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The Case For An Autopsy: Who Decides? · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:01
Speaker 1: Quody doors, but Joseph's gotten more. The old adage once
0:08
Speaker 1: bitten twice shy holds a different meaning when you consider
0:15
Speaker 1: that most of the time, as a death investigator, you
0:19
Speaker 1: get one shot at what you're doing. You can make
0:23
Speaker 1: decisions over the course of your career that not only
0:28
Speaker 1: have a certain cringe factor to them relative to the
0:31
Speaker 1: decisions that you made as a death investigator, but can
0:37
Speaker 1: impact family members and even local citizenry based upon that
0:45
Speaker 1: choice that you made as a government official moving forward.
0:51
Speaker 1: That will change the dynamic the landscape of how people
0:54
Speaker 1: view not only your office, but death investigation overall. Some
1:01
Speaker 1: of these decisions remain with us, and like everybody out there,
1:06
Speaker 1: I have a couple over the course of my history
1:09
Speaker 1: that have in fact haunted me and still haunt me
1:12
Speaker 1: to this day. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is bodybacks.
1:19
Speaker 2: All right, So right out of the box, if you're
1:21
Speaker 2: going to tell me, Joe that there is something that
1:23
Speaker 2: haunts you to this day that happened while you were
1:28
Speaker 2: in the course of your job, you have something like
1:32
Speaker 2: that even now.
1:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, still to this day, and it was it's
1:37
Speaker 1: kind of one of these I don't know if I
1:42
Speaker 1: can actually call it an anomaly, but i'd say that
1:46
Speaker 1: it is. And if you want me to run it
1:48
Speaker 1: down to I'll run it down to you very briefly.
1:50
Speaker 3: Here and it's actually now I need you run it
1:53
Speaker 3: down for me. It's not a one, it's a need.
1:56
Speaker 1: Well, here's the thing. I got a call to a
2:02
Speaker 1: private residence. This is when I was still working in
2:05
Speaker 1: New Orleans. And I can't recall if I've told the
2:10
Speaker 1: story before, but it doesn't matter. Well, I'll tell it
2:13
Speaker 1: for the purposes of kind of illustrating what we're about today.
2:17
Speaker 1: I got a call, and this was very early on
2:19
Speaker 1: in my career. I was young and did not have
2:23
Speaker 1: a lot of experience, and had a guy that had
2:28
Speaker 1: drowned in his swimming pool. Now, it's a weird thing
2:36
Speaker 1: in New Orleans down there because everything's below sea level.
2:41
Speaker 1: I would say that you have more above ground pools
2:44
Speaker 1: than you do below ground pools because we're below selete
2:48
Speaker 1: sea level. But this was a rather large in ground
2:52
Speaker 1: pool where I had a gentlemen that lived next door
2:56
Speaker 1: to the owner of the pool. This fellow crossed over
3:01
Speaker 1: into his neighbor's backyard and jumped off into the deep
3:06
Speaker 1: end and drown himself. Okay, now here's kind of where
3:12
Speaker 1: one of the problems arises. This gentleman that decided to
3:17
Speaker 1: take his life was an Orthodox Jew, and you don't
3:24
Speaker 1: have a lot of Orthodox Jews in the Deep South.
3:29
Speaker 1: Like you know, if you go to New York and
3:31
Speaker 1: go the Diamond District, you can walk around town. You'll see,
3:34
Speaker 1: you know, you'll you'll see people that are in that lifestyle,
3:39
Speaker 1: that dress in a very particular way. Well, this gentleman,
3:43
Speaker 1: you know, he had the ringlets.
3:45
Speaker 2: Uh.
3:46
Speaker 1: He always wore a yamica and see I think he
3:52
Speaker 1: was involved, uh in the antique business in New Orleans.
3:57
Speaker 1: And there's if you've ever been to the French Quarter,
4:01
Speaker 1: there's a street everybody thinks about Bourbon Street. There's a
4:03
Speaker 1: street called Royal Street. And Royal Street has antique shops
4:07
Speaker 1: that are renowned worldwide. You have European antiques on the street,
4:11
Speaker 1: and of course they're valued more so than they're probably worse,
4:15
Speaker 1: but their face fascinating walking. And I think that that
4:18
Speaker 1: was his business, if I remember correctly. But he was
4:21
Speaker 1: having trouble in business and he went to great links
4:25
Speaker 1: in order to facilitate his death. Obviously, I don't if
4:28
Speaker 1: I remember correctly, didn't own a firearm. And he was
4:31
Speaker 1: wearing a heavy black overcoat, okay, which in and of itself,
4:37
Speaker 1: and I'll never forget. This was in the late spring,
4:39
Speaker 1: which is brutally hot in New Orleans. He took five
4:44
Speaker 1: pound plates from bench press that he had in his
4:50
Speaker 1: garage and put multiple of these in the deep pockets
4:54
Speaker 1: on the outside of his trench coat and went fully
4:58
Speaker 1: closed and jumped into the deep end of the pool
5:02
Speaker 1: and drowned, facilitated his own death. Didn't leave a note
5:04
Speaker 1: or anything like that. Well, as time went by, we
5:11
Speaker 1: finished the investigation, the family obviously showed up and they said,
5:17
Speaker 1: where what are you going to do with the body?
5:21
Speaker 1: Was there, you know, a vehicle here from the corner,
5:25
Speaker 1: And We're like, well, we're going to go back. We autopsy,
5:29
Speaker 1: you know, suicides, that's what we do. Because I wasn't
5:33
Speaker 1: here to witness it. You don't have a doctor that's
5:35
Speaker 1: going to sign a death certificate. It's actually going to
5:38
Speaker 1: fall to us as the corner We are, in fact
5:40
Speaker 1: the certifier of death. And so that's what we do.
5:47
Speaker 1: And with that task upon us, we have to examine
5:50
Speaker 1: the body and they raised forty kinds of hell over.
5:54
Speaker 1: They got their attorneys involved. We did take the remains
5:58
Speaker 1: back to the shop. And since he was Orthodox, and
6:02
Speaker 1: many people are not aware of this, they have a
6:06
Speaker 1: kind of this indwelling principle. And I'm probably gonna get
6:08
Speaker 1: this wrong, but you have to be buried by sundown,
6:11
Speaker 1: and many people don't realize that, and it's it's a
6:14
Speaker 1: big deal, you know, particularly in the Orthodox community. Well,
6:19
Speaker 1: we really served the pot because we were holding him,
6:22
Speaker 1: this was in the morning. We were holding him, you know,
6:27
Speaker 1: over over a long night, and we had I know,
6:32
Speaker 1: it was an own slaught of attorneys. There had to
6:34
Speaker 1: be three, and I get it, you know, I've been
6:36
Speaker 1: involved in cases where I would have one or two,
6:39
Speaker 1: but this was three. And we wound up, to our
6:46
Speaker 1: great shame releasing his body the next morning directly to
6:51
Speaker 1: the to the funeral home of the family's choice. And
6:57
Speaker 1: never even drew blood on this guy, period. We never
7:01
Speaker 1: even took his clothing off. I think we may have
7:04
Speaker 1: snapped some photos and he was buried. Six months go
7:09
Speaker 1: by and we get sued. I have to go in
7:13
Speaker 1: and give a deposition. The pathologist has to go in
7:16
Speaker 1: and give a deposition. That was on call. The corner
7:19
Speaker 1: had to go in and get a deposition. And the
7:23
Speaker 1: big question in the deposition is why didn't you do
7:26
Speaker 1: your job? You know, you have the force of law
7:30
Speaker 1: behind you, and it was the family that rote the lawsuit. Yeah,
7:35
Speaker 1: I know, that's the shocking thing about it. If you
7:37
Speaker 1: don't know. Right now, I'm staring into Dave's eyes and
7:40
Speaker 1: he has a look of shock, and so yeah, and
7:45
Speaker 1: so when I say once bitten, twice shy, I would
7:50
Speaker 1: rather let's see the adage of dying on this hill
7:55
Speaker 1: is not necessarily apropos. But I will I will fight
8:01
Speaker 1: tooth and nail to do everything that I have to
8:04
Speaker 1: do in order to not just look out for the family,
8:07
Speaker 1: but the continuity of an investigation. So I appreciate and
8:12
Speaker 1: I respect your religious views perhaps and I'm going to
8:16
Speaker 1: try to honor them as best we can. However, you
8:21
Speaker 1: have to look at this very much more broadly. First off,
8:25
Speaker 1: no one witnessed this. They found him at the bottom
8:27
Speaker 1: of the pool. He was in financial trouble, and there
8:32
Speaker 1: was some indication per the police that there was some
8:36
Speaker 1: sketchy events that surrounded his business practice. And you take
8:42
Speaker 1: all that in total and you think, well, you know,
8:45
Speaker 1: the guy's fully clothed, he puts plates, five pound plates
8:49
Speaker 1: into the pockets of his overcoat. I don't know about you, David.
8:52
Speaker 1: I don't think I could break the surface in a
8:53
Speaker 1: ten foot pool with all of that hanging off of me,
8:56
Speaker 1: soaking wet, trying to drag myself up to the top.
9:00
Speaker 1: So how did Yeah, it is, so how do we
9:03
Speaker 1: know that somebody didn't stick something in his pockets and
9:06
Speaker 1: push him off into the pool. It's just a you know,
9:09
Speaker 1: and I know that many naysayers would probably say, well,
9:13
Speaker 1: what are the odds that that would happen. Well, there
9:17
Speaker 1: are odds and things like that have happened. And that's
9:21
Speaker 1: that's the thing about medical legal death investigation, Dave. You
9:23
Speaker 1: truly get one shot at at what's going to happen
9:29
Speaker 1: or or where you can determine the course of the future.
9:34
Speaker 1: You know, it's like stepping up to the plate in baseball,
9:36
Speaker 1: where you're trying to prove yourself and you get one
9:38
Speaker 1: shot against a really premier picture. And if you don't
9:42
Speaker 1: adhere to the basic understanding of what you've learned as
9:45
Speaker 1: a batter, uh, you're going to run into problems and
9:49
Speaker 1: we know these we know these problems because they've happened
9:52
Speaker 1: elsewhere and from a variety of sources. It can either
9:56
Speaker 1: be families that decide that they don't want to note
10:01
Speaker 1: and look, all I have to do is point at
10:03
Speaker 1: Tammy Davell. Remember her she got carried across state lines
10:08
Speaker 1: and buried in Utah as opposed to there having been
10:13
Speaker 1: an autopsy and David that wound up being a homicide.
10:19
Speaker 1: So you can see where this can get train wrecked
10:22
Speaker 1: really really quickly. And you really ask these questions, who
10:28
Speaker 1: who makes these decisions, Who's going to make these decisions
10:32
Speaker 1: about that terminal diagnosis, who's going to have the authority
10:41
Speaker 1: to sign off on the terminal diagnosis? Because even if
10:44
Speaker 1: you have somebody that say, for instance, things appear to
10:47
Speaker 1: be natural, if you don't have an attending physician, and
10:51
Speaker 1: for those for our friends that don't know when anytime
10:56
Speaker 1: you're involved with a corner of medical examiner and you
10:59
Speaker 1: have somebody that dies and there what's referred to as
11:03
Speaker 1: and this is an actual industry term called unattended death,
11:06
Speaker 1: and unattended can mean a lot of things. That can
11:08
Speaker 1: mean there was no one with them than they when
11:12
Speaker 1: they died or it has been used to say they
11:16
Speaker 1: didn't have a physician. Well, guess who the de facto
11:19
Speaker 1: physician is at that point in time. It's a certifier
11:22
Speaker 1: of death. It's going to be the corner slash medical examiner.
11:25
Speaker 1: And so that individual has to make a decision as
11:28
Speaker 1: to what the cause and manner of death is going
11:31
Speaker 1: to be. And if you do not do it, at
11:36
Speaker 1: minimum an external examination where you take the clothes off,
11:40
Speaker 1: photograph the body, draw vitreous fluid out of the eye,
11:44
Speaker 1: draw urine directly out of the bladder, which you can
11:47
Speaker 1: do externally, draw heart blood directly from the a order,
11:51
Speaker 1: which you can do externally, and you submit all of that.
11:54
Speaker 1: At least you have that baseline, and you do a
11:56
Speaker 1: total body examination externally and you do X ray. But
12:01
Speaker 1: sometimes that doesn't even get you know, Dave, I've actually
12:04
Speaker 1: worked with corners over the course of my career, and
12:06
Speaker 1: this is one of my biggest, biggest things. I never
12:10
Speaker 1: like to bury bodies with bullets in them. And you
12:13
Speaker 1: will have people that will work suicides, and somebody will
12:18
Speaker 1: self inflict a gunshot wound or shoot, you know, to
12:22
Speaker 1: the head or to the chest, and the projectile want
12:25
Speaker 1: to exit, and they will bury that body with a
12:28
Speaker 1: bullet in the body. And I think that that is egregious,
12:36
Speaker 1: absolutely egregious, because you're talking about a real traumatic event.
12:40
Speaker 1: And I can't tell you how many times I've given
12:44
Speaker 1: talks or have been places where somebody would say, well,
12:49
Speaker 1: it's obviously a suicide, why do you need to do
12:51
Speaker 1: an autopsy? Or they died in a car accident, why
12:55
Speaker 1: do you need to do an autopsy? Well, car accidents
12:58
Speaker 1: become many times vehicula homicide or negligent homicide. Suicides sometimes
13:04
Speaker 1: turn out to not be suicides. They turn out to
13:08
Speaker 1: be something else, or in the case of Tammy Davell,
13:11
Speaker 1: sometimes things that appear to be natural turn out to
13:16
Speaker 1: be wholly something else, and in her case, homicide. So
13:21
Speaker 1: you're left with this big question that winds up going unanswered.
13:27
Speaker 1: And guess what, once you place that body in the ground,
13:31
Speaker 1: or once you place God help you, that body into
13:35
Speaker 1: a crematory, all of the evidence is gone. Dave Of
13:56
Speaker 1: of course, my career now in academia, which, believe it
13:59
Speaker 1: or not, my hair is as gray as yours. I've
14:04
Speaker 1: been I've been in academia now as long as I
14:07
Speaker 1: was a death investigator. I'm twenty years on so as
14:13
Speaker 1: a as a professor, and I have kids that have
14:16
Speaker 1: come up to me year after year and they will say,
14:19
Speaker 1: Professor Morgan, tell me what you did. Tell me how
14:22
Speaker 1: do I do for a living? What you did? And
14:27
Speaker 1: the first thing I always tell them is, think about
14:29
Speaker 1: doing something else. Go be fingerprinted at analysts, Go be
14:35
Speaker 1: a DNA person. That's a really cool job. Man. But still,
14:41
Speaker 1: you know, they get that, they get that twinge and
14:45
Speaker 1: they want to become a death investigator. Or they'll say,
14:48
Speaker 1: I want to go back home in my little rural
14:50
Speaker 1: county and run for corner. I want to be a
14:52
Speaker 1: corner full time and know they don't get paid a
14:56
Speaker 1: lot of money for that. And no, you don't have
14:58
Speaker 1: to be a physician, Sarily, you know a corner.
15:02
Speaker 3: Can I ask her about this? Go?
15:03
Speaker 1: Yes, sure, all right.
15:05
Speaker 2: I didn't know this until a friend of mine ran
15:07
Speaker 2: for corner in a county and I thought, I like him.
15:10
Speaker 2: He's a nice enough fella, but I wouldn't let him,
15:14
Speaker 2: you know, put a band aid on a kid. You know,
15:17
Speaker 2: he's not a medical mind. And anyway, he ran for
15:20
Speaker 2: corner and I for the life, and we couldn't figure
15:23
Speaker 2: out why. I still to this day don't know why
15:25
Speaker 2: he did, because they not qualified at all, no medical training,
15:28
Speaker 2: no medical background.
15:29
Speaker 3: He just ran for the office because he could.
15:32
Speaker 2: And I thought, that's not even a real thing, but
15:34
Speaker 2: it is. In some areas, people don't have to have
15:38
Speaker 2: any kind of background at all to serve. Please tell
15:43
Speaker 2: me there's a difference between what we call a corner
15:46
Speaker 2: and a medical examiner.
15:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, semantics, there's.
15:49
Speaker 1: A different No, No, it's not semantics, And there's a
15:51
Speaker 1: real there. There is a definitive line with corners and
15:56
Speaker 1: you and listen, I'm not I'm not detegrating in any way. Corners.
16:03
Speaker 1: I love corners. I've got a lot of friends that
16:05
Speaker 1: are corners. However, the standard for a corner in most
16:09
Speaker 1: locations is completely different than that of a medical examiner.
16:13
Speaker 1: And just to briefly break it down, I think we've
16:16
Speaker 1: done a previous episode on it, but we do have
16:20
Speaker 1: form and function relative to this episode because something has
16:23
Speaker 1: occurred in the news that we need to discuss with
16:26
Speaker 1: corners as kind of a refresher. Dependent upon the state
16:30
Speaker 1: that you're in, there's little or no educational requirements some states.
16:35
Speaker 1: There are some states that still only require ged to
16:38
Speaker 1: run for the office, and you can't be a felon okay,
16:41
Speaker 1: thank god. Wow, And you have to be a resident
16:44
Speaker 1: of the county for a prescribed amount of time. You
16:47
Speaker 1: have to be above a certain age. Most places it's like,
16:49
Speaker 1: I don't know, I think it's like twenty six or something.
16:52
Speaker 1: You have to have a valid state driver's license, and
16:55
Speaker 1: then dependent upon the state, you may or may not
16:59
Speaker 1: go to what referred to as a corner academy. Now,
17:02
Speaker 1: I've taught at corners academies all over the country, and
17:07
Speaker 1: I've taught at police academies. I teach death investigations still
17:09
Speaker 1: to this day at police academies, just to give young
17:13
Speaker 1: cops a taste of what we do in the medical
17:16
Speaker 1: legal world, trying to understand manner and cause of death
17:20
Speaker 1: and how we id bodies and recognizing certain trauma. However,
17:24
Speaker 1: you know, police go through a rather lengthy police academy,
17:28
Speaker 1: you know, and just to become kind of a baseline
17:32
Speaker 1: law enforcement practitioner, and that doesn't necessarily exist with corners.
17:36
Speaker 1: So it's going to be hit or miss relative to
17:40
Speaker 1: the state that you're in as to what the training
17:43
Speaker 1: requirement is going to be and what your capabilities are. Now. Look,
17:48
Speaker 1: I have had corners that I have come across that
17:51
Speaker 1: are probably some of the finest death investigators I've ever encountered,
17:56
Speaker 1: people that have these really solid medical legal backgrounds. They
18:00
Speaker 1: may have been nurses, by the way. In my opinion,
18:03
Speaker 1: I think that nurses probably make the best medical legal
18:07
Speaker 1: death investigators anywhere. In my recent hospitalization, I was talking
18:12
Speaker 1: to three young nurses that came into the room, by
18:15
Speaker 1: the way, and Kim had to remind me of this
18:17
Speaker 1: because I was on so many narcotics. She said, all
18:20
Speaker 1: three of these young nurses came into the room and
18:22
Speaker 1: they wanted to talk to you, but you were on
18:24
Speaker 1: medication and they all listen to bodybacks. Oh wow, and
18:27
Speaker 1: so yeah, I know. And the only thing I remember
18:30
Speaker 1: telling them is, nurses make the best death investigators because
18:34
Speaker 1: you're all naturally nosy people. Wow, that is the truth.
18:38
Speaker 1: The thing is about it.
18:39
Speaker 2: Now, I understand why you have the red cap and jacket.
18:42
Speaker 2: In case Kim walks in, You're just Santa the white
18:45
Speaker 2: white hair.
18:46
Speaker 3: They're just sitting in my lap. We're talking Christmas presents.
18:49
Speaker 2: There you go.
18:51
Speaker 1: You know, nurses they have to ask questions all the
18:54
Speaker 1: time and listen, they deal with trauma obviously all you
18:57
Speaker 1: got to do is walk into any emergency room, but
18:59
Speaker 1: you know the time, they deal with natural deaths day.
19:02
Speaker 1: That's what they're dealing with in hospitals. Whether they work
19:05
Speaker 1: in a private doctor's office or whether they work on
19:08
Speaker 1: a med search floor and surgery or wherever it is,
19:11
Speaker 1: they're primarily dealing with natural disease pathology. And that's what
19:15
Speaker 1: makes them such great medical legal death investigators. And for me,
19:23
Speaker 1: if I have somebody that has that inquisitive mind, has
19:26
Speaker 1: a baseline of medical knowledge, you can train them with
19:30
Speaker 1: all of the forensic ins and outs, you know what
19:33
Speaker 1: trace evidence and fingerprints and all that other stuff that
19:36
Speaker 1: we do, and even even blood examination at the scene,
19:40
Speaker 1: the dynamics of blood flow and all of that that
19:42
Speaker 1: can be trained. But it's really hard to find somebody
19:46
Speaker 1: a clinician that you know is going to show up
19:50
Speaker 1: and are a layperson's going to show up and has
19:54
Speaker 1: that clinical background. Paramedics great make great medical legal death
19:57
Speaker 1: investigators as well. So with that said, here's here's something
20:03
Speaker 1: that I want to throw out at you, and this
20:04
Speaker 1: has to do with what we're talking about today. Out
20:07
Speaker 1: of all of these practices that I've kind of mentioned,
20:11
Speaker 1: and what happens relative to a death investigator and what
20:19
Speaker 1: you need to show up. I can tell you what
20:22
Speaker 1: you did not, Dave have on your BINGO card. You
20:25
Speaker 1: didn't have lawyer.
20:27
Speaker 3: No, I didn't have any of those.
20:29
Speaker 2: I've learned way too much today that I wish I
20:34
Speaker 2: didn't know. There's things I'm not going to be able
20:36
Speaker 2: to forget that I really like to that are actually
20:38
Speaker 2: legal in this country that I'm gonna be honest, if
20:40
Speaker 2: it was a third world nation where they still had,
20:44
Speaker 2: you know, a doctor feel good living in a cave
20:47
Speaker 2: that passes, I would expect it from them, not us.
20:50
Speaker 3: You know.
20:51
Speaker 1: Well, as it turns out, you know, we've got a
20:54
Speaker 1: case and this kind of caught my eye, and it's
20:58
Speaker 1: involved in a gentleman who I believe is like fifty
21:01
Speaker 1: six years old.
21:02
Speaker 2: Dave, Yes, fifty six. His name, his name is Pete.
21:06
Speaker 2: That's what his family calls It's not his real name.
21:08
Speaker 2: His real name is like Pedco, ped pedtoe, pe dt o,
21:12
Speaker 2: oh okay, not pedro pedtoe.
21:14
Speaker 3: And he never went by that. They called him Pete.
21:17
Speaker 3: But when you got a name like Pete.
21:19
Speaker 2: And you live in Omaha, Nebraska. You're fifty six years old.
21:23
Speaker 2: You're talking to your sister on the phone, planning a
21:26
Speaker 2: road trip to Arkansas.
21:27
Speaker 3: That you do every year.
21:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, to go visit family.
21:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, and everything's fine, you know, everything's fine. And then
21:34
Speaker 2: in less than a week, going from Sunday to Monday,
21:38
Speaker 2: I mean, in a seven day period of time, to
21:40
Speaker 2: go from that to being wheeled out on a gurney,
21:44
Speaker 2: something's not right, Joe. You don't just drop dead of
21:47
Speaker 2: natural causes at fifty six like that.
21:49
Speaker 1: I don't think, well, well, let me pauseh you because yeah,
21:53
Speaker 1: I mean, there are a number of people over the years,
21:55
Speaker 1: and I've worked them, where people will have these certain
21:57
Speaker 1: cardiac events. But he's he's on the upper end of
22:01
Speaker 1: that area where you're starting to get a little bit
22:05
Speaker 1: beyond that, and then you would expect somebody to have
22:07
Speaker 1: an m I. But I'm sorry, a mile cardial infarction.
22:12
Speaker 1: It's a fancy it's a fancy term for a heart attack.
22:16
Speaker 1: Heart attack is not something that physicians use unless they're
22:22
Speaker 1: talking to families. They'll say, well, yeah, he had a
22:27
Speaker 1: heart attack, and that way they're not going to have
22:29
Speaker 1: to go down the road and explain all of the
22:32
Speaker 1: clinical stuff. They'll talk about how he had a blockage
22:35
Speaker 1: and part of the heart muscle died, which is what
22:37
Speaker 1: an infarcted area in the heart is. But you know, Dave,
22:41
Speaker 1: we don't even we don't have that to make a
22:43
Speaker 1: diagnosis with this with Pete. Okay, we because the corner
22:50
Speaker 1: in Nebraska, who by law, is not merely a corner
23:00
Speaker 1: there county attorney. Now it comes down this law is
23:05
Speaker 1: kind of interesting because you can have a prosecuting attorney,
23:09
Speaker 1: you have county attorney, and county attorneys many times are
23:12
Speaker 1: for folks that don't know and you've never worked in government.
23:16
Speaker 1: The county gets sued all the time. So the county
23:20
Speaker 1: actually has legal representation and they become a de facto coroner,
23:26
Speaker 1: or it's not de facto, they actually are the corner.
23:30
Speaker 1: And it seems like a major Well, first off, it's
23:34
Speaker 1: a huge conflict of interest because you you begin to
23:40
Speaker 1: think about you think about the awesomeness of is that
23:45
Speaker 1: actually good word you're talking about, Joe, Well, you're talking
23:49
Speaker 1: about death, yes, and being a.
23:51
Speaker 3: Rule that it's look, you don't like somebody. Hey, that's
23:54
Speaker 3: not a natural depth.
23:55
Speaker 2: I think Dave mac somehow put air in that guy's
23:58
Speaker 2: blood pain.
24:00
Speaker 1: H yeah, I mean yeah no. And and so you're
24:04
Speaker 1: with no training or little or no training. And what's
24:08
Speaker 1: amazing about this office is that now we're talking in
24:12
Speaker 1: the greater Omaha area. You were thinking, Omaha is, you know,
24:19
Speaker 1: has a lot of deaths, they have homicides, you know,
24:23
Speaker 1: as as any larger city would. But you begin to
24:26
Speaker 1: think about this and you think, so, how does this work.
24:31
Speaker 1: You're the corner and you're going to certify death. You're
24:33
Speaker 1: going to list, You're gonna list manner and cause death
24:37
Speaker 1: and make a scientific determination relative to that, and it
24:41
Speaker 1: extends out. It's it's amazing some of the numbers that
24:45
Speaker 1: were kind of floated out. They are way beyond the
24:50
Speaker 1: national average relative to the number of autopsies that this
24:53
Speaker 1: autopsy that this office involves itself in. And then as
24:57
Speaker 1: you move westward in Nebraska, you're going to you're gonna
25:02
Speaker 1: get down to like I think it's like one percent
25:05
Speaker 1: in some of these counties where autopsies are never performed,
25:10
Speaker 1: and that means that you have a lot of bodies
25:16
Speaker 1: that with the depth disposition, not deposition disposition of the
25:20
Speaker 1: bodies where you're making pretty broad assumption scientifically about what
25:27
Speaker 1: was the manner and cause of death. And listen with
25:30
Speaker 1: with Pete. You know, he's found days later, he's deceased
25:34
Speaker 1: in his home and is found dead there and the
25:41
Speaker 1: family has no answers whatsoever. And the family even asked,
25:46
Speaker 1: they said, are you going to do an autopsy?
25:48
Speaker 2: No?
25:48
Speaker 1: Well, can we at least have a private autopsy done,
25:54
Speaker 1: which means that you got and you hire a uh
26:00
Speaker 1: a forensic pathologist or a hospital pathologist, which would generally happen,
26:05
Speaker 1: and you would pay for it. And sometimes the cost
26:07
Speaker 1: of these things is it's rather steep. You know. I've
26:11
Speaker 1: seen private autopsies, and again a lot of it depends
26:14
Speaker 1: upon how involved they are. I've seen them be upwards
26:17
Speaker 1: a couple of thousand bucks. I've seen them, you know,
26:20
Speaker 1: in the fourteen hundred dollars range. A lot of it
26:22
Speaker 1: is dependent upon where you are, the access, what access
26:27
Speaker 1: do you have to a pathologist, and if they're willing
26:30
Speaker 1: to do it. Hospital pathologists, contrary to what people think,
26:33
Speaker 1: don't like to do autopsies. You know, they examine tissue
26:37
Speaker 1: that comes in from surgery. Autopsies, they're trained to do them.
26:41
Speaker 1: But it ain't their bag most of the time, you know,
26:43
Speaker 1: It's not like it's not like a forensic pathologist who
26:47
Speaker 1: spends their life, you know, in the autopsy suite, doing
26:51
Speaker 1: autopsy after autopsy, and that's how they build up these
26:54
Speaker 1: huge numbers. I mean me alone, I'm you know, I'm
26:58
Speaker 1: just this guy. And I participated and over seven thousand autopsies.
27:02
Speaker 1: I was physically there in the room as autopsies are
27:04
Speaker 1: being done, and you know, around them, assisting, taking notes,
27:09
Speaker 1: doing all the stuff that you do associated with autopsies.
27:12
Speaker 2: I was like working in a factory, or It's almost
27:14
Speaker 2: like you expect to have a car come by the
27:16
Speaker 2: needs its doors put on.
27:17
Speaker 3: You put the doors on, check the heart.
27:18
Speaker 1: But the way they checked that exactly. I've walked into
27:21
Speaker 1: an autopsy suite early in the morning and had bodies
27:25
Speaker 1: lined up literally. I can remember being a State Medical
27:28
Speaker 1: Examiner's office in Georgia and I was assigned out there
27:33
Speaker 1: for eight very eight or nine very very very long
27:38
Speaker 1: months and walking in and having I know that I
27:43
Speaker 1: know there were a couple of days we did twenty
27:45
Speaker 1: autopsies in one day, and those are all in varying
27:48
Speaker 1: degrees of trauma severity, or complications relative to natural deaths,
27:56
Speaker 1: and so it requires a key eye, it requires somebody.
28:00
Speaker 1: Now you have the county attorney slash DA that's actually
28:05
Speaker 1: the person who is the certifier of death. And let's
28:10
Speaker 1: just couple that with the idea that if you are
28:15
Speaker 1: if you are a let's just say you're a prosecutor.
28:21
Speaker 1: Think about this just for a second. You're the prosecutor
28:24
Speaker 1: and you're also in charge of the examination or certifying
28:28
Speaker 1: to death because obviously the attorney is not going to
28:31
Speaker 1: do the attorney slash corner is not going to do
28:33
Speaker 1: the autopsy. You're going to have a pathologist's that's hired
28:36
Speaker 1: by them to do it. But the pathologists yet they're
28:39
Speaker 1: going to sign off on it. But it's going to
28:40
Speaker 1: be up to the corner what the manner and cause
28:42
Speaker 1: of death is. Do you see? I mean? And I
28:45
Speaker 1: think most people can can appreciate what a conflict that is.
28:48
Speaker 1: That's like if you go to well, we were talking
28:51
Speaker 1: about Tammy just a moment ago to Tammy Davell. I
28:53
Speaker 1: talked about her like she's on a first name basis.
28:56
Speaker 1: I feel like I got to know her over those
28:58
Speaker 1: years and we were covering the case. But you know,
29:00
Speaker 1: with Utah, thank god they went from Idaho to Utah
29:05
Speaker 1: because Utah has a state medical examiner. There are no corners, Okay, so.
29:09
Speaker 3: There's just one guy that's over all of it or.
29:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they'll have it broken down in districts. Utah
29:14
Speaker 1: is a big place. Yeah, you know, so they might
29:17
Speaker 1: have satellite like down in Saint George's maybe in Utah.
29:20
Speaker 1: And then of course you got Salt Lake City in
29:22
Speaker 1: a variety of places, and they're going to have people
29:25
Speaker 1: that do the autopsies there. They're board certified forensic pathologists.
29:29
Speaker 1: You go to New Mexico, for instance, which is a
29:31
Speaker 1: fine example. They are a state Medical Examiner's office, no corners,
29:36
Speaker 1: and the State Medical Examiner's Office is actually managed by
29:39
Speaker 1: the State Health Apartment. And that makes sense. I mean,
29:43
Speaker 1: it truly makes sense because most of the deaths that
29:45
Speaker 1: you're going to certify are going to be naturally. You
29:47
Speaker 1: go to Oklahoma. You know, Oklahoma is a non corner state.
29:52
Speaker 1: You know it has it has you know, it has
29:57
Speaker 1: a state medical examiner. But you go north to go
30:00
Speaker 1: to Kansas. You hit Kansas, Well, buddy, Kansas is a
30:03
Speaker 1: corner state. Nebraska is corner state. South Dakota corner state.
30:08
Speaker 1: North Dakota is a corner state, Montana corner state, Wyoming,
30:13
Speaker 1: corner state, Colorado corner state. So you can go down
30:17
Speaker 1: the list. Then you get to these kind of anomalous
30:20
Speaker 1: places like California, and people go on and on about
30:24
Speaker 1: how progressive California is and all these sort of things.
30:26
Speaker 1: Did you know in a lot of places in California,
30:30
Speaker 1: the corner and the sheriff are one and the same. Yeah,
30:35
Speaker 1: So you think about that, You think about that, and
30:38
Speaker 1: how bizarre that is. So you know, back to Pete
30:41
Speaker 1: in Nebraska, you're thinking, well, that's that's not that's not surprising,
30:48
Speaker 1: you know when you put it into that context, you know,
30:53
Speaker 1: and listen, this is nothing new under the sun day,
30:56
Speaker 1: you know, I think it was. I might get this
30:59
Speaker 1: day wrong. Prior to the Civil War. This is how
31:03
Speaker 1: far back this goes. Did you know the state of
31:06
Speaker 1: Maryland they first had a statue that was written up
31:11
Speaker 1: and it's the first time they had corners. They no
31:14
Speaker 1: longer have corner in Maryland. They have state Medical Examiner.
31:19
Speaker 1: Matter of fact, I think that's where doctor Zumwalt was
31:21
Speaker 1: and he was one of the finest, finest forensic minds anywhere.
31:26
Speaker 1: But anyway, back in eighteen sixty they saw the need
31:30
Speaker 1: back then to say, you know what, we need to
31:32
Speaker 1: bring a physician in to consult. Wow, all right, that's
31:36
Speaker 1: all idea. That's eighteen sixty, Dave once the year I
31:40
Speaker 1: lose track. It's twenty twenty five, twenty twenty five. We're
31:43
Speaker 1: in George jetson time.
31:44
Speaker 2: Now.
31:45
Speaker 1: You know, we're supposed to have flying cars and we
31:48
Speaker 1: still have these weird amalgams and you you know, you
31:51
Speaker 1: go all around the corner of the states and things
31:55
Speaker 1: are so kind of out of why you go to
31:58
Speaker 1: Texas and the justice of the pieces the corner, you know,
32:01
Speaker 1: and so you have all of these oddities. Now certain
32:04
Speaker 1: things have evolved. You know, Tennessee, for instance, has gotten
32:07
Speaker 1: rid of corners. You know, the corner is this final
32:11
Speaker 1: this final person, you know, is the final ruler.
32:14
Speaker 2: Uh.
32:15
Speaker 1: I mean, look at what we're dealing with with Ellen
32:17
Speaker 1: Greenberg right now. Okay, But because you know, with with Ellen,
32:21
Speaker 1: they had they had stated that I think in one
32:25
Speaker 1: of the early rulings in this case that listen, state
32:28
Speaker 1: can't tell the medical examiner how to rule.
32:32
Speaker 3: Okay, they cannot compel him to change his.
32:34
Speaker 1: Decase they cannot come. No, this is not a law
32:37
Speaker 1: enforcement entity. It's a separate entity there, okay. And you
32:42
Speaker 1: are dealing with the Philly Medical Exam which is interesting
32:45
Speaker 1: because Pennsylvania is one of those states that has both
32:49
Speaker 1: medical examiners and corners. It's a weird, so you'll you'll
32:53
Speaker 1: get these kind of weird, weird mixtures that are all
32:57
Speaker 1: over the place. You know, you got to You go
33:01
Speaker 1: to Ohio, for instance, Cuyahoga County. I think that's Cleveland,
33:05
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken. They have a medical examiner. But
33:07
Speaker 1: you can go other places and I have corners. You
33:10
Speaker 1: go to New York again, a state that's so so progressive, right, Well,
33:15
Speaker 1: they have the OCME in New York City, but there's
33:19
Speaker 1: there's a hell of a lot more to New York
33:21
Speaker 1: than just Manhattan, and you know New York City itself,
33:26
Speaker 1: they've got corners all over the state. But you go
33:29
Speaker 1: to Virginia, and Virginia the state medical Examiner system. They
33:32
Speaker 1: no longer have corners there, so it's kind of hit
33:35
Speaker 1: or miss. And with Pete's family and Nebraska, you sit
33:39
Speaker 1: there and you think, well, what's left for him? What's
33:44
Speaker 1: left for him, where do they go? And of course,
33:47
Speaker 1: unfortunately for them, they don't have too many choices. There's
34:06
Speaker 1: a term that kids use nowadays. My college students have
34:10
Speaker 1: used it for a number of years. I don't feel
34:13
Speaker 1: comfortable because I'm not quite hip enough to do it,
34:15
Speaker 1: but I like the term, and it says, I'll hauler
34:17
Speaker 1: back up and with with Pete Chapel in in Omaha.
34:27
Speaker 1: That's what he was. That's what he was known for, Dave.
34:30
Speaker 1: He he had a catchphrase where he would say, I'll
34:35
Speaker 1: holler at you later, and he was known for this.
34:38
Speaker 1: He was He was beloved by his family members who
34:43
Speaker 1: cared deeply for him. He lived. He lived in public
34:47
Speaker 1: housing called the Underwood Tower there in Omaha. And here's
34:52
Speaker 1: what's interesting, uh Dave Uh. Pete was found dead on
34:57
Speaker 1: a welfare check back on July of the third of
35:00
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four and the police report notice I didn't
35:07
Speaker 1: say corner report. The police report stated that there was
35:14
Speaker 1: enough foul play and the police report stated that he
35:19
Speaker 1: died of natural causes. Now, I don't know about you,
35:26
Speaker 1: but the question I would have is what qualifies a
35:30
Speaker 1: police officer to say that an individual died of natural
35:34
Speaker 1: causes sounds to me like any corner that you have
35:37
Speaker 1: you can just kind of, you know, throw that out
35:39
Speaker 1: the window. You don't need a corner, You'll just call
35:42
Speaker 1: You'll call the local constabulary, local cops that have just
35:45
Speaker 1: come out of the academy or whatever the case might be,
35:47
Speaker 1: and have them make the ruling. I mean, because that's
35:50
Speaker 1: what it comes down to, and there is a high
35:55
Speaker 1: there is. I guess maybe as far as probability goes,
36:00
Speaker 1: there's a chance that maybe Pete died of natural causes.
36:05
Speaker 1: How soon after he entered that apartment did he in
36:09
Speaker 1: fact pass away? But you know, Pete's death is horrific
36:17
Speaker 1: relative to the family because these things, at least in
36:21
Speaker 1: my estimation, will never be put to rest. There are
36:26
Speaker 1: critical moments that we come across in forensics death investigation
36:31
Speaker 1: where we have to be brave enough to make a
36:35
Speaker 1: decision to sally forth into maybe the protests of a
36:40
Speaker 1: family or getting past what's inconvenient for you. I look
36:45
Speaker 1: back and I reflect upon that young man all those
36:49
Speaker 1: years ago, when I pull that man out of the
36:51
Speaker 1: bottom of that pool, and I think that if I
36:54
Speaker 1: had had the intestinal fortitude at that moment in time
36:58
Speaker 1: and had stood full face against the family and be
37:03
Speaker 1: as respectful as I could and said no, we're gonna
37:07
Speaker 1: go ahead and do an autopsy. Six months later, I
37:11
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been deposed along with everybody else that was
37:14
Speaker 1: involved in the case. In the office. Sometimes you just
37:18
Speaker 1: have to go with science and make a strong decision
37:22
Speaker 1: and make sure that you're trained up in the right
37:24
Speaker 1: way so that when it comes down to it, you
37:27
Speaker 1: can do the most important thing of all, and that's
37:30
Speaker 1: provide answers to not just the family, but the general public.
37:35
Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Bodybacks