from the city police reporting that a plumber had found numerous skeletal remains underneath a house. It’s not uncommon for someone to find a buried bone in their garden or lying in a vacant lot. It’s so common in fact that in most cases I would simply ask the reporting officer to drop off the bone at the morgue so that it could be ruled out as human. I usually don’t get too excited about the prospect of skeletal remains because well over 90 percent of the time, the bone in question is non-human. Unless there is a human skull, personal effects, or clothing among the remains, I’m not too interested in going out at 3 a.m. to look at chicken bones or beef ribs.

This most recent call had a different dynamic. The officer reported that the plumber had found “dozens‿ of bones in the crawl space underneath the home—some of which appeared to have been cut into smaller pieces. There were no obvious findings to indicate the remains were human, but then again the officer couldn’t tell a whole lot what with the house being in the way.

The officer informed me that he had already called his supervisor and was told that the crime scene detectives weren’t interested in working the scene until the Medical Examiner determined if the bones were human or not. Apparently they were as disinterested in the prospect of looking at animal bones at 10 a.m. as I was at 3 a.m.

Side Note:

Different police departments respond to scenes in different ways. Some agencies work every death as though it’s suspicious by sending scene technicians to document the scene and detectives to interview witnesses and take statements. In most cases, it depends on the size and available resources of the agency. As such, it’s not uncommon for a police department to wait for the initial impression of the Medical Examiner before it commits resources to a scene investigation. I’ve worked many deaths that started off as basic unattended deaths but warranted a more in depth scene investigation by law enforcement based on my initial findings. When that happens, I simply stop my part of the investigation until law enforcement has a chance to respond accordingly.

When I got to the scene, the officer directed me to a screened vent in the foundation at the front of the house. Peering through the screen into the dark underneath the house I could just make out an area of scattered bones with a larger accumulation in the center. Fortunately, the area of accumulation appeared to be a pile of random bones rather than the easily identifiable remains of a vertebrae and ribs.

“I don’t see anything that’s obviously human, but it’s hard to see much of anything under there. Where are the bones the plumber brought out?‿

“He didn’t,‿ the officer responded.

Just my luck. The one time I wished someone had disturbed a scene, and it turns out the plumber noticed the bones and immediately crawled out from under the house before disturbing anything.

As much as I would have liked to have determined the bones to be non-human at that point, the fact of the matter was that I hadn’t seen enough. Judging from the duty belt of the officer and the tool belt of the plumber that stood leaning against his van in the street, there was only one of us that was going to fit under the house.

“Where’s the opening to the crawl space?‿

“In the backyard.‿

“Of course it is,‿ I thought to myself as the officer led me around the house.

After seeing the opening, I returned to my car and retrieved flashlight and a Tyvek suit (the white, paper-like coveralls worn on crime dramas or in microchip factories). Within minutes I was crawling my way to the front of the house—though the more accurate word would be “slithering‿ due the fact there wasn’t room to crawl.

I’ve never considered myself to be claustrophobic, but that doesn’t mean I’m necessarily a fan of willfully threading my body into an area with all the headroom of a coffin. This particular adventure was even more complicated by the presence of pipes and floor joist supports that required me to negotiate a maze of obstructions instead of simply going straight to the front of the house where the bones were located.

Along the way I came across random bones, examining each in turn and placing them into my Tyvek suit to keep my hands free for use. I was happy to see some signs of teeth marks on the bone, but of course that didn’t automatically mean they were non-human. Many of the bones I found in the maze were cut sections of long bones that were much larger in diameter than a section of human long bone would be. Most butcher saws are powered and make a cut that is almost surgical in nature—a nice clean cut with uniform blade marks across a nice even plane. Most hand tool saw marks are more ragged and uneven across a plane. That’s not to say a butcher couldn’t use their saw on a human or a person couldn’t use a powered hand tool on their victim.

As it turned out, the accumulation of bones at the front of the house was more of the same. There were no obvious human bones present anywhere. No skull, no mandible, no vertebrae, and nothing that looked like carpals or tarsals. The closest thing to human bones were the ribs I found, but they were shaped differently than human ribs. None of the bones were fresh. All of them had been under the house long enough to dry out and lose some of their density in the interim. I also dug at the ground a little bit, but all of the bones appeared to have been placed on top of the ground. This point was worth noting because if someone were to have tried to dispose of a body under a house, then chances are they would have buried the body to further limit the possibility of discovery.

As far as I could assume, years ago the house belonged to someone with access to a butcher shop and a dog small enough and determined enough to negotiate the maze I had just crawled through. I didn’t see any reason to call out the crime scene unit. I made my way over to the screened vent and shared my thoughts with the officer, and the homeowner that had joined him. Noticing a small hole in the screen I asked the officer to pass through a plastic bag. When the homeowner went inside to get the bag, the officer asked me why I needed the bag.

“I’m going to pick up all these bones so the poor bastards that replace you and me don’t have to go through this again in 20 years.‿

The following comment/question was posted by TCat .

I was wondering if you could tell me what a body of a child looks like after being in the water(drowned)for 2 weeks to 1 month. The weight 110lbs. Drowned or Murdered/ Sexually Assaulted? is the question. Fully clothed. Any criminal knows that water will wash evidence away, all you have to do is watch TV. What if the examiner does not do an accurate examination and the cause of death is ruled “AN ACCIDENTAL DROWNING” just because they can tell the body has been emerged into water for a long period of time when other evidence points to foul play? Would ligature marks show up? What about strangulation marks? Are they even looked for? I figure that it is easier to speculate drowning in a case like this and move on to the next case. 20 ft and icy?

Please reply

TCat,

Ideally, every case is treated as suspicious until evidence supporting such a suspicion is ruled out. Still, any death involving a child or a drowning is placed under even more scrutiny–if such a thing is possible (i.e., giving a case 120% instead of just 100%). That said, any recognizable signs of ligature marks and strangulation that remain visible–internal or external–should be recognized during the course of a standard postmortem examination.

The temperature of the water and the physiology of the individual dictate the extent and rate of progression of postmortem changes. From the two weeks to one month range you presented, I would expect to find extremely wrinkled skin on the hands and feet, bloating, skin slippage, and discoloration–but these characteristics are likely to progress more slowly in icy waters. Depending on the length of submersion and the condition of the body when found, there should be findings like edematous airways and enlarged lungs at autopsy that confirm a drowning took place rather than simply a disposal.

Even if a body was submerged for an extended period of time, assuming it was an accidental drowning would be as inaccurate as calling it a homicide without specific signs of evidence on which to base the classification. The possibility that exposure of the body to the elements may have “disguised” potential evidence is exactly the reason the death would be classified as unknown because a possibility exists that it could be either. In other words, an accident isn’t a “default diagnosis.” It should take as much evidence for a pathologist to rule a death as an accident as it does for them to rule a death as a homicide.

Water may wash away external trace evidence deposited on the body, but it doesn’t wash away trauma inflicted on the body or preserved within the body. As far as criminals and television are concerned, if criminals are watching television, it isn’t making them any smarter. Fortunately, most homicidal acts are committed on the spur of the moment with little effective premeditation on the part of the perpetrator. I say fortunately because it tends to make the crime easier for police to solve. Based on the resolution rate of television cases, you’d think criminals would learn to give up their profession altogether, but apparently they haven’t learned that either.

Soapbox Warning

On a personal note, I feel that any medical examiner who would find it “easier to speculate drowning in a case like this and move on to the next case” should move on to their next career.

A Douglas

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