Bloody Hell!: A Forensic Pathologist’s Notebook of Sundry Conversations

By A. Jay Chapman, MD

About the Book

Discover the long and fascinating history of forensic pathology in this interactive reading experience! Directed especially toward people having interest in forensic aspects of murder/crime dramas and the utility of the various forensic findings touted in these presentations, Bloody Hell!: A Forensic Pathologist’s Notebook of Sundry Conversations delves deeply into a number of interesting cases investigated by the author in North Carolina, Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and California, as well as Nepal, England, and Thailand ranging from homicide and murder to suicide and everything in between.

With over half a century of experience in the field of forensic pathology, author A. Jay Chapman, MD—perhaps more famously (or infamously) known as “the Father of Lethal Injection,” much to his chagrin! —details forensic pathology for lay people, paying special attention to the medical examiner and justice.

A semi-autobiographical account of the author’s working, living, and travel experiences in several countries and his growing up in the US of the past century (which is markedly different from the US of today), A Forensic Pathologist’s Notebook will transport you to different times and different places as seamlessly as your favorite TV crime drama or novel. Just remember as you explore, sometimes fact is stranger than fiction!

About the Author

A. Jay Chapman, MD, is a forensic pathologist with more than five and a half decades of experience. His hobbies are photography, cooking, reading, classical music, and travel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: Nov 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9798888128794

Book preview

Acknowledgments

I want to express particular appreciation to my friend Yvonne Rufford, who graciously read this entire manuscript several times and offered invaluable suggestions and corrections. Yvonne is as sharp as a tack at 102, is a real grammarian, and has many captivating tales of her own life to tell. She remembers things much better than I and has marvelous immediate comebacks in conversations.

Equally valued is the fortitude of my friend Dickie Bauer, who also read the manuscript and offered very constructive criticisms and encouragement. Dickie came into my life via Ingrid Haylock and has been a friend for quite a few years.

My abiding gratitude goes to Dr. Charles Davis, Kym Ater, and Barbara Blechschmidt, who have read portions of the manuscript and have also made extremely useful suggestions. Charles is a friend, much like a brother, from college and medical school days and kindly provided pointed critique and the subtitle for this work. Kym is a friend I have known for nigh onto 40 years and the daughter of one of my best friends, the late Ingrid Haylock. Barbara and I met over dead bodies at the morgue in the 1990s and have been best friends since.

I am also grateful to Dr. Binod Shrestha, formerly a student in my forensic medicine class in Kathmandu and now a physician and friend in the US, for supplying pseudonyms for one of the chapters.

Many thanks to Pat (P.J.) Wilkerson, a former medical investigator for the Office of Oklahoma Chief Medical Examiner, for providing accounts of scene investigation incidents. He contributed much to the camaraderie and integrity of the office for which I have always been, and remain, grateful. I am pleased to count him and his wife, Mona, friends.

Finally, I must acknowledge my appreciation to Dr. James Brumfield—a fellow curmudgeon, pathologist, and friend—for his constructive comments and fortitude put forth in reading portions of this opus. He would, however, have run ten miles to keep from performing an autopsy!

1628_-_Mustang93_-_Tsarang_door_chorten.jpg

1

Greetings!

Welcome! A very warm welcome to my offbeat world of forensic pathology. I assume that, since you are here on this page with me, you must have at least some degree of interest in things forensic and would like me to discuss some of them with you. It will be my great pleasure to chat with you in the following pages about many of my experiences, forensic and otherwise, and tell you about various cases I have investigated over many years.

I hope you will feel we are sitting and conversing as a couple of people getting to know each other better as we go along. I will share with you some of my life experiences—many having nothing to do with forensic pathology—along the way so you may know me better. (Or you may not want to! A)

Given the tremendous popularity of the television and cinematic murder and crime productions, along with the practically innumerable crime fiction publications, I assume you likely have interest in the forensic aspects of these representations of murders and other crimes. Aspects of forensic pathology are often presented unrealistically in many of these dramas and writings in ways that cause people to have distorted or impractical concepts of their true utility. I shall attempt to give you accurate information and concepts as we go along.

Marvelous pronouncements, such as, This man died from asphyxia very shortly after 1 o’clock this morning, tend to leave the viewer absolutely amazed at how wonderfully accomplished the forensic pathologist is and how amazing it is to have such precise determinations of time and cause of death all wrapped into one tidy declaration. I am not amused. Such great, pinpoint declarations have never been quite that easy for me—or even possible. Perhaps I should have studied harder? K

Eh? What? Just what is forensic pathology, and who is a forensic pathologist, you ask? Those questions are excellent ones. We certainly should not begin without defining our subject, now should we? Thank you for keeping me on course.

(A warning: I do have a great propensity to wander astray when I think of related interesting or amusing things I want to share with you. Although the asides most often are related, I do have a tendency to wander, so you can never be sure just what subject will pop up under a given heading. You have been cautioned! A)

Pathology (literally, the study of disease) is the bedrock of all medicine. The hospital pathologist is a physician whom most patients never see or meet, although that doctor may be critical to their care. The pathologist is the person who makes the final diagnoses concerning the nature of disease within the tissues examined from skin biopsies to organs and tissues removed at surgery.

The forensic pathologist is not just some obscure weirdo stuck in the basement morgue. He (as a generic term to also include women) is also a physician and pathologist with further specialty training in the recognition of the presence or absence of disease, injury, or poisoning. The autopsy is his stock in trade, so to speak.

The forensic pathologist must have knowledge of the forensic sciences, including toxicology, the working of firearms, wound ballistics, forensic DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and serology technology, and many other areas. He is a specialist in determination of the cause and manner of death and must provide interpretation of wounds, injury patterns, and other findings in the legal matters that arise: the application of medical knowledge to legal situations. Testimony and opinions of the forensic pathologist in court must be straightforward and accurate since they may be crucial in a given case.

Do you mind if we chat informally? No? Great. A Grab a cup of coffee or tea—a cuppa—if you are so inclined!

I would like to begin our conversations by introducing myself and my career as a forensic pathologist—a profession I have found both enjoyable and satisfying. I have performed or supervised well more than 10,000 autopsies and have performed external examinations of far, far more bodies over a period of more than five and a half decades.

Forensic pathology might be considered odd as a career by some, I suppose. A lot of folks don’t even want to know any details about it, although many of these same individuals may also have some morbid curiosity to which they may not want or be willing to admit. Often, after hearing even some minor detail of what the practice of forensic pathology involves, some unappreciative, sensitive—or is that sensible?—person will opine the conversation should be directed to a more pleasant subject. I am not offended. A

I am sure you are not amongst these sensitive humans, so we shall have what I hope are some interesting—and enlightening—discussions.

Most assuredly, some folks may feel my work was very unpleasant. In reality, the most unpleasant parts of my work certainly had little or nothing to do with the dead. It was my duty as a forensic pathologist to speak for the deceased. I was the last person that individual had to be their advocate and representative. To speak for the dead is what it means to be a forensic pathologist. The dead speak through us. They tell us through our examinations about their injuries, their illnesses, and in quite a few cases, some of their innermost secrets.

Certainly, not all cases a forensic pathologist must investigate are delightful, and I would not insult your intelligence by telling you I found examination of decomposed bodies a delightfully pleasant task. KK You may be surprised, however, to learn that without exception I invariably had an unfailing, stalwart friend with me to assist at each and every single one of these examinations—a physiological one, that is. This exceptionally good and totally reliable friend was olfactory paralysis—the development of the inability to fully detect an odor when one remains in it for a period of time.

It is the same thing that happens when I am baking sourdough or other breads, which I do quite often so we do not have to be subjected to the commercial, store-bought offerings. When I am in the kitchen as the bread is baking, I cannot completely appreciate the wonderful aromas emanating from the oven. If I leave the kitchen and go, for instance, to the garage refrigerator to get something, I can again fully appreciate the marvelous odor of the baking bread upon returning to the kitchen and even in the hallway. I am sure you have had similar experiences.

Chapman_002.jpg

The same thing happens, of course, with unpleasant odors. This phenomenon, therefore, proved to be—as you would expect, if you think about the matter—the undoing of some individuals who attended these autopsies. They would decide early on to leave the room to get some fresh air—a disastrous mistake since they lost whatever degree of olfactory paralysis they had developed—and then returned only to find the odor even more overwhelming.

As you are probably guessing by now, given my sense of humor some would (mistakenly, of course) call twisted, these individuals provided me with a modicum of amusement along the way with their retching and carrying on as if they were soon going to be on the autopsy table themselves! A Get over it, folks!

The truly disagreeable—although at times, I must admit, also simultaneously interesting and challenging—parts of my work have been dealing with the living, most especially the politicians and bureaucrats. Surely you can understand, given the likes of those lots. It seems when one gets a bureaucratic position, horse sense and practicality have flown directly out the window. Do they think it is their calling to stand in the way of any reasonable suggestion or progress? (It seems so. A)

You probably expected me to mention interacting with lawyers as a disagreeable aspect. Quite the opposite, actually. I shall tell you about a few courtroom experiences later on—ones I think you will find at least amusing. I have most often thoroughly enjoyed the courtroom. After all, if the lawyers have a good time, why should I not also? Certain belligerent lawyers simply added to the enjoyment and/or entertainment on many occasions when they were cross-examining me.

People often use the term gruesome (causing repulsion or horror; grisly) in referring to my work. I have never regarded the investigation of any sort of human remains as gruesome. In fact, in many of these situations one can find a particular brand of amusement—forensic humor, which perhaps many folks may not understand, although I am sure you will.

One example of this special kind of humor I experienced very early on when an outstanding member of the local knife-and-gun club in Richmond, Virginia, was brought in dead from a stab wound to the left groin. I guessed his alcohol level was quite high and assumed his friends also were in a similar state of alcoholic inebriation with my very first glance at the body.

You ask how could that be so and how in any way could it possibly have been humorous?

Well, what I saw was a mildly gaping, approximately 2.5-inch stab wound to the left groin. I grant you: this finding alone is not humorous in any way. But guess where a tourniquet had been applied. It was beyond the stab wound in the mid left thigh. His drunken cohorts were probably not capable of making a better decision. AA

From the very first autopsy I ever did, I have never had any difficulty in looking at a case objectively and without emotional involvement with extremely few exceptions. I have seen a multitude of the uttermost and monstrously heinous things humans are capable of doing to each other—and to themselves. There has been only a handful of cases during my entire career which did cause me some degree of distress. Perhaps I may explain later. Perhaps not. (You will have to stay with me to find out. Most likely, however, I will spill the beans. I usually do.)

Some cases one investigates may be filled with a great deal of irony. An example of such irony I saw in the death of a man driving a linen delivery box truck on a tree-lined semi-rural road during a moderately powerful storm in Northern California. A large limb overhanging the road snapped off and landed directly on the cab of the truck and squarely upon the man, killing him instantly. A second or two or three, more or less, would have meant the man would not have been directly crushed by the falling limb and may have survived. It was, however, a direct hit.

The irony? The man had considered his previous vocation too dangerous to continue since he had seen his father killed while working alongside him, so he took the job as a driver of the delivery truck—work he considered eminently safer than his previous job.

His previous job? He had been a tree feller. Was his death the result of the revenge of the trees?

My career has been most satisfying because I feel I have contributed at least somewhat to society. I will be telling you about some unusual and interesting cases. I am assuredly going to attempt to give you an appreciation for the importance and indispensability of the medical examiner to the rule of law and how changes in the systems for the investigation of deaths in many areas of the United States need to be made. Perhaps I can even inspire you to become active in bringing about needed reforms? I can only hope.

You and I are going to explore terminology, especially the terms bandied about in the murder dramas. They are often misconstrued as to their actual usefulness and limitations in the investigations of deaths. Depending upon the situation being portrayed and/or my mood, I either find them maddening or downright ridiculously amusing.

I hope you find our conversations interesting, informative, and enjoyable. I shall be presenting a lot of information to you.

Be forewarned, however, I have strong opinions I may be expressing, and with which you may very well disagree—even most vehemently. No problem. Each person has a right to his/her own beliefs. You are very much entitled to disagree, and I shall not be offended. I must tell you at the outset that I take a very dim view of religion, but I will only be expressing my own opinions on occasion. No need to take offense. A

So, what do you say we get the show on the road?

Forensic pathology was decidedly not a career I had anticipated pursuing from my infancy. As a matter of interest, it was only in the year I was born that Maryland established the first true statewide medical examiner system. The formal teaching of forensic pathology as a recognized entity had only been in existence for two years, having begun with a course at Harvard in 1937. It was not until I was 20 years old that the first certifications in forensic pathology were given by the American Board of Pathology in 1959.

Early life experiences

I simply fell into it. (My specialty, that is.) My path to a career in forensic pathology appeared anfractuous to me, even though, in retrospect, my course of study went straight to it.

From my early childhood I was exposed to some of the idiocy of human beings via my paternal grandfather who kept an ever-increasing stack of detective magazines on his wicker desk. Living on a small farm with no siblings and no other children in any near proximity, I often entertained myself by reading those magazines.

I can tell you under penalty of perjury my paternal grandfather was a despicable old bastard—an opinion universally held by my family, and I would not be surprised if he obtained some sort of vicarious pleasure from all the mayhem and carnage in those magazines. I found the accounts interesting in that they allowed one to see what went on behind the scenes, so to speak. I had much curiosity about what it might be like to actually see those crime settings. These were mostly accounts from True Detective, a now defunct popular magazine of the era that dealt with actual cases.

I was also not unacquainted with actual homicidal violence: A high school classmate became a homicide victim—killed during a robbery of his business in Crossville, Tennessee.

A gifted and dedicated medical school classmate and friend was killed during his residency by his mother-in-law who refused to accept the fact that her daughter had married him outside her Mormon religion. The mother-in-law, a devout, fundamentalist Mormon, had essentially set a trap and lay in wait for him to arrive on a trip he believed was meant to bring about reconciliation of the family. She shot him in his chest with a shotgun upon his arrival. Mother-in-law reconciled the situation alright, but what do you suppose was her further relationship with her daughter?

Choosing a career path

As I neared graduation from the Bowman Gray School of Medicine of Wake Forest College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, I was trying to decide on a specialty for my medical career. I found from the experiences I had with professors and patients, I really did not relish any of the clinical specialties from passing gas (anesthesia) to carpentry (orthopedics) to plumbing/water works (urology), even though clinical medicine with treatment of patients had been my motivation for entering medical school in the first place.

(I will tell only you, confidentially, the hypochondriacs—of whom there is quite a plethora—had gotten to me. And that is not even to mention the psychiatric patients who told me of their various dalliances during their appointments. It seemed I had a wholly disproportionate number of patients whose problems centered on sex. My reaction (not expressed to the patients, of course) to their confessions of sexual encounters and the like was, I understand your situation, but what the bloody hell is the problem? The problem, I usually discovered upon further discussion, boiled down to being brainwashed with religion, which gave them overwhelming guilt to the point of making them ill. I was certainly not going to spend my life listening to this sort of thing that I considered drivel and for which I personally saw no need for therapy. Certainly lucky for them, I guess. A)

Looking back over my medical school experiences, I found there were two areas I truly enjoyed: biochemistry and pathology. Each of these departments was headed by outstanding people: Dr. Robert P. Moose Morehead and Dr. Robert Prichard in pathology and the renowned Dr. Camillo Artom in biochemistry.

Although I had unexpectedly and thoroughly enjoyed the course in biochemistry due to the inspiration from Dr. Artom, I did not plan to spend my life in a laboratory in research, which I found very off-putting. I decided upon pathology and did my internship in the excellent department of pathology at the medical school.

Forensic pathology had never entered my mind, of course, since I had never even heard of such a specialty at the time. (It had only been a recognized specialty with board certification possible for five years.) It was during my internship, however, as I shall relate to you, that I encountered and had to undertake my very first forensic case—an occasion of great anxiety, especially when I was subpoenaed to court.

It was in 1964 during the Vietnam War that I graduated from medical school and entered the Ensign 1915 program of the United States Navy, a program allowing deferment from active military duty for specialty training, so that I could complete my pathology residency and enter the service as a pathologist. Ultimately, I was honorably discharged at the rank of Lt. Colonel, having never served a day of active duty. Go figure.

My stumble into forensic pathology

During my residency in anatomic pathology at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, Texas, from 1965 to 1968, I became acquainted with Dr. Earl Rose, the medical examiner for Dallas County who had been involved with the Kennedy assassination and had performed autopsies on the bodies of Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald. Dr. Rose occasionally presented forensic pathology subjects to our resident conferences, and I found them extremely interesting. I decided to undertake a forensic pathology fellowship where Dr. Rose had trained at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Richmond, Virginia.

From my experiences in Richmond during my two-year fellowship, part of which was spent in England performing autopsies in Finchley and a few other districts of London and in Walton-on-Thames, I knew I had found the niche into which I fit in the medical world: forensic pathology.

But, you might ask, why forensic pathology—a branch of medicine in which all of one’s patients are dead? If one considers the dead were my patients—a most mistaken concept—then it certainly goes without saying I could not possibly have killed or injured any single one of them by malpractice! (Some wags have said that all my patients were dying to see me and never complained. A)

However, the true patient whom we as forensic pathologists have is the body politic—society. Forensic pathology is an absolutely indispensable part of the rule of law. It is this concept to which I dedicated my life’s work.

In order to be a board-certified forensic pathologist, one must undertake after medical school a four-year residency in pathology, a one-year residency in forensic pathology, and successfully sit for the examinations given by the American Board of Pathology. I became board-certified in 1970 in anatomic pathology and forensic pathology.

In the morgue of the New York City Medical Examiner is this Latin inscription:

Taceant colloquia, effugiat risus. Hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae.

Let conversation cease, let laughter flee. This place is where death rejoices to teach the living.

——

Vivos mortui docent.

Let the dead teach the living.

W

As I am sure you will agree, one’s responsibilities must be carried out in a highly professional and responsible fashion, but this admonition does not mean—least of all to me, as you likely have already picked up from our conversation—that one is supposed to be lacking in humor. One must take his duties seriously because of their impact upon individuals and upon society. Life itself, as it is often said, is far too important to be taken seriously, and never should one take himself too seriously. That is most assuredly my philosophy.

I hope you do not take yourself so seriously you cannot laugh at yourself! I am sure you don’t. If you do, get over it! Chuckle just a little at this point, please. A

People without some sort of sense of humor and who lack the ability to laugh at themselves are tedious, dull, and generally, a nuisance, at least in my opinion, and I usually describe them as thrombosed hemorrhoids to indicate they are a royal pain in the region indicated—or, as the Brits might put it, a pain in the royal arse.

A thrombosed hemorrhoid. It even looks painful, n’est-ce pas?

Chapman_001.png

One writer, Dr. Theodore Dalrymple, Sunday Telegraph, 4 February 2001, observed in an opinion piece, "The Odd Psychology of Pathologists, that the only flamboyant pathologists are the forensic variety, whose deductive powers are formidable, whose anecdotes are wonderful, and whose sense of humour, while acute, is often of doubtful taste." So be it! (No doubt you will be in complete agreement on the matter of humor before we finish our conversations!)

——

Some definitions, so you and I are on the same page:

Pathology. The literal meaning of this term is the study of disease. It is that particular branch of medicine that studies the chemical and anatomic (structural) changes in the body in disease states, including both macroscopic (gross; observable with the naked eye) and microscopic changes in the tissues. It is the science upon which all medicine is ultimately based.

Clinical pathology. This subspecialty of pathology involves the laboratory study of blood and body fluids with chemical, serologic, microscopic, and other examinations. You have contact with clinical pathology when your blood is drawn for testing.

(Perhaps I might more realistically—which some might mistake for cynically—state that you most likely have contact with corporate laboratories that nominally have a clinical pathologist listed in order to comply with regulations. As a physician, I decry the medical-pharmaceutical-insurance industry complex we now have in this country—a complex that has made medical care completely unaffordable and in which we ultimately have insurance companies—rather than physicians—deciding whether or not a patient can have a certain procedure. Our patient outcomes are amongst the worst of industrialized nations.)

Anatomic pathology. The anatomic pathologist studies the body organs and tissues to diagnose or determine the causes of diseases and to diagnose disease(s) present in the tissues. He spends a lot of time at the microscope. If you have a biopsy or surgery, any specimens will be sent to the anatomic pathologist. In hospital practice the anatomic pathologist is usually also a clinical pathologist in charge of the clinical laboratory.

Forensic pathology. This subspecialty of pathology applies medical knowledge to legal situations and is sometimes referred to simply as legal medicine. Forensic is derived from the Latin forum with its idea of public discussion or assembly.

Medical examiner. A medical examiner is a trained forensic pathologist charged with determining the cause and manner of death, especially in cases of deaths that occur unattended by a physician or are otherwise suspicious or due to unnatural causes. These deaths include instances of homicide, accident, and suicide. A small percentage will be cases in which the cause of death cannot be determined by autopsy and thorough investigation.

Coroner. A lay individual (very rarely a physician but most often an undertaker or politician of some stripe) holding an elective public office charged with determining the cause and manner of death of individuals in which the death occurs without a physician in attendance or under suspicious circumstances or by violent means. In the majority of California counties the elected sheriff is also the coroner—a sheriff-coroner—a most abysmal situation. I will chat with you more about coroners later since there is much need for reform in the matter of medicolegal death investigation.

H

Now, relax, but flex your brain! Since you have shown a great deal of interest, not to mention forbearance and endurance, to this point, I will now share with you a case that occurred in the past century—in the early mid-1960s. It demonstrates one extremely important aspect of the medical examiner’s work.

Do not worry. The photos are black and white, so there is no red blood and not even more than a teense of blood at all. It is a case for you to figure out what actually happened and just who the killer was. Good luck with that. A

2

A case of homicide…or was it?

This is a case to test your abilities as an armchair detective. You have watched murder dramas on the telly and have read murder and crime novels. Now is the time for you to shine by solving a case! A

Listen carefully to all of the circumstances and findings that I am going to tell you about this case, and then, I am going to ask you to tell me whodunit! It is a case that shows how a medical examiner system could operate to fulfill its obligations to the people in an era long before DNA technology and so many sophisticated tests and procedures that exist today.

(This case with photos is courtesy of the late Dr. Geoffrey T. Mann, Chief Medical Examiner, Commonwealth of Virginia.)

——

The scene was the bedroom of a farmhouse, the time 01:45 on a Sunday more than 57 years ago. A 38-year-old Caucasian adult male, retired Army captain, lay dead on the bedroom floor.

History

The victim was a veteran who had served in the Pacific during World War II. He had been reported missing in action and was presumed dead. It was later determined that he had not been killed but was a prisoner of war. After his discharge from the service, he returned to his home and was reunited with his wife who had returned to their home in Virginia from California, where she had spent considerable time while her husband had been on active duty and then a prisoner of war.

Neighbors and friends had frequently reported marital difficulties involving the couple. Our present-day term would be a situation of domestic abuse, which included allegations of loud quarreling and physical assault, perhaps at least in part a consequence of what would presently be labeled PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) from the war and his experiences as a prisoner of war. Back then, the condition was referred to as shell shock.

The couple had been out earlier that Saturday evening and had friends to their home. The decedent was reported to have been drinking heavily during the entire evening.

Their friends having left earlier, the wife reportedly last saw him alive shortly before his death, which was believed to have happened between 23:00 and midnight. As nearly as could be determined, his wife was the only other person in the house after their friends had departed.

At approximately 01:15 on Sunday morning, the wife telephoned their family physician to come to the house. Having no telephone in their house, the wife had to go to a neighboring farmhouse to place the call to the physician. (What a far cry from this era of ubiquitous cellphones and 9-1-1—but one might also reflect that there was concomitantly a tremendously significant amount less useless, pointless, and ridiculous chatter. A)

The victim was lying on the floor naked, save for a pair of socks. The carpet was soaked with blood in two areas near the feet of the decedent. A pillow was under his head, and a sheet covered most of his torso as you see in this photo.

Chapman_003.png

A perforating gunshot wound was found in the inside of the right arm midway between elbow and shoulder joints. The direction of the wound was from the back inside of the right arm to the front inside of the arm (posteromedial to anteromedial). A second gunshot wound—a penetrating wound (the bullet retained within the body)—was noted in the right chest between the fifth and sixth ribs, approximately three inches to the right of the nipple and one inch inferior to the plane of the nipple.

Chapman_004.pngChapman_005.png

Beyond the edge of the carpet, involving a bare area of the wooden floor along the wall nearest the body in front of a small clothes hamper situated between a wardrobe and a bureau, were five bullet holes. The photo below demonstrates the trajectory of the holes with dowels inserted into the defects. Yet another bullet hole, covered by a picture, was located in the wall at the head of the bed.

Chapman_006.png

Five empty cartridge cases were found in the room with the decedent. A small automatic pistol was found against the baseboard in a small adjoining room. It was located in an approximate line with the body of the victim through the connecting doorway between the two rooms. A cartridge case (a fired round) was in the pistol chamber and a fresh round was in the magazine.

Chapman_007.png

Here is a diagrammatic sketch of the scene showing the locations of the various items mentioned.

Chapman_008.png

The decedent was classified as a semi-invalid from his war injuries. He drank heavily and was well-known to become extremely ill-tempered when drunk. He was also quite proficient with his pistol and an excellent marksman.

By her own statement, the wife was the only other person in the house at the time of the shooting. She very strongly denied having shot her husband and maintained that the shooting had been accidental. Bus tickets to California for the following day for her were found in her purse. It was learned that during her time in California, believing that her husband was dead from the war, she had married another man. She was arrested by the county magistrate and held for indictment on a charge of murder.

Whodunit?

See if you can figure out this case before reading the solution below. Did the wife shoot her husband as alleged by the police? If not, who shot him? The gunshot wounds in this case had no gunpowder or soot deposition from the weapon, and they were classified as distant (indeterminate-range) wounds, which means that the pistol was discharged beyond the range where powder or soot could be deposited on the body—a minimum of a few feet. The chest wound was determined to be the cause of death. It was physically impossible for the decedent to have held the pistol and to have inflicted these wounds.

The decedent had a blood ethanol (ethyl alcohol; beverage alcohol) level of 0.32 percent—four times the level at which DUI (driving under the influence) is now legally presumed for the operation of a motor vehicle—indicating he was quite intoxicated.

So, whom do you say was responsible for this man’s death? Who shot him?

Oh, you think so, do you? Well, let’s see!

Solution

This death was obviously one subject to public inquiry and under the purview of the office of the medical examiner since it involved a violent death. The medical examiner took the following steps to establish the cause and manner of death: Photographs and a diagrammatic sketch of the scene were made. The medical examiner performed a complete autopsy examination of the body. All blood, hair, and similar items found at the scene were preserved for reference. The blood ethanol content was determined, as indicated above.

Factors examined. At the scene, a determination was made of the direction of fire of the bullet holes in the floor by placing dowels into the holes, as shown to you in one of the photos above. A determination was made of the relationship of the position of the decedent to the bullet holes found in the floor and their significance.

Examination of the weapon included test firing and was made in cooperation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Residual evidence present at the scene was developed. Additionally, nitrate studies (paraffin tests) on the hands and wounds of the decedent were made along with fingerprint examinations. (I need to tell you that nitrate testing to determine if a person has recently fired a weapon is no longer done because of its lack of specificity and likely production of false-positive results. Specific gunshot residue components, such as barium and antimony, are nowadays identified instead. We shall chat more about this test later.)

Results of investigation. The investigation made by the chief medical examiner’s office revealed some very interesting and important facts. First and foremost, the autopsy revealed that the three bullet holes in the decedent were made by a single bullet. The fatal shot had passed through the right arm (entry and exit) and had entered the chest (re-entry) between the fifth and sixth ribs. This determination demonstrated the position of the arm at the time of the wounding.

(Can you figure what positioning of the arm/upper extremity is indicated by this very important finding? Perhaps you might want to look back at the second photograph and imagine the position of the arm as it necessarily had to be, given the gunshot wound path.)

The alcohol content of the blood was 0.32 percent, as we noted above, which indicated that the victim was markedly intoxicated at the time of death.

Now, just as with the crime dramas, I have not given you quite all of the information that was ultimately determined in this case. It seems there is always something held back so that someone can shine at the end. AA

In this case there was critical information about the pistol! However, you should have been observant and questioned exactly what the little "x" on the diagram represented! Perhaps you did?

The position of the body and the trajectory of the bullets into the floor indicated the victim had fired the shots into the floor. The weapon, however, was in an adjoining room in an approximate line with the body from which it could be seen through the connecting doorway. Examination of the pistol revealed that it was jammed and that there was also a fresh nick in the metal of the hammer. Could a jammed pistol be fired by something striking the hammer? The FBI verified that this could happen.

The murderer or murderess. Who or what could have discharged the jammed pistol by striking the hammer? It was most certainly not the victim since the course of the fatal bullet precluded his using but one hand, his left, in an awkward and weak manner insufficient to strike the hammer of the jammed pistol. Accepting until proven otherwise the wife’s story of innocence, the only thing that could have discharged the jammed pistol was impact by another object of equal strength directly on the hammer.

This object was quickly found. A metal grill covering a floor heating unit was located inside the doorway of the adjoining room from where the decedent was killed. The pistol was in this room also. Examination of this grill revealed metal filings, and spectrographic analysis by the FBI showed that they matched the fresh nick in the hammer of the pistol. It was apparent, therefore, that the pistol had struck the grill with sufficient force to discharge the hammer and fire the fatal bullet.

The encircled area in this photo of the grill of the floor furnace is shown in detail in the next photo.

Chapman_009.jpgChapman_010.png

Detail of the hammer of the semi-automatic weapon showing the nick received from impact onto the floor furnace grill.

Chapman_011.png

But who threw the pistol? The victim, of course. This determination was made from the location and nature of the victim’s wounds. The bullet entered the right arm when the arm was in the air in a position similar to the follow-through motion made by a baseball pitcher after throwing the ball. The arm was not in a defensive position. It was concluded that in a fit of drunken rage at his pistol becoming jammed, the decedent had hurled it from him to the adjoining room only to have it strike the metal grill and discharge, sending the bullet back through his arm and into his chest.

Important and unimportant facts. Background investigation revealed that, when drunk, the victim liked to shoot at real and imaginary rats (likely accounting for the bullet holes in the bedroom floor), that he was a heavy drinker, and that he had a very nasty temper when he was drunk. This combination killed him. The death was declared accidental, and the wife was released from custody. The bus tickets had been bought when the wife decided several days prior to the accident to leave her husband and return to California to the other man she had married.

The bullet hole in the bedroom wall concealed behind a picture? Just a memento from a similar evening.

Z

So, it would seem that this case then almost compels us to have a short chat regarding what exactly the role of the medical examiner is in society and to the rule of law. It’s serious stuff.

3

Why and wherefore the medical examiner

Man, sick in bed: Call the medical examiner! Call the medical examiner!

Wife, anxious and about to wail: Why? Are you dying? You’re not, are you? Are you?

Man, sick in bed: No, I’m not dying, but they’re the only doctors around who still make house calls.

We truly may be the only physicians left who make house calls. This fact reminds me with my twisted sort of mind of a little characterization of physicians from years ago that you might enjoy:

Internists: Doctors who know everything and do nothing.

Surgeons: Doctors who know nothing and do everything.

Pathologists: Doctors who know everything and do everything—but it is all too late.

u

As you have seen with the case in the previous chapter, a shooting may not be what it seems at first blush. The case also exemplifies the vitally necessary role of the medical examiner in the protection of the innocent person who may be accused of a crime where no crime exists.

There are two sides to this coin, of course, and