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The Final Autopsy · Hell and Gone: Murder Line

0:07
Speaker 1: The School of Humans. We found a tape in Ron
0:15
Speaker 1: Ward's boxes from two thousand and seven. In it, he's
0:19
Speaker 1: reading a letter that his lawyer, Jerry Sallings, had received
0:22
Speaker 1: from the Special Prosecutor Tim Williamson. If you and your
0:26
Speaker 1: clients do not wish to state to attempt to obtain
0:30
Speaker 1: additional forensic evidence to be used in this criminal investigation,
0:36
Speaker 1: I suggest you buy your request for any youngty's relief.
0:40
Speaker 1: The letter informs him that the state intends to do
0:43
Speaker 1: another exhumation and autopsy on Jennie. Great efforts have been
0:47
Speaker 1: taken to schedulist exhamation and autopsy. My experts cannot be
0:55
Speaker 1: present again for several weeks, and doctor Burnell or whichever
1:00
Speaker 1: family medical expert is present and only observed. Now, come on, now,
1:08
Speaker 1: Ron is frustrated. He doesn't understand why Tim Williamson doesn't
1:12
Speaker 1: trust doctor Burnell's conclusion that Jennie was hit in the
1:16
Speaker 1: face with a blunt object, that her death was a homicide.
1:20
Speaker 1: Doctor Burnell not just some kind of backyard warm dog.
1:24
Speaker 1: You know, he's a high incredible pathologist. Why on earth
1:29
Speaker 1: that he wanted to question a renowned pathologists that him
1:36
Speaker 1: back here? I have no speculation. The Word family had
1:39
Speaker 1: painstakingly had Janie's body exhumed and autopsied a second time.
1:44
Speaker 1: Why did Tim Williamson need to do this again? We
1:47
Speaker 1: have got to file an injunction. Otherwise we'd be saying
1:52
Speaker 1: we didn't believe doctor Buranell. We go along with the state.
1:57
Speaker 1: We didn't believe doctor Burnell. We don't want our daughter's
2:00
Speaker 1: remains removed and affered with again. No, but we know
2:03
Speaker 1: it's it's we can't prevent, but we can in assert. Hey, hey, look,
2:10
Speaker 1: we don't agree with this. We agree with doctor Vernell's
2:13
Speaker 1: find these and all of the investigation that we've done
2:17
Speaker 1: is just born. Now what your excuse? We're not agreeing
2:21
Speaker 1: with doctor Vernell. Three years and over ten thousand dollars later,
2:26
Speaker 1: Tim Williamson said he did not find any conclusive evidence
2:30
Speaker 1: that Janie's death was a homicide. In the end, he
2:34
Speaker 1: can't determine anything, So in August of two thousand and seven,
2:39
Speaker 1: they exhumed Janey's body one more time for a final autopsy.
2:45
Speaker 1: I'm Catherine Townsend and this is hell and gone. Janey's
3:23
Speaker 1: third autopsy is a spectacle. With Mike Masterson's columns Arkansas's
3:28
Speaker 1: attention is on the case. Everyone is waiting to see
3:32
Speaker 1: what will happen this time. Tim Williamson finds an out
3:36
Speaker 1: of state pathologist to perform the autopsy. He wants someone
3:39
Speaker 1: whose credentials are impeccable, someone who is not controversial, someone
3:44
Speaker 1: who can help him convince the Ward family and the
3:47
Speaker 1: rest of the state that he is being completely impartial
3:51
Speaker 1: the cause of the conflicts and the concerns of the family.
3:55
Speaker 1: Of anyone in the state of Arkansas doing this, they
3:58
Speaker 1: had questions that everybody's involvement completely. So we were trying
4:03
Speaker 1: to stay as independent as possible and give them the
4:06
Speaker 1: greatest assurance and afford them the opportunity to know that
4:11
Speaker 1: we've done everything we possibly could do to do an independent,
4:15
Speaker 1: totally independent, complete review. I got to looking for medical
4:21
Speaker 1: examiners or pathologists nationally recognized so that we could bring
4:24
Speaker 1: somebody from out of state inn to actually do this investigation.
4:28
Speaker 1: And doctor John Plus out of Indianapolis. It was by
4:33
Speaker 1: far and above the most appropriate choice. We've had a painstaking,
4:37
Speaker 1: step by step process for the exhumation. The family had
4:42
Speaker 1: a right to be president as a representative president. We
4:45
Speaker 1: did not want anyone saying that we had in any
4:48
Speaker 1: way interfered for a manipulated Jamie's body before this could
4:53
Speaker 1: be done. So when we had her exumed, there was
4:57
Speaker 1: a state police president, law enforcement president and a press
4:59
Speaker 1: presence at the cemetery. We transported her to the state
5:04
Speaker 1: crime Lab, and because of the family's concerns about they
5:10
Speaker 1: were concerned that the crime lab might similar another try
5:13
Speaker 1: to manipulate the findings or tasts, or again the body
5:18
Speaker 1: before a chance to be examined. We placed her body
5:21
Speaker 1: into a sealed, locked room and we sealed it controlled
5:25
Speaker 1: access to it. E Woun put a camera in motion
5:27
Speaker 1: sens her cameras up. I think they alleviated any concerns
5:31
Speaker 1: that might be about any manipulation of any evidence. The
5:36
Speaker 1: words make it clear they don't trust Tim Williamson or
5:39
Speaker 1: the crime lab. They want to make sure that the
5:42
Speaker 1: pathologists selected doctor John Plus will do an accurate autopsy.
5:49
Speaker 1: They asked doctor Barnell to be present, and the autopsy
5:51
Speaker 1: had been rescheduled so that he could attend, but at
5:54
Speaker 1: the last minute doctor Burnell had a conflict and sent
5:58
Speaker 1: a different pathologist to be present for the family. There
6:01
Speaker 1: were other people supervising the autopsy as well, including an
6:05
Speaker 1: FBI consultant from ABC and a forensic anthropologist. The first
6:10
Speaker 1: stop was the University of Arkansas Medical Center, where the
6:13
Speaker 1: team put Janey's body through a CT scan to see
6:16
Speaker 1: a three D rendering of her skeleton. Then they brought
6:20
Speaker 1: the body to the Arkansas Crime Lab where every part
6:23
Speaker 1: of the body was dissected. Ron and Mona and their lawyer,
6:27
Speaker 1: Jerry Sellings met with doctor Plus and with Tim Williamson
6:31
Speaker 1: after they completed the autopsy. Ron recorded the meeting. It
6:36
Speaker 1: begins with doctor Plus explaining his results. We went quite
6:41
Speaker 1: a bit further than either doctor Malick or doctor Banell
6:46
Speaker 1: by literally removing all of the skin from the body
6:50
Speaker 1: so that we could see any evidence of hemorrhage in
6:53
Speaker 1: the soft tissues around the bond. We had the advantage
6:58
Speaker 1: of the three D X ray examination, so we knew
7:02
Speaker 1: what all was intact before we really went in there
7:05
Speaker 1: to do that. We found bruises or hemorrhages also referred
7:11
Speaker 1: to as contusions of the right elbow of the left
7:16
Speaker 1: back where doctor Mallick had made his incision. I also
7:21
Speaker 1: found multiple small hemorrhages in the eppibilotis and that's where
7:27
Speaker 1: sometimes you can get a crouton or a small piece
7:30
Speaker 1: of bread caught back in your throat and in the
7:33
Speaker 1: trachea ah, And in my experience, hemorrhages of that type
7:39
Speaker 1: are seen in people who choke on things. Those are
7:43
Speaker 1: basically my findings in the examination and my opinion that
7:47
Speaker 1: at some point or another, just prior to her collapse,
7:52
Speaker 1: she got something caught in her throat, couldn't breathe couldn't talk,
7:58
Speaker 1: and as the oxygen level was reduced, she finally collapsed.
8:04
Speaker 1: After all this time, the words get another opinion that
8:08
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense to them. No one ever described her
8:11
Speaker 1: daughter as choking and coughing. They said she was run
8:17
Speaker 1: on the ground and she would guess, but that was it.
8:21
Speaker 1: I didn't ebscribe her cho choking, though, is just an opinion. Officially,
8:27
Speaker 1: doctor Plus leaves the cause and manner of death as undetermined.
8:32
Speaker 1: He also suggests that Janie could have had a heart arrhythmia.
8:37
Speaker 1: After Janie's first and second autopsies, her organs were put
8:41
Speaker 1: in a bag inside her abdomen, but doctor Plus couldn't
8:45
Speaker 1: make an official diagnosis because Janie's heart was missing. And
8:50
Speaker 1: you know what happened to the arm someone probably a
8:55
Speaker 1: h person. An envoment must have hand those in those
9:02
Speaker 1: That's the only reason I can think of why they
9:05
Speaker 1: wouldn't be there. Is that normal for a heart to
9:08
Speaker 1: be missing when you have the other organs. It's not normal,
9:12
Speaker 1: but it happens. I've seen it had a before. Doctor
9:15
Speaker 1: Plas also completely disagrees with doctor Manew's most significant findings.
9:21
Speaker 1: He says he sees absolutely no evidence of his spinal injury.
9:25
Speaker 1: Ron is shocked and pulls out the photos that doctor
9:29
Speaker 1: Malik said to him. Photograph sent to doctor Malik himself
9:36
Speaker 1: that shows the voter ragmen cut in a levelment deck demand.
9:41
Speaker 1: It shows the spinal chord exposed. Did you put jagging torn?
9:47
Speaker 1: Did you say that? All? Yes? Okay? And that was
9:52
Speaker 1: all done by doctor Malik and his examination of an X.
9:58
Speaker 1: There's no evidence of any hemorrhay. I know this looks red,
10:04
Speaker 1: and this looked pretty bad when you look at it,
10:07
Speaker 1: but there's no hemorrhage there that you would expect to
10:11
Speaker 1: see if it were a blunt force injury of any kind.
10:15
Speaker 1: And what he made of thought final could conflict. That
10:20
Speaker 1: was part of his examination of the body. If not
10:25
Speaker 1: anything that was done prior to the autopsy. It's all
10:28
Speaker 1: modifications that he has made in his examination on the body.
10:33
Speaker 1: Doctor Plus also says he didn't see any evidence of
10:37
Speaker 1: abrasions or trauma on Janie's face. When pressed by the
10:41
Speaker 1: ward's lawyer, he admits he didn't take any samples from
10:44
Speaker 1: the face to look out microscopically. Doctor Plus says it's
10:48
Speaker 1: because it wouldn't have made any difference because he didn't
10:51
Speaker 1: see any hemorrhaging. Why didn't you tell the samples because
10:54
Speaker 1: there was no hemorrhy in associatedation with those areas, kailed
11:00
Speaker 1: that there was no underlying hemorrhage, so there was no
11:04
Speaker 1: reason to take sections. And again, if for no other
11:07
Speaker 1: reason than to discuss the findings that doctor Burnell has, well,
11:12
Speaker 1: that would be true, but I don't think it really
11:14
Speaker 1: would have made any difference. You understanding interesting? Ron Ward
11:18
Speaker 1: again pulls out the photographs that doctor Mallick had given him.
11:23
Speaker 1: Ron says, it looks like there's bruising on Janie's face
11:26
Speaker 1: and a cut across her nose and blood in her mouth.
11:30
Speaker 1: And doctor Plus says this, yeah, and you did not
11:35
Speaker 1: see this a braid in the with her nose, And
11:39
Speaker 1: I think pecially those blood and there, all right, that's
11:43
Speaker 1: what it looks like. Again, I would agree with you.
11:45
Speaker 1: And I don't know what this Isn't a little bit
11:48
Speaker 1: of blooding are on top of her nose? That's well,
11:52
Speaker 1: I don't know that either. You do, Yes, I do
11:55
Speaker 1: you know? I saw my daughter. It wasn't no blood
11:58
Speaker 1: up here. This meeting gets pretty heated. The words keep
12:04
Speaker 1: going back to the photographs they got from doctor Mallet
12:07
Speaker 1: and the x rays that they insist were different from
12:10
Speaker 1: the ones they saw at the crime lab. And I
12:12
Speaker 1: don't know when, and I don't know who was involved,
12:15
Speaker 1: but I think sometimes or none of you've gotten the
12:18
Speaker 1: wrong idea about what these x rays are. And it
12:23
Speaker 1: may be just a misunderstanding. Uh. And I don't know
12:27
Speaker 1: who is misunderstanding, but it's hard for me to believe,
12:31
Speaker 1: having seen her body and examined her skeleton personally removed
12:38
Speaker 1: all the soft tissue, what I see is what what
12:42
Speaker 1: I saw, is what these photographs show, and nothing else.
12:48
Speaker 1: And there is no there is no injury. I mean,
12:52
Speaker 1: we you will accept the fact that I did examine
12:56
Speaker 1: her body, is that right? Yes? We did a thought
13:01
Speaker 1: feeling about sayin circumstances, right, this is Mona talking. She
13:08
Speaker 1: tells Doctor Plas about all the suspicious circumstances around Janie's death,
13:13
Speaker 1: but Doctor Plus says the forensic evidence doesn't match what
13:17
Speaker 1: she's telling him. People tell me all these things that
13:20
Speaker 1: you've just told me. I mean, I'm not ignorant of
13:23
Speaker 1: any of these things. People have made statements about this,
13:27
Speaker 1: mostly coming from you, Law. But when I look at
13:33
Speaker 1: a body, I have to develop my opinions from the
13:37
Speaker 1: body as welf, not from what people may feel are
13:42
Speaker 1: the circumstances. But I have to look at the body
13:48
Speaker 1: and scientifically to make an opinion about what went on.
13:54
Speaker 1: And of no injury. There's just not any injury here
14:00
Speaker 1: that would have caused your daughter's death. After the meeting
14:08
Speaker 1: with Tim Williamson and Doctor Plus, there's a press conference.
14:13
Speaker 1: It's packed with news stations from across the state. As
14:17
Speaker 1: Ron and Mona leave the press conference, they're surrounded by reporters.
14:23
Speaker 1: Ron and Mona are trying to hurry through the interviews
14:26
Speaker 1: because they know that Jane's body is being driven away
14:29
Speaker 1: back to the cemetery to get reburied. Well, we thought
14:32
Speaker 1: they were waiting for us, actually, because we were supposed
14:37
Speaker 1: to be there when they reburied her, because the first
14:41
Speaker 1: time we got to pray, you know, like a funeral,
14:47
Speaker 1: you know, like it was another funeral, and like when
14:51
Speaker 1: we had her exhumed, we got to do that. It's
14:55
Speaker 1: just so callous, you know, to just do that. It
14:59
Speaker 1: meant something. There'd been nothing to them. By the time
15:03
Speaker 1: they got to the cemetery, Janie was buried and the
15:07
Speaker 1: crew was driving away. They were supposed to have waited
15:10
Speaker 1: for the wards so that they could pray as their
15:13
Speaker 1: daughter was lowered into the ground for the third time
15:17
Speaker 1: once again. Journalist Mike Masterson was outraged at the treatment
15:21
Speaker 1: of the Wards and thought the third autopsy was horrific
15:25
Speaker 1: and supposedly they just absolutely skinned her. They there's nothing
15:29
Speaker 1: left if they wanted to do another autopsy, and that
15:31
Speaker 1: was not necessary, but they did it so they made
15:35
Speaker 1: sure there wasn't going to be a fourth exhamation. He
15:38
Speaker 1: still thinks it's totally illogical that doctor Malick would have
15:42
Speaker 1: cut and removed part of Janie's spine instead of it
15:45
Speaker 1: being torn from an injury. See Whybret, you reach out
15:48
Speaker 1: and tear her spinal cord in the canal. So no,
15:52
Speaker 1: it's just all a bunch of words. It's dissemblings. What
15:54
Speaker 1: it is, just words to try to fill air and
15:57
Speaker 1: try to confuse people. I mean, it didn't confuse me
16:01
Speaker 1: at all, and it didn't confuse most of Arkansas, I
16:05
Speaker 1: mean around the state today, all these years later, and
16:11
Speaker 1: one or two of the questions I'm ask invariably deal
16:14
Speaker 1: with Jenny Ward's case. You know, are they ever going
16:16
Speaker 1: to do anything with the Jenny Ward case? What about
16:19
Speaker 1: Jenny Ward? So it really touched the nerve this whole mess.
16:27
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Doctor Plus's autopsy didn't provide definitive
16:40
Speaker 1: answers to how Janie died. He said she could have choked,
16:45
Speaker 1: she could have had a heart problem, and doctor Plus
16:48
Speaker 1: seemed pretty convinced that there was no sign of his
16:51
Speaker 1: final injury or a blunt forced trauma to the face.
16:55
Speaker 1: According to the forensic evidence provided by this autopsy, Jane
16:59
Speaker 1: didn't die from falling off the porch. She wasn't hitting
17:03
Speaker 1: the face with a baseball bat, didn't run into the
17:06
Speaker 1: post and then fall off the porch, as Steve Ward
17:08
Speaker 1: had suggested, and she didn't sustain a spinal injury in
17:12
Speaker 1: the truck on the bumpy roads. Back to the bank
17:14
Speaker 1: parking lot. So with this third autopsy, there is very
17:19
Speaker 1: little pointing to homicide in the forensic evidence, but at
17:23
Speaker 1: the same time, nothing is definitive about it. Her cause
17:27
Speaker 1: and manner of death remain undetermined. This seems incredible to
17:32
Speaker 1: have three different autopsies with three completely different results, and
17:36
Speaker 1: we needed to know more about how this could be possible.
17:40
Speaker 1: We found a forensic pathologist through the College of American Pathologists.
17:45
Speaker 1: Her name is Gray Stuke's and she's a board certified
17:48
Speaker 1: pathologist and a member of the College's Forensic Pathology Committee.
17:53
Speaker 1: We asked her to review the three autopsies. Our job
17:56
Speaker 1: as medical examiners is to determine a cause of death
18:00
Speaker 1: and usually the manner of death, but that can vary
18:02
Speaker 1: by a law depending on the state that you're in.
18:04
Speaker 1: Sometimes the coroner makes it distinction. At our autopsy, we
18:08
Speaker 1: can see what we see grossly and microscopically, and then
18:13
Speaker 1: the cause of death ultimately is our opinion. So in
18:17
Speaker 1: these three cases, people looked at the body, drew their
18:21
Speaker 1: own conclusions, and then formed their own opinions. I think
18:25
Speaker 1: some of the variation in the opinions comes from the
18:29
Speaker 1: fact that the body was in different states each time.
18:33
Speaker 1: You know, there had been dissections performed on it two
18:37
Speaker 1: different times by the time the third autopsy happened. So
18:40
Speaker 1: there's substantial autopsy artifact. There's decomposition artifact. You know, there's
18:46
Speaker 1: embalming artifact. There are all these factors that could alter
18:50
Speaker 1: potentially the way that things look. And then even it
18:54
Speaker 1: you know, someone doing their you know, best job at
18:58
Speaker 1: an autopsy, there can still be variability in the opinion
19:02
Speaker 1: that people draw from those findings. To review the complicated
19:07
Speaker 1: history of Janey's autopsies, let's go back to nineteen eighty nine.
19:13
Speaker 1: Two days after Jane died, doctor Fowmi Mallick conducted an autopsy.
19:18
Speaker 1: He said that the cause of death was a hyper
19:20
Speaker 1: extension neck injury from falling off the porch. The manner
19:24
Speaker 1: of death was undetermined. Doctor Malick was a controversial figure
19:29
Speaker 1: in Arkansas. In nineteen ninety one, he quit amid allegations
19:34
Speaker 1: that he bought several autopsies. In nineteen ninety two, two
19:39
Speaker 1: out of state pathologists reviewed doctor Malick's work. They didn't
19:43
Speaker 1: perform their own autopsy, but they did have access to
19:46
Speaker 1: the report, the photos, and the x rays, the ones
19:49
Speaker 1: where the side view had a white blob that blocked
19:51
Speaker 1: most of Jane's neck. These are also the X rays
19:54
Speaker 1: that the words said were different from the ones they
19:57
Speaker 1: saw at the crime lab. At the crime lab, they
20:00
Speaker 1: insisted that they saw X rays where it was clear
20:04
Speaker 1: that Janey had a broken neck, but the pathologists in
20:07
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two said they were not convinced that Janey
20:10
Speaker 1: had his final injury. They also said the X rays
20:14
Speaker 1: looked like those of a male skull. They changed Janey's
20:18
Speaker 1: death certificate, leaving both the cause of death and the
20:21
Speaker 1: manner of death as undetermined. Then doctor Burnell conducted his
20:26
Speaker 1: autopsy in two thousand and four, fifteen years after Janey died.
20:32
Speaker 1: He also concluded that Janey died from a neck injury
20:35
Speaker 1: and had blunt forced trauma to the face. He said
20:39
Speaker 1: the manner of death was homicide. Doctor Cox was a
20:43
Speaker 1: medical examiner at the crime lab at that time, and
20:45
Speaker 1: he wrote a scathing review of doctor Burnell's findings, mostly
20:49
Speaker 1: citing the lack of evidence and documentation for doctor Burnell's conclusions.
20:54
Speaker 1: Doctor Pluss's autopsy was in two thousand and seven, eighteen
20:58
Speaker 1: years after Janey died, and after two other autopsies he
21:03
Speaker 1: left the death certificate as undetermined in both cause and
21:06
Speaker 1: manner of death, and said he saw no evidence of
21:09
Speaker 1: a spinal injury. We discussed doctor Cooke's review of doctor
21:13
Speaker 1: Burnell's autopsy in episode five. We asked doctor Grace Dukes
21:18
Speaker 1: her impressions of that autopsy. Normally, an autopsy, you know,
21:21
Speaker 1: would include the external exam, documentation of identifying Marx injuries,
21:28
Speaker 1: you know, any sort of distinctive feature. Then you know,
21:32
Speaker 1: there would be an internal examination where we examine the organs.
21:34
Speaker 1: Obviously in an embalmed, decomposing body with a bag of
21:38
Speaker 1: organs in the abdomen, you know that's going to be limited.
21:42
Speaker 1: And then you know, putting in sections for microscopic exam,
21:45
Speaker 1: which would also be relatively limited because the tissues will
21:48
Speaker 1: be decomposing, and then potentially photographs and X rays, et cetera. So,
21:53
Speaker 1: I mean, many of those tasks were performed. I think
21:59
Speaker 1: he is a bit more brief in how he documents them.
22:04
Speaker 1: It is a significantly you know, more brief report than
22:08
Speaker 1: say doctor Plus's report, which is very thorough. But the
22:14
Speaker 1: conclusion that the second autopsy came to that this was
22:19
Speaker 1: a homicide. You know, if you're going to change a
22:22
Speaker 1: manner of death to especially to a homicide where people
22:25
Speaker 1: could be prosecuted. I think it's important to do all
22:29
Speaker 1: of the documentation of those injuries that you say, you
22:33
Speaker 1: know were the lethal injuries causing the death in a homicide.
22:38
Speaker 1: And I think some of that isn't isn't present and
22:41
Speaker 1: wasn't subject to examination later. You know, doctor Plus couldn't
22:45
Speaker 1: go back and look at the photographs and look at
22:48
Speaker 1: the detail and the report necessarily and come to that
22:51
Speaker 1: same conclusion, and other pathologists couldn't either. Much of doctor
22:55
Speaker 1: Plus's autopsy and doctor Barnell's, to an extent, are dedicated
22:59
Speaker 1: to autopsy artifact, that is, observations about the changes on
23:03
Speaker 1: the body that are due to previous autos, not the
23:06
Speaker 1: original injury. And so much of the debate over Jane's
23:10
Speaker 1: cause and manner of death has come from observations of
23:14
Speaker 1: her face. Ron Wards said he saw bruising, and even
23:19
Speaker 1: doctor Plus admitted that according to ron Ward's pictures, it
23:23
Speaker 1: did look like Jane had discoloration to her face. But
23:27
Speaker 1: there is post mortem lividity. So lividity is the natural
23:31
Speaker 1: settling of the blood within the blood vessels after a
23:35
Speaker 1: person dies, so everything just sort of, you know, flows
23:38
Speaker 1: down to the dependent portions dependent to gravity, and so
23:42
Speaker 1: the blood is within those vessels, and then over a
23:45
Speaker 1: matter of hours, the blood can lice and link out
23:48
Speaker 1: of those vessels and it'll become what we call fixed,
23:51
Speaker 1: where you know, when it's just in the vessels, you
23:53
Speaker 1: can push on it and you can make a white
23:55
Speaker 1: spot on the skin. Once it becomes fixed, well you
23:58
Speaker 1: can push on it and it'll it'll stay fixed there.
24:02
Speaker 1: So that happens over a matter of hours. Doctor Do
24:05
Speaker 1: said it can be hard to tell between injuries and
24:08
Speaker 1: libidity because if a body isn't embalmed in a timely
24:11
Speaker 1: manner after death, both of these things can cause what
24:15
Speaker 1: looks like hemorrhaging under the skin. But in his autopsy,
24:19
Speaker 1: doctor Plus said there was no hemorrhaging underneath the surface
24:22
Speaker 1: of the face, so it seems that any discoloration on
24:25
Speaker 1: Jane's face happened after death. Doctor Plus's other huge finding
24:31
Speaker 1: was that doctor Malick had removed part of the spinal cord,
24:34
Speaker 1: which doctor Plus said was an unusual autopsy practice, and
24:38
Speaker 1: he concluded that there was in fact no spinal injury.
24:43
Speaker 1: Doctor Duke said that conclusion seems definitive because of the
24:47
Speaker 1: use of the CT scanner. So the CT scan is
24:50
Speaker 1: performed at some medical examiner's offices, but it's few. Uh.
24:56
Speaker 1: It's helpful because you get an image of the skeleton
25:00
Speaker 1: without having to cut it or scrape tissue off. It's
25:03
Speaker 1: just as you know, as if you went into a
25:04
Speaker 1: hospital and they were imaging you and they could see
25:07
Speaker 1: your skeleton and if there was fracture, if there was abnormality,
25:11
Speaker 1: and so to have the CT scan of the whole body,
25:14
Speaker 1: you know, and show having a radiologist examine it and
25:17
Speaker 1: show that there was not trauma there, there were not fractures,
25:22
Speaker 1: is very very helpful. Whereas you know, in the first autopsy,
25:26
Speaker 1: he was the pathologist was looking at all of these
25:29
Speaker 1: and feeling them and you know, I don't know how
25:33
Speaker 1: much of the tissue he scraped off or what he
25:35
Speaker 1: removed or what he cut, but you know, he came
25:37
Speaker 1: to the conclusion that there were fractures there, and then
25:40
Speaker 1: the CT scan was able to definitively show that that
25:43
Speaker 1: wasn't true. We also asked doctor Dukes about a couple
25:47
Speaker 1: of other theories, including the one that Janie drowned. So
25:51
Speaker 1: there's a in one of the early reviews of the autopsy,
25:54
Speaker 1: there's mention of or and in the investigative reporting there's
25:59
Speaker 1: mention of her clothing being wet and there's sand under
26:02
Speaker 1: her undergarments, And so I think that's a reason a proposal.
26:07
Speaker 1: But ultimately, you know, drowning is a diagnosis of exclusion,
26:12
Speaker 1: so it relies heavily on investigative findings, and as far
26:17
Speaker 1: as I could tell from what I looked at, investigative
26:21
Speaker 1: findings in the interviews don't support that the choking. You know,
26:27
Speaker 1: to have a food bullus stuck in your throat and
26:30
Speaker 1: you're you know, trying to inhale past it or breathe
26:33
Speaker 1: past it in your straining and you're you're increasing the
26:36
Speaker 1: pressure in your lungs, in the blood vessels of your lungs,
26:40
Speaker 1: in your airways. So you can get those little particual
26:43
Speaker 1: hemorrhages in a situation like that. But you know that
26:47
Speaker 1: that can happen. It's it's reasonable. Again, you know, nothing
26:52
Speaker 1: about the investigation suggests that she was choking. There was
26:57
Speaker 1: no food bowlus noted in her airway at the first autopsy.
27:01
Speaker 1: I mean, if it were lodged in there, you know,
27:04
Speaker 1: in ems didn't suction it out, which is a thing
27:06
Speaker 1: that happens too as they're trying to clear the airway.
27:10
Speaker 1: I don't know how much she was I don't know
27:11
Speaker 1: how much resuscitation was done on her. When Kathy, who
27:15
Speaker 1: worked at the Ambulance Service, talked with investigators in two
27:18
Speaker 1: thousand and seven, she said she didn't see anything visibly
27:21
Speaker 1: wrong with Janie's spine, and she also said she didn't
27:25
Speaker 1: see any blockage in the windpipe, which could have indicated
27:28
Speaker 1: that Jennie choked, Which leaves just one more question for
27:32
Speaker 1: doctor Duke's Could Janey have had a heart problem? Yeah,
27:36
Speaker 1: I think that has to be considered a possibility because
27:41
Speaker 1: there are basically negative findings on her. There's the finding
27:47
Speaker 1: of the larynx and I don't you know this many
27:49
Speaker 1: years later. I don't know if there's something else that
27:52
Speaker 1: could cause that or not. But so they're the petiqui
27:55
Speaker 1: and then there's the history of the wet clothing in
27:58
Speaker 1: the sand, and so there are other possibilities. There's not
28:03
Speaker 1: definite proof of any of those scenario. But in terms
28:07
Speaker 1: of a cardiac arrhythmia, anytime you have a death, especially
28:11
Speaker 1: in a young healthy person with no findings, you have
28:16
Speaker 1: to consider that a possibility, just some natural disease process
28:20
Speaker 1: where she suddenly, you know, collapsed. Like the ward's lawyer,
28:25
Speaker 1: Jerry Sallings said about the investigative evidence, there's really nothing
28:29
Speaker 1: more that can be done in the forensic field, and
28:33
Speaker 1: that's because of a series of errors that built up
28:36
Speaker 1: over time. It started with doctor Mallet, who removed part
28:40
Speaker 1: of the spinal cord with no explanation. Jane's fingernails were
28:44
Speaker 1: never swabbed, the X rays were either poorly taken or lost. Also,
28:49
Speaker 1: doctor Mallet mislabeled his cause of death. He said it
28:53
Speaker 1: was a hyper extension injury, but based on his theory
28:57
Speaker 1: of how she died falling back in her head snapping forward,
29:01
Speaker 1: it's actually a hyperflection injury. Doctor Bonnell's lack of documentation
29:06
Speaker 1: made it impossible to understand his findings. He made claims
29:10
Speaker 1: that were not backed up by the evidence. His descriptions
29:14
Speaker 1: of the injuries were brief, and by the time doctor
29:17
Speaker 1: Pluss did his autopsy, Jane's body had significant autopsy artifact. Still,
29:25
Speaker 1: because of the CT scan, it seems pretty convincing that
29:29
Speaker 1: she didn't have a spinal injury. We'll be right back.
29:45
Speaker 1: The third autopsy concludes that there was no injury to
29:49
Speaker 1: Janie's spine, but we wanted to go back one more
29:53
Speaker 1: time and take another look at the spinal cord because
29:56
Speaker 1: that has been the focus of the investigation into Janie's death,
30:00
Speaker 1: and with no spinal injury, most of the theories about
30:03
Speaker 1: how Janie died don't make any sense. Even doctor Plus
30:07
Speaker 1: agreed it is odd that doctor Malick would have removed
30:10
Speaker 1: part of the spinal cord in that first autopsy. That
30:14
Speaker 1: is not typical, and because that part of the spinal
30:17
Speaker 1: cord was removed, neither doctor Burnell nor doctor Plus could
30:21
Speaker 1: actually see the part of the spinal cord that would
30:23
Speaker 1: have been injured. Unlike the cord, the vertebrae were intact
30:28
Speaker 1: and the CT scan in the third autopsy did not
30:31
Speaker 1: show any fractures to these bones. When we talked with
30:35
Speaker 1: a journalist, Jason Peterson, the reporter who did the demonstration
30:39
Speaker 1: of Janie falling off the porch, he brought up one
30:42
Speaker 1: more theory that Jane had been injured before the party,
30:46
Speaker 1: but that she hadn't collapsed until hours later. Doctor Plus's
30:51
Speaker 1: autopsy revealed that Janie did have bruising on her elbow,
30:55
Speaker 1: and he did confirm that she had the large bruise
30:57
Speaker 1: on her back. Although a lot of people really didn't
30:59
Speaker 1: want to talk with me when I called, there were
31:01
Speaker 1: some who did, and there were some who were actually
31:03
Speaker 1: quite chatty, And one of them was Billy. He was
31:07
Speaker 1: one of the three people who said he saw Jane
31:11
Speaker 1: fall off the porch, and so I wanted to talk
31:14
Speaker 1: to him and see if he had any theories. And
31:16
Speaker 1: when I asked him what his theory of what happened was,
31:19
Speaker 1: he said, and I'm quoting for my notes here, I
31:22
Speaker 1: know she fell off the porch, but I don't think
31:24
Speaker 1: the fall killed her. I think she was suffering from
31:26
Speaker 1: a previous injury. I think something happened to her either
31:29
Speaker 1: hours before or maybe a couple of days before, that
31:32
Speaker 1: just caught up with her caused her to fall. And
31:35
Speaker 1: then Janie had been at the cabin earlier in the day.
31:38
Speaker 1: I seem to recall that she had gone down to
31:40
Speaker 1: the river to swim. I also remember hearing that the
31:43
Speaker 1: guy who drove her down there he was spinning donuts
31:46
Speaker 1: and Janie was thrown out of the back of the
31:48
Speaker 1: truck and was injured. That way, and maybe she thought
31:51
Speaker 1: she was okay but was really injured more seriously than
31:54
Speaker 1: she thought. Kids take their trucks down to the Buffalo River,
31:57
Speaker 1: which is about two miles from the cabin, all the
31:59
Speaker 1: time to do that. And so this is the first
32:02
Speaker 1: I heard anything about an earlier trip day to the river,
32:06
Speaker 1: and who may have may or may not have been there.
32:09
Speaker 1: And so but as I started to think about his
32:12
Speaker 1: theory and the physical evidence, you know, she had unexplained
32:17
Speaker 1: sand and gravel, and her clothes were wet, I mean
32:20
Speaker 1: sand and gravel like under her undergarments, and you know,
32:23
Speaker 1: falling out of a truck or another person said there
32:26
Speaker 1: was a fight down by the river. You know, those
32:29
Speaker 1: those things explained the presence, the unexplained presence of the
32:32
Speaker 1: sand and gravel in her you know, under her clothes,
32:35
Speaker 1: and why her clothes were wet. If she saw out
32:38
Speaker 1: of a moving truck and landing on her head, you know,
32:40
Speaker 1: face first, that could explain how her neck could have
32:43
Speaker 1: been that badly injured. Now, how you get to that
32:47
Speaker 1: middle ground where you're hurt really bad, but you're still
32:50
Speaker 1: kind of like a walking wounded. You know, you'd need
32:53
Speaker 1: to talk to someone with more medical knowledge than myself
32:56
Speaker 1: to see if that's even possible. From what I saw
32:58
Speaker 1: in the case file, most of Janie's day appears to
33:02
Speaker 1: be accounted for in the investigative evidence she was is
33:05
Speaker 1: that her friend Leslie's house, then went to the grocery
33:08
Speaker 1: store in the pool hall, and then got picked up
33:10
Speaker 1: by Ron to go to the party. So this theory
33:13
Speaker 1: that she went down to the river before the party
33:15
Speaker 1: seems like a stretch. But I bring it up because
33:18
Speaker 1: I did talk to someone who knows a lot about
33:20
Speaker 1: spinal injuries. His name is Douglas Cohen, and he's a
33:24
Speaker 1: Harvard educated neurosurgeon who operates on catastrophic spinal injuries daily.
33:30
Speaker 1: I wanted to get to the bottom of all of
33:32
Speaker 1: our remaining spinal cord questions. Could Janey have had a
33:36
Speaker 1: previous injury that led to her collapse, and is there
33:39
Speaker 1: any way she could have had a spinal cord injury
33:41
Speaker 1: if the vertebras surrounding the cord weren't broken. I guess
33:45
Speaker 1: the first question I would have is having seen the
33:48
Speaker 1: autopsy report. Apparently in the first autopsy the cord the
33:54
Speaker 1: spinal cord was either taken out or her parents seemed
33:59
Speaker 1: to think that the spinal cord was cut by some
34:02
Speaker 1: type of injury, but then it didn't break any bones,
34:04
Speaker 1: And we're trying to how likely that would be to happen.
34:07
Speaker 1: Exceedingly unlikely in a young, healthy, young adult. You can
34:11
Speaker 1: see something like that in an infant where the bones
34:14
Speaker 1: aren't kind of well formed and there's more cartilaginous connections.
34:19
Speaker 1: But I have never seen any direct damage to the
34:24
Speaker 1: spinal cord without significant bony damage. That would not be
34:28
Speaker 1: your expectation in somebody who was a young adult. Okay,
34:33
Speaker 1: so the theory that what about the theory that some
34:36
Speaker 1: other people have that earlier in the day she was
34:39
Speaker 1: injured and the injury didn't manifest until she just and
34:43
Speaker 1: that injury caused her to collapse at the party. You know,
34:46
Speaker 1: those things are possible, but to get exceedingly rare. Generally,
34:53
Speaker 1: when you have a traumatic injury, you're going to get
34:57
Speaker 1: some kind of symptoms, significant complaints, even if you go
35:02
Speaker 1: on to develop what is known as an unstable cervical spine,
35:05
Speaker 1: which is reason why you know we see him and
35:07
Speaker 1: instead of putting hard collars on patients, theoretically you injured
35:12
Speaker 1: your spinal the structures so that you have an unstable
35:16
Speaker 1: cervical spinal canal even though the spinal cord itself is
35:19
Speaker 1: not injured. In theory, that is, a person who without
35:23
Speaker 1: proper bracing can go on to develop worsening spinal cord injury.
35:28
Speaker 1: But it is not somebody who will have no complaints
35:31
Speaker 1: of pain, who will be up and walking around, who
35:34
Speaker 1: will be, you know, feeling well enough to go to
35:36
Speaker 1: a party and drink beer. In that circumstance, you can
35:39
Speaker 1: have a patient with you know, at landish and almost
35:42
Speaker 1: insufferable amounts of neck pain, very difficult to move around,
35:47
Speaker 1: great deal of pain literally to get up from a
35:50
Speaker 1: seated position, let alone to walk around. So it's not
35:53
Speaker 1: something that you would expect to be clinically subtle enough
35:57
Speaker 1: for a person to kind of go about is or
35:59
Speaker 1: her business for the next several hours and then will
36:01
Speaker 1: of a sudden sustain a life ending injury like this.
36:05
Speaker 1: That would be very, very unlikely. Is it possible for
36:09
Speaker 1: a you know, otherwise healthy teenager to fall of the
36:13
Speaker 1: step less than ten inches high in such a way
36:15
Speaker 1: that she would sustain this type of entury? Have you
36:18
Speaker 1: seen that? Well? What I will tell you is that
36:22
Speaker 1: you can yes a fool like that. Generally, although unusually,
36:28
Speaker 1: can cause somebody's death. It does not cause somebody's death
36:32
Speaker 1: through serviable spine injury. However, that would be exceedingly rare
36:36
Speaker 1: and almost unheard of without any significant bony aftermaldies. When
36:41
Speaker 1: I operate on, you know, a traumatically injured spinal cord,
36:45
Speaker 1: it is looking mess in there. Things are torn and
36:48
Speaker 1: bleeding and bones are broken, so it's not something that's subtle.
36:53
Speaker 1: What generally kills people when they fall is if they
36:57
Speaker 1: fall in a particular fashion, either kind of hitting the
37:00
Speaker 1: back of their head or the front of the head,
37:02
Speaker 1: they can go on to develop a significant contusive injury
37:05
Speaker 1: of the brain increased into cranial pressure, and that can
37:09
Speaker 1: potentially cause death. It generally doesn't happen suddenly. It can
37:14
Speaker 1: happen suddenly, but at least that would be consistent with
37:17
Speaker 1: kind of pathophysiologic processes of which I'm familiar. A person
37:22
Speaker 1: falling off a tan inge step, sustaining a hyperflection injury
37:26
Speaker 1: with essentially minimal or no bony injury, and then dying
37:30
Speaker 1: because of a cervical cord injury. It is, as I
37:34
Speaker 1: mentioned in my experience unheard of, at least in the
37:36
Speaker 1: clinical setting, right, And what about someone hitting her in
37:40
Speaker 1: the face, if that had happened, someone hitting her in
37:42
Speaker 1: the face of baseball bat and her dying from that, well,
37:46
Speaker 1: that's certainly possible. Again, if you hit somebody hard enough
37:51
Speaker 1: in the face and they lose consciousness and fall back
37:53
Speaker 1: and hit the back of their head, that also can
37:55
Speaker 1: be potentially lethal injury. But you know, you would expect
37:59
Speaker 1: a profound amount of contucive injury where the bat made
38:02
Speaker 1: contact with the scalp or skull or no eyescke. I
38:07
Speaker 1: do recall some mention of some kind of orbital echumoses
38:10
Speaker 1: on like the second or third uh what autopsy, And
38:14
Speaker 1: I don't recall specifically, But if you hit somebody court
38:17
Speaker 1: enough in the face to kill them, you're gonna without
38:21
Speaker 1: be too facetious, you're gonna leave a mark. The coroner,
38:26
Speaker 1: most of the witnesses of the party, Kathy who worked
38:29
Speaker 1: at the ambulance service, and investigator Bill Beach. None of
38:33
Speaker 1: these people said they saw obvious injuries on Janey the
38:35
Speaker 1: night she died. And no matter how we stretch the
38:38
Speaker 1: theories around Janie's death, it seems very unlikely that Jane
38:43
Speaker 1: could have died from a spinal injury. That means that
38:46
Speaker 1: any evidence that supports doctor Bannell's conclusion of homicide does
38:50
Speaker 1: not seem to exist. On June fifth, two thousand and nine,
38:55
Speaker 1: the Judge of the Third Division of the Sarcey County
38:58
Speaker 1: Court signed an order. It reads, the Special Prosecuting Attorney
39:03
Speaker 1: has found no probable cause for the filing of any
39:06
Speaker 1: criminal charges as a result of his investigation and the
39:09
Speaker 1: forensic reports, nor has he found it necessary to request
39:13
Speaker 1: the calling of a grand jury. It is further ordered
39:16
Speaker 1: that the Special Prosecutor, Tim Williamson is relieved from any
39:21
Speaker 1: further responsibility. I'm Katherine Townsend and this is Helen Gone.
39:30
Speaker 1: Helen Gone is a joint production between School of Humans
39:34
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio. It is written and recorded by me. Katherine Townsend.
39:39
Speaker 1: Taylor Church and Gabby Watts are our producers and story editors.
39:43
Speaker 1: Executive producers are Brandon Barr, Brian Lavin, and L. C.
39:47
Speaker 1: Crowley for School of Humans and Connell Byrne and Chuck
39:50
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