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Botched · Hell and Gone: Murder Line

0:08
Speaker 1: School of Humans. We've all seen episodes of CSI where
0:18
Speaker 1: murders get solved in an hour or less. But the
0:21
Speaker 1: truth is that in America today, if you put a
0:24
Speaker 1: gun to someone's head, you have about a fifty percent
0:27
Speaker 1: chance of getting away with murder. In many areas, the
0:32
Speaker 1: murder clearance rate is a lot worse. On September ninth,
0:38
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine, sixteen year old Janie Ward collapsed during
0:42
Speaker 1: a high school party at a cabin in the woods
0:44
Speaker 1: near Marshall, Arkansas. Some friends put her in the back
0:48
Speaker 1: of a pickup truck and drove her into town. They
0:51
Speaker 1: ended up at the Bank parking lot, where Janie was
0:54
Speaker 1: pronounced dead at eight forty five pm. It could have
0:58
Speaker 1: been an accident. That's the official story. But the closer
1:02
Speaker 1: I look at the case, the more questions I have.
1:05
Speaker 1: Did someone get away with murder? I'm Catherine Townsend, and
1:10
Speaker 1: this is helen gone. In many cities in America, experts
1:48
Speaker 1: say that a lot of people are afraid to speak
1:51
Speaker 1: out about what they witnessed, and fear of retaliation. Doesn't
1:55
Speaker 1: just happen in big cities with gang problems. It happens
1:58
Speaker 1: in small towns too. Small towns also struggle with death investigations.
2:04
Speaker 1: A lot of police forces lack the experience and the
2:06
Speaker 1: budget to deal with complex murder cases. As a result,
2:10
Speaker 1: mistakes are made and valuable evidence can be lost forever.
2:15
Speaker 1: In many counties, the person who examined you after death
2:19
Speaker 1: is not a medical examiner, but the coroner, who often
2:22
Speaker 1: has no medical training. In Arkansas, you just have to
2:26
Speaker 1: be eighteen years old and not a felon to be coroner.
2:30
Speaker 1: In Janney's case, Tom Martin was coroner of Cercy County.
2:35
Speaker 1: He's the one who pronounced Janeye dead at the bank
2:37
Speaker 1: parking lot. The medical examiner who performed the autopsy was
2:41
Speaker 1: doctor Fawmy Mallick. He was the chief medical examiner for
2:44
Speaker 1: the whole state of Arkansas and located in Little Rock.
2:48
Speaker 1: Some coroners are working to get additional training and to
2:51
Speaker 1: change the system from within to explain what happens when
2:54
Speaker 1: someone dies under mysterious circumstances. Here's an Arkansas corner. My
3:00
Speaker 1: name is Joseph. Joseph Blake is the coroner in Stone County.
3:04
Speaker 1: He's twenty two, making him the youngest coroner ever elected
3:08
Speaker 1: in Arkansas. He's very open about the fact that many
3:11
Speaker 1: corners have no medical expertise and stresses the importance of
3:15
Speaker 1: additional training. He says that his job starts with a
3:18
Speaker 1: call from the sheriff. It all starts normally from the
3:21
Speaker 1: Sarf's office. They call me. Let's say it's just a
3:24
Speaker 1: regular home unattended death, which that means that nobody was
3:27
Speaker 1: present of thee walked in the house and pounce on
3:30
Speaker 1: man on the floor. So the Sheriff's office is gonna
3:32
Speaker 1: call me, and then I'm gonna check in the radio
3:36
Speaker 1: and be in that out. Normally, by the time I
3:39
Speaker 1: get there, there's normally an officer that's already made it there,
3:42
Speaker 1: or CID guy that's made it there, or both, and
3:46
Speaker 1: they're they're they've kind of done there an investigation part.
3:51
Speaker 1: I'm normally the last person call for anything nine times
3:55
Speaker 1: out of ten. That's that's how it's gonna be the
3:58
Speaker 1: cause they like to do their investigation first. When talking
4:02
Speaker 1: to Joseph, I get a sense that the relationship between
4:05
Speaker 1: the Coigner's office and police departments hasn't always been the best,
4:10
Speaker 1: and while he's been the Stone County corner, repairing that
4:12
Speaker 1: relationship has been one of his top priorities. This is
4:15
Speaker 1: getting a lot better since I've took office. But there's
4:18
Speaker 1: not been a good relationship between corners and police officers.
4:21
Speaker 1: There's not really. If you was a corner, you thought
4:24
Speaker 1: police officers were done. If you was a police officer,
4:27
Speaker 1: you thro all the corner. So it was kind of
4:29
Speaker 1: that hand. But now it's gotten a lot better with
4:33
Speaker 1: me after developed a good relationship with their guys here
4:35
Speaker 1: just don't county, and so they're normally there. They take pictures,
4:40
Speaker 1: get a lot of information, and I get there. My
4:43
Speaker 1: job is I'm kind of the missing pieces kind of guy.
4:48
Speaker 1: I look and make sure that anything that they didn't miss,
4:52
Speaker 1: I get pretty much the same information they get. Who
4:55
Speaker 1: found them, down their normal bedtime schedule, just kind of
4:59
Speaker 1: gathering information to my corner report. And then I pronounced
5:04
Speaker 1: them is legally dead at that point, and then we
5:09
Speaker 1: asked the family from there if if everything lo file
5:13
Speaker 1: place affected. When I asked the family, you know which
5:17
Speaker 1: funeral home they want to choose, and it goes from
5:19
Speaker 1: the natural. That's very easy, and it don't sound like
5:26
Speaker 1: a lot. Every death, every death I'm you moved to
5:30
Speaker 1: the nursing home. Every death is like that. As a
5:35
Speaker 1: homicide until proven otherwise. Every death is looked at as
5:39
Speaker 1: a homicide until proven otherwise. But in Jennie's case, Ron
5:44
Speaker 1: said that coroner Tom Martin didn't even bring up an
5:47
Speaker 1: autopsy until Ron insisted. Tom instead just asked which funeral
5:52
Speaker 1: home the family wanted to use. This is odd given
5:56
Speaker 1: that the paramedics had already said it was a suspicious death.
6:04
Speaker 1: Janie's funeral on September fifteenth. After Janie's death, Ron starts
6:10
Speaker 1: recording and taking notes everywhere he goes. The funeral was
6:15
Speaker 1: no exception. What have you have? A word of Mars
6:20
Speaker 1: that's Saturday came the math at age sixteen. He wrote
6:26
Speaker 1: down that five hundred people attended the funeral and said
6:30
Speaker 1: that a lot of them looked into the open casket
6:32
Speaker 1: and sought injuries on Janie's face and body. We read
6:45
Speaker 1: in one of his notebooks more trauma showed up on
6:49
Speaker 1: her body, things that were not noticed the night of
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Speaker 1: her death. What showed up on Jannie's wrists were what
6:55
Speaker 1: appears to be restraining marks and bruises on the back
6:58
Speaker 1: of her hands, and a splinter about a quarter of
7:02
Speaker 1: an inch long under her right thumbnail. Ron had photos
7:06
Speaker 1: taken of Jennie at the funeral to document what he saw.
7:10
Speaker 1: When we talked to Janie's sister Crystal and her mom,
7:13
Speaker 1: Mona Cristal also remembered additional injuries on Jennie. One thing
7:17
Speaker 1: I'll never forget and I was eleven when I saw
7:21
Speaker 1: Jannie there the first time in the coffin, and I
7:24
Speaker 1: pointed this out to Dad. Jenny had claw marks in
7:27
Speaker 1: her face. She had nicks different places that were claw marks.
7:33
Speaker 1: You don't get that from falling off of port roofs
7:35
Speaker 1: all the way down. She had bruises down it was
7:37
Speaker 1: fingernails where Nag had clawd her scratched her face and
7:41
Speaker 1: that's cat fine. Oh. Yes. She had a splinter under
7:44
Speaker 1: her thumb half an inch long. Also. That was never
7:49
Speaker 1: spoken of or addressed in the autopsy, but we saw
7:55
Speaker 1: it in the cast at a funeral. I saw it,
7:58
Speaker 1: Ronnie saw it. We all commented on it. Why was
8:01
Speaker 1: that not in the autopsy. The state's chief medical Examiner,
8:08
Speaker 1: doctor Fawmy Malick, performed Janey's autopsy at the State Crime
8:12
Speaker 1: Lab in Little Rock on September eleventh, two days after
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Speaker 1: she died. The cause of death was listed as an
8:18
Speaker 1: upper spinal cord and neck injury from landing on the
8:21
Speaker 1: back of the head. The manner of death is listed
8:24
Speaker 1: as undetermined. The autopsy mentions a single small bruise bluish red,
8:30
Speaker 1: circular in shape with a cleared center on Jane's lower back,
8:34
Speaker 1: but says nothing about the injuries Ron says that he
8:37
Speaker 1: and others saw at the funeral. Doctor Malick wrote, the
8:42
Speaker 1: neck is loose, but no apparent external injury is present.
8:47
Speaker 1: To Jane's parents, this doesn't make sense. How could someone
8:51
Speaker 1: have such a catastrophic injury falling off a portstep that
8:55
Speaker 1: was less than ten inches high. Also, Jane's body was
8:59
Speaker 1: clean when it arrived in Little Rock. There was no
9:02
Speaker 1: mention of the dirt or debris or any ante sort
9:05
Speaker 1: of why her body could have been wet. Today is
9:10
Speaker 1: Friday's twenty seventh, nineteen eighty nine. This tape is Ron
9:15
Speaker 1: Ward at the Arkansas State Crime Lab in Little Rock
9:18
Speaker 1: with his friend Robert on Friday, November twenty seventh, nineteen
9:22
Speaker 1: eighty nine. Ron had requested the autopsy report after several
9:27
Speaker 1: months of waiting. He said all he received was the
9:30
Speaker 1: first few pages determine. Ron heads to Little Rock to
9:35
Speaker 1: get the report himself, get help us, get a coffee
9:40
Speaker 1: of the roapopture. Well, how are you kneing an autopsy
9:45
Speaker 1: report on? He isn't one who needs it. It's w daughter,
9:47
Speaker 1: my daughter, okay, And what's your NA award? I'm sorry,
9:54
Speaker 1: Ronald Ward Ron. And what's your daughter's fame? Her name
9:58
Speaker 1: was Olivia Jane. It was listed I think probably as
10:02
Speaker 1: your records as in Janie. When Ron shows up at
10:05
Speaker 1: the office, he's told by the receptionist that doctor Malik
10:08
Speaker 1: is in the middle of an autopsy elsewhere in the building.
10:11
Speaker 1: She motions for him to sit and wait for doctor
10:14
Speaker 1: Malick to get back so he can authorize the release
10:17
Speaker 1: of the autopsy report. Ron sits in the tight waiting room.
10:21
Speaker 1: Then the phone rings, move on and like, okay, I'll go.
10:32
Speaker 1: I don't know if you ever talk pay or what?
10:34
Speaker 1: Let me kick Yes, come. Doctor Malik invites Ron back
10:42
Speaker 1: to his office to explain the autopsy results. I will
10:45
Speaker 1: pretend you all to them, to do a lot of
10:51
Speaker 1: things for you. Ambo I have for the body. If
10:56
Speaker 1: you're left to see if I see it shortly, you don't,
10:59
Speaker 1: don't you will see it? Sure? Yeah? Doctor Malick shows
11:05
Speaker 1: Ron and photographs and an X ray of Jennie's spine.
11:08
Speaker 1: Let's part the junction between the skull and the bone
11:14
Speaker 1: then become loose, and the believing was here when she landed.
11:20
Speaker 1: The cause of death is an upper spinal cord and
11:22
Speaker 1: neck injury. High put extension studn HYGHT extension can snap
11:29
Speaker 1: her neck like that. Doctor Mallick clarifies it's a hyper
11:33
Speaker 1: extension injury. He says that the next snap back and
11:37
Speaker 1: then snap forward with enough force to cause hemorrhaging in
11:40
Speaker 1: the upper neck. He says it's severe whiplash and compares
11:44
Speaker 1: the injury to one you'd get if you were rear
11:46
Speaker 1: ended in a car. When she lived, what would happen?
11:50
Speaker 1: Not lucky if she lived? A record with me? Why
11:56
Speaker 1: does undertaining Let me explain this to you, because I
12:00
Speaker 1: wanted the head for the first hand. Before that, Doctor
12:03
Speaker 1: Malick explains why he left. The result is undetermined? Is
12:07
Speaker 1: this uh game? As a game? Feeling her own nobody
12:16
Speaker 1: touch it could be an extent or that. But if
12:21
Speaker 1: somebody just push the ther it can't to change the story.
12:31
Speaker 1: Uh As maybe homicide and homicide different. It's a bit
12:35
Speaker 1: hard to make out, but here doctor Malick is explaining
12:38
Speaker 1: that if someone intended to harm Jenney, that's homicide, but
12:41
Speaker 1: there could also be negligence intend to harm her, maybe neighbors,
12:45
Speaker 1: and you see what I mean. So he had the
12:49
Speaker 1: difference between accident and homicide just a little thin line.
12:56
Speaker 1: The difference between accident and homicide is a thin line.
13:00
Speaker 1: And because I don't know, I can't U yes, so
13:07
Speaker 1: I can't throw it either way. The bottom line is
13:13
Speaker 1: he can't rule it either way. He also couldn't tell
13:16
Speaker 1: Ron about the missing white pinstriped shirt or why Janie's
13:20
Speaker 1: body was wet and covered with sand and dirt. This
13:22
Speaker 1: mighty pedipus to show you in order to listen to Roma.
13:27
Speaker 1: Here he's saying he doesn't notice any bruising that would
13:30
Speaker 1: indicate that someone attacked Jennie. Nobody again seeing and submediate
13:38
Speaker 1: the girl landers and had that and snap their neck.
13:43
Speaker 1: There are some stretches in the back, as he noted,
13:46
Speaker 1: but otherwise no, no, nobody a doctor. Melick seems very
13:53
Speaker 1: polite in the tape. He's sympathetic to Ron when Ron
13:57
Speaker 1: says he hasn't been getting information from the police. But
14:01
Speaker 1: see they haven't told him anything, and he'll ask, I
14:06
Speaker 1: mean tell him that he can't, and they say you
14:09
Speaker 1: don't need to know that. Well, for me is a
14:12
Speaker 1: sorry way, you know, and a way he is a
14:14
Speaker 1: father he should he has. Uh, That's why we came
14:17
Speaker 1: down here literally, Miss Silver. Let me tell your sense
14:20
Speaker 1: against school, the law, the way hit just anything is
14:26
Speaker 1: there's some cruel people do as they tell you. The
14:30
Speaker 1: uthopic is up confidential, but I'm my father, I don't.
14:34
Speaker 1: That's why I do it her if this happened to
14:37
Speaker 1: why I would left to know you see what that
14:39
Speaker 1: you I do know some people just stick to the
14:42
Speaker 1: law and tell the law. But we should be human
14:44
Speaker 1: as the child. You know. I know that at that
14:49
Speaker 1: funeral home. I know when you saw her she looked
14:53
Speaker 1: this way. When I saw her, they had different short arms.
14:57
Speaker 1: Ron asked if you could take one of the Autosi photos.
15:00
Speaker 1: May may I have this? Doctor Mallick hesitated, but said
15:04
Speaker 1: yes you w Later Ron wrote in his notebook that
15:11
Speaker 1: what he walked out of the crime lab wod that
15:13
Speaker 1: day would become very significant toward helping piece together the
15:17
Speaker 1: events of nine nine eighty nine in the death of
15:19
Speaker 1: his daughter, sixteen year old Olivia Jane Ward. We'll be
15:24
Speaker 1: right back. I'm pouring over autopsy reports trying to find
15:37
Speaker 1: similar cases that could explain what happened to Janey. The
15:41
Speaker 1: photo doctor Mallet gave to Ron shows a dissection of
15:44
Speaker 1: Janey's spinal column. The column is made up of thirty
15:48
Speaker 1: three vertebra protecting the spinal cord around the neck. There's
15:52
Speaker 1: less space between the bone and the nerves, making it
15:55
Speaker 1: much more vulnerable. An arrow points to the injury. Doctor
16:00
Speaker 1: Malick examined Janie's stomach. He wrote, the stomach contains ten
16:05
Speaker 1: hoursnces of digested food matter, in which tomato particles are encountered.
16:09
Speaker 1: No oranges are noted. He mentioned oranges because that's the
16:14
Speaker 1: fruit that the party host, Jay had soaked in rubbing
16:17
Speaker 1: alcohol for the PGA punch. People at the party saw
16:21
Speaker 1: Jane chewing on orange slices, but the contents of the
16:24
Speaker 1: stomach were not tested, So if Malach only made a
16:27
Speaker 1: visual inspection, it hits me that orange slices soaked in
16:31
Speaker 1: red punch would look exactly like tomatoes. He noted that
16:35
Speaker 1: it didn't appear that she had any other medical condition
16:38
Speaker 1: that would have caused her to drop dead suddenly. Janey's
16:42
Speaker 1: blood alcohol level was point zero five, or the equivalent
16:46
Speaker 1: of around one shot or glass of beer. No trace
16:50
Speaker 1: of drugs was found in her system, which means that
16:53
Speaker 1: at least some of the rumors can be put to rest.
16:57
Speaker 1: The evidence points to the fact that it wasn't an
16:59
Speaker 1: overdose of drugs or drinking that killed Jane. According to
17:04
Speaker 1: the rology report, Janney was not pregnant and no blood
17:08
Speaker 1: or seamen were found. But there are still so many
17:11
Speaker 1: things that are unexplained, like why didn't the crime lab
17:16
Speaker 1: test the residue on Jane's body, which Ron insisted was
17:19
Speaker 1: from the creek bed. Also, one of the paramedics on
17:23
Speaker 1: the scene put a bag around Jannie's hands. This is
17:26
Speaker 1: normally done so the material underneath the fingernails can be
17:30
Speaker 1: tested later for DNA, but in Janney's case, this was
17:33
Speaker 1: never done. This seems to be a huge oversight because
17:38
Speaker 1: fingernails can give all kinds of clues. They can point
17:41
Speaker 1: to the cause in a natural death case, and they
17:44
Speaker 1: can also show if there is DNA from a fight.
17:49
Speaker 1: A few weeks after visiting doctor Malick at the crime lab,
17:53
Speaker 1: Ron received a copy of his daughter's X rays in
17:55
Speaker 1: the mail, but Ron insisted that the x rays were
17:59
Speaker 1: not the same ones he saw at the crime lab.
18:02
Speaker 1: The X rays looked like they had been tampered with.
18:05
Speaker 1: When we met with journalists Mike Masterson and Janie's mom, Mona,
18:09
Speaker 1: this was obviously something that still baffles them. The side
18:13
Speaker 1: X ray, the one where they blanked it out all
18:15
Speaker 1: the way up her neck, which was not the one
18:18
Speaker 1: they showed you when you went to the crime lab,
18:19
Speaker 1: which she didn't even have the official stamp of the
18:21
Speaker 1: crime lab lie in it, so obvious they were tampered with.
18:26
Speaker 1: You know, the very area that was supposed to be
18:29
Speaker 1: X ray was white it out. You know what when
18:33
Speaker 1: you first saw it, because Ronnie dead, he made the statement,
18:36
Speaker 1: that's why killed her? Right there it was separated. So
18:38
Speaker 1: what was the purpose of an X ray if it's
18:41
Speaker 1: all white it out? The lateral X ray shows the
18:43
Speaker 1: side of Jannie's skull, but her entire neck is covered
18:46
Speaker 1: by a hazy semicircle basically a white blob in the
18:50
Speaker 1: bottom part of the X ray film. The crime lab
18:53
Speaker 1: seal is also not on this view of the X ray.
18:56
Speaker 1: When we asked Mona about doctor Malick, she made her
18:59
Speaker 1: feelings clear and he wasn't very smart. You know he
19:03
Speaker 1: wasn't smart at all. He was so confident he didn't
19:06
Speaker 1: know what he was doing. It was obvious. It was
19:10
Speaker 1: so obvious he did not know what he was doing.
19:12
Speaker 1: I just wanted to note in case you didn't know this,
19:15
Speaker 1: Fammy Malick, he not only watched my sister's case, but
19:19
Speaker 1: many many while he was in the Bill Clinton administration
19:24
Speaker 1: while he was the governor of the state of Arkansas.
19:27
Speaker 1: Fammi Malick's controversial career in the many botched autopsies during
19:32
Speaker 1: the years he ran the Arkansas State Crime Lab or
19:34
Speaker 1: the stuff of nightmares. By the time doctor Malick performed
19:39
Speaker 1: the autopsy on Janey, he'd been working in the crime
19:42
Speaker 1: lab for about ten years. At that point, he had
19:45
Speaker 1: performed thousands of autopsies. Ron collected articles about doctor Malick.
19:52
Speaker 1: One headline from a yellowed article written in nineteen ninety
19:55
Speaker 1: accused doctor Malick of lying on the stand, tampering with evidence,
19:59
Speaker 1: and manufacturing convictions, and the words wouldn't be the first
20:03
Speaker 1: family appalled by doctor Malix's autops the results. Families joined
20:07
Speaker 1: together and formed a group called Victims of Malix's Infuriating Testimony.
20:12
Speaker 1: The acronym for that group is vomit. The author of
20:16
Speaker 1: that article from nineteen ninety was Rod Lorenzen. I asked
20:20
Speaker 1: him what made Malix so problematic. He had no oversight
20:24
Speaker 1: from state government. His decisions affected things like insurance payouts,
20:30
Speaker 1: you know, on life insurance policies. He was in a
20:34
Speaker 1: position to do favors for politicians if they needed something
20:40
Speaker 1: done in their district, for example, if they needed a
20:43
Speaker 1: decision on an autopsy to go a different way. My
20:47
Speaker 1: impression was that that would get done, and so he
20:51
Speaker 1: just had a lot of power and freedom in how
20:55
Speaker 1: he decided cases. You know. That was the one thing.
20:58
Speaker 1: This wasn't anybody watching the guy, I don't think. My
21:02
Speaker 1: impression was that he was not very good at his job,
21:05
Speaker 1: to story, and yet he was there for several years,
21:09
Speaker 1: mainly just because there was no ower sight of that position.
21:13
Speaker 1: In his article, Rod refers to Malik as a tool
21:16
Speaker 1: of the state and points out that in Arkansas at
21:19
Speaker 1: the time, the medical examiner held the sole power to
21:23
Speaker 1: determine the cause of death. This differs from other states,
21:27
Speaker 1: where county coroners also have some input in decisions and
21:29
Speaker 1: provide evidence of foul play suspected, but in Arkansas, in
21:34
Speaker 1: the late eighties, Malik ran the crime lab. No one
21:39
Speaker 1: really knew what happened with the evidence Corners gathered and
21:41
Speaker 1: sent to the crime lab and if it was ever
21:44
Speaker 1: used in making decisions. Rod told me that while he
21:48
Speaker 1: was writing about the crime lab, he reached out to
21:51
Speaker 1: doctor Malick multiple times, but that doctor Malik always denied
21:54
Speaker 1: requests to speak to media. Then, after Rod wrote his
21:58
Speaker 1: pieces about Malik, Malik's attorney threatened to sue him. Rod said,
22:03
Speaker 1: when he was writing about the crime lab, he got
22:05
Speaker 1: creeped out. Malik's employees were kept on a tight leash
22:10
Speaker 1: and afraid of speaking out against him. When I was
22:13
Speaker 1: an interview on one of one of the guys that
22:15
Speaker 1: worked for Malik, they just called themselves Meathollers. This guy
22:20
Speaker 1: told me that in some cases Malik would come into
22:24
Speaker 1: the lab and he would know something about, say a
22:28
Speaker 1: victim that had come into the lab. And this guy
22:32
Speaker 1: told me that Malick would already have his mind made
22:35
Speaker 1: up about what the cause of death was gonna be.
22:39
Speaker 1: Malix's controversial rulings include the June twenty eighth, nineteen eighty
22:43
Speaker 1: five death of Raymond p. Albright, a fifty year old
22:46
Speaker 1: man from Mountain home, who was found in his yard
22:48
Speaker 1: dead of gunshot wounds. Malik ruled the death of suicide,
22:53
Speaker 1: even though Albright had been shot five times in the chest.
22:58
Speaker 1: One finding the infamous Boys on the Tracks case in
23:01
Speaker 1: Saline County was particularly controversial. On October twenty third, nineteen
23:07
Speaker 1: eighty seven, seventeen year old Kevin Ives and sixteen year
23:11
Speaker 1: old Don Henry were run over by a train near
23:14
Speaker 1: the town of Alexander. Doctor Malick ruled that the boys,
23:18
Speaker 1: who were best friends, had been smoking pot and just
23:21
Speaker 1: happened to fall asleep on the tracks, but a second
23:24
Speaker 1: autopsy indicated that Henry had been stabbed in the back,
23:27
Speaker 1: that Ives had been struck on the skull, and that
23:30
Speaker 1: both boys probably had been placed on the tracks unconscious,
23:34
Speaker 1: maybe already dead. The case would later be linked to
23:38
Speaker 1: high level cocaine dealing through an airport in Mina, Arkansas,
23:41
Speaker 1: involving state officials at the highest level. Two years after
23:47
Speaker 1: Janey died in nineteen ninety one, Malik quit among a
23:52
Speaker 1: flurry of allegations that he botched autopsies, and after losing
23:56
Speaker 1: the support of then Governor Bill Clinton. He applied for
24:00
Speaker 1: a position in Guam, but his employment was put on
24:03
Speaker 1: hold after officials there found out about all the contents.
24:07
Speaker 1: Malick eventually ended up in Clearwater, Florida. He died in
24:11
Speaker 1: August twenty eighteen at the age of eighty five. When
24:20
Speaker 1: you ask people in Arkansas about doctor Malick, he's considered
24:24
Speaker 1: a pariah in a statewide embarrassment. But when we talked
24:27
Speaker 1: with journalist Mike Masterson, he had another perspective on doctor Malick.
24:32
Speaker 1: He said he was someone that he once considered a friend. Oh,
24:35
Speaker 1: I was going to ask you about I know, you
24:37
Speaker 1: told me a little bit about your relationship with Fommy
24:39
Speaker 1: and how he was good at his job. But then
24:41
Speaker 1: something happened. Yeah, But when he came to Arkansas, he
24:44
Speaker 1: replaced a medical examiner named Stephen marx Well. Stephen had
24:49
Speaker 1: been canned and I think ended up down in Texas.
24:53
Speaker 1: FAMMI started, we became friends. I met him. Pommy started
24:57
Speaker 1: telling me about things that he thought, as a journalist
25:01
Speaker 1: I should know about involving the medical examiner's office. Well,
25:06
Speaker 1: the first one was a girl who had died in
25:09
Speaker 1: the Lake Hot Springs. It had been ruled that she drowned.
25:14
Speaker 1: He suspected that wasn't true. So I wrote a column
25:17
Speaker 1: I'm not called. Back then, I was writing stories. This
25:20
Speaker 1: case Mike is describing would end up with the body
25:22
Speaker 1: being exhumed and the cause of death change from drowning
25:26
Speaker 1: to being shot through the head. And that was just
25:28
Speaker 1: the first case that Mike wrote about. Anyway, cases like that,
25:32
Speaker 1: there were several, and after they dug up six bodies,
25:37
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton said, Okay, we're not going to dig up
25:39
Speaker 1: the entire state of Arkansas. Now. I say this only
25:43
Speaker 1: because Fomi Malek was at that point struck me very
25:49
Speaker 1: much as someone interested in truth and a clean medical
25:53
Speaker 1: examiner's office. So another reporter and I after that dug
25:58
Speaker 1: into the medical examiner's office and found all kinds of
26:03
Speaker 1: stuff wrong with it. Under Stephen Marx Malick seemed to
26:06
Speaker 1: be although later in his career he had some pretty
26:11
Speaker 1: dark periods until he finally left. During that period, he
26:15
Speaker 1: seemed to be trying to help that family, and I
26:17
Speaker 1: think he felt for him. He's a father himself. He
26:21
Speaker 1: was a smart man. He was from Egypt, but he
26:23
Speaker 1: could see the truth this case thinks that I haven't.
26:27
Speaker 1: Whatever his motives were, Mike said that doctor Malick inherited
26:31
Speaker 1: an already corrupt crime lab, so it's no wonder that
26:35
Speaker 1: the Wards would be suspicious of any result. In their eyes,
26:39
Speaker 1: Janey's autopsy could be another one that was botched or
26:42
Speaker 1: intentionally mishandled to help a political ally. In the years
26:48
Speaker 1: that he covered doctor Malick, Rod ended up writing a
26:51
Speaker 1: few stories about Janey. I met mister Ward, I guess
26:56
Speaker 1: probably twenty years ago at a restaurant, and he's kind
27:01
Speaker 1: of showed me a fellow that he had kept on
27:04
Speaker 1: his daughter, and he showed me the autopsy photos. And
27:11
Speaker 1: it was just very difficult to believe that this girl
27:14
Speaker 1: died by falling backwards off a porch ten or twelve
27:18
Speaker 1: inches high. I mean, it seemed ridiculous. I remember, really,
27:24
Speaker 1: you know, talking with mister Ward, it was he was
27:26
Speaker 1: just taunted by the whole thing. I mean, he was
27:30
Speaker 1: you could just see in his eyes that he was
27:32
Speaker 1: a tortured individual, and he it Goshi. He made an
27:38
Speaker 1: incredible effort to try to, you know, see if he
27:42
Speaker 1: could he could get it the truth of how his
27:45
Speaker 1: daughter died. Before Ron Ward visited the crime lab, he
27:51
Speaker 1: knew about doctor Malick's reputation, and when he received the
27:55
Speaker 1: X rays, the family grew even more suspicious. So we
28:00
Speaker 1: have a medical examiner who some people think is complicit
28:03
Speaker 1: in covering up cases for powerful people and Arkansas, and
28:07
Speaker 1: we have a crime lab that already has a long
28:09
Speaker 1: history of corruption. So here's where Ron made this leap.
28:14
Speaker 1: Would doctor Mallick be complicit in a cover up of
28:16
Speaker 1: a murder that impacted some of Marshall's elite, like the
28:20
Speaker 1: parents of the kids at the party, especially the children
28:23
Speaker 1: of the town's doctor, and a judge who delivered Sirce
28:27
Speaker 1: County to Bill Clinton. To an outsider, this could all
28:31
Speaker 1: sound a little paranoid, But as a great Pi once
28:35
Speaker 1: said to me, paranoid people aren't always wrong, especially in Arkansas.
28:42
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Jane's case is officially closed on
28:55
Speaker 1: February fourteenth, nineteen ninety, just five months after she died.
29:01
Speaker 1: The prosecuting attorney, H. G. Foster sends a letter to
29:04
Speaker 1: the Wards to say that the investigation found no evidence
29:08
Speaker 1: of foul play in Jane's death. On November fifth, nineteen ninety,
29:13
Speaker 1: the Ward family files affidavits calling for the arrest of
29:17
Speaker 1: the prosecutor's assigned to the case, the coroner, the deputy sheriff,
29:20
Speaker 1: and doctor Mallick the reason conspiracy, perverting and obstructing justice,
29:27
Speaker 1: and helping cover up the facts in Olivia janey Ward's death.
29:31
Speaker 1: They also submitted a petition with twelve hundred signatures calling
29:35
Speaker 1: for a grand jury and an appointment of a special
29:38
Speaker 1: prosecutor to look into the case. Their request is denied.
29:42
Speaker 1: The judge writes to Ron, in my opinion, there is
29:45
Speaker 1: nothing in the evidence reviewed by me that indicates that
29:48
Speaker 1: anyone deliberately murdered her daughter. Two years later, Malick was
29:56
Speaker 1: gone from the Arkansas State Crime Lab. Arkansas brought in
30:01
Speaker 1: two independent medical examiners to review a dozen of Malick's
30:04
Speaker 1: controversial autopsies, one of which was Jennie's and Janey's was
30:10
Speaker 1: the only case reviewed where they ended up changing the
30:12
Speaker 1: cause of death on the desert teet. Of all the
30:14
Speaker 1: cases we looked at, I think I'm not sure what that.
30:21
Speaker 1: Ron and Mona spoke with the two pathologists when they
30:23
Speaker 1: were in Arkansas, Like he always did, Ron recorded the conversation,
30:28
Speaker 1: and over the years this tape sound quality has seriously degreed. Well,
30:32
Speaker 1: am I asking to turn what happened? We ask what
30:35
Speaker 1: didn't happen? We know he did not offer biopaper in
30:39
Speaker 1: course of the pont aug andrew a lot. We know this,
30:44
Speaker 1: so we don't have to content with a dull let's
30:46
Speaker 1: feel about Okay, we did tell us that what didn't
30:50
Speaker 1: happen because we've I didn't know this, so so we
30:53
Speaker 1: can go from there. So we want a grand jury.
30:57
Speaker 1: We have to know. The Holling me is just all.
31:03
Speaker 1: The main thing the family takes away from this meeting
31:06
Speaker 1: is that, by looking at the autopsy report, the pathologists
31:10
Speaker 1: can't say definitively what killed Jane. They say that some
31:14
Speaker 1: of the circumstantial evidence is concerning, like the fact that
31:18
Speaker 1: she was wet and the sand on her clothes. They
31:21
Speaker 1: suggest that another investigation could yield more answers. The most
31:26
Speaker 1: surprising thing these pathologists say is that they are not
31:30
Speaker 1: convinced that Jane even died of a spinal injury. Presented
31:34
Speaker 1: to me, all the evidence that I have, all the
31:35
Speaker 1: autopsis time, the photographs that I've got do not indicate
31:40
Speaker 1: the lead that a child dies and techondry, I can't
31:43
Speaker 1: tell you that. So you asked me to tell you
31:44
Speaker 1: what didn't happen. In the way it looks right now
31:47
Speaker 1: that didn't happen okay. Suspicion is that they suggest a
31:53
Speaker 1: sudden cardiac event could have been the cause, and they
31:57
Speaker 1: say they can't rule out drowning. Drowning is often a
32:00
Speaker 1: diagnosis of exclusion. It's not considered a cause of death
32:04
Speaker 1: until everything else is ruled out. But Mona and Ron
32:07
Speaker 1: are adamant about the X rays. They want to know
32:10
Speaker 1: what the pathologists have to say about the lateral view
32:13
Speaker 1: of the X ray where Janie's spine looks like it's
32:15
Speaker 1: been whited out. First, the pathologists emphasize that they are
32:20
Speaker 1: not radiologists, so they are cautious about their opinions on
32:23
Speaker 1: the X ray. They also say that the X ray
32:26
Speaker 1: images and the photos they received of Janey were photocopies
32:30
Speaker 1: and very unclear. But they don't find the white blob
32:35
Speaker 1: in the foreground of the side view of the X
32:37
Speaker 1: ray suspicious white obstruction there. They suggest the blob could
32:45
Speaker 1: just be your shoulder and explain that it's difficult to
32:47
Speaker 1: situate a body on an X ray table. Also, they're
32:51
Speaker 1: not suspicious that there isn't a crime lab seal on
32:54
Speaker 1: the X ray. But then one of the pathologists says, this,
32:59
Speaker 1: I have a certain suspicion, and a greated the lateral
33:02
Speaker 1: film that you should be the color true daughter. He says,
33:11
Speaker 1: I have a certain suspicion the lateral isn't your daughter.
33:14
Speaker 1: In fact, I think it might be a male. So
33:18
Speaker 1: did the crime lab even give the Wards the correct
33:21
Speaker 1: X ray? The pathologists changed Janey's death certificate. Cause of
33:30
Speaker 1: death is no longer listed as a neck and spinal injury. Instead,
33:35
Speaker 1: just like the manner of death, it's undetermined. But the
33:39
Speaker 1: Wards couldn't convince officials to do a second autopsy, at
33:43
Speaker 1: least not yet. In two thousand and four, an independent
33:48
Speaker 1: medical examiner based in San Diego agreed to review Janie's death.
33:54
Speaker 1: He would come to a completely different conclusion. He said
33:57
Speaker 1: that Janey was murdered. I'm Catherine Townsend and this is
34:02
Speaker 1: Helen Gone. Helen Gone is a joint production between School
34:13
Speaker 1: of Humans and iHeartRadio. It is written and recorded by me.
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Speaker 1: and story editors. Executive producers are Brandon Barr, Brian Lavin,
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