Dr. Baden Q & A [2006]
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Is there such a thing as a perfect murder?
Yes. But there are two categories of perfect
murders. Technically, any unsolved murder
is a perfect murder. In the 1960s, eighty-five
per cent of murders were solved in New York
and close to it around the country. That
means at that time, there were ten or fifteen
per cent of perfect murders where people
committed murder and didn't get caught.
Counter intuitively in the late 1980's, when
DNA evidence comes into the picture, we find
that less than fifty per cent of murders in New
York City are now solved, and less than sixty
per cent nationwide. There are a couple
reasons: one is most murders don't involve
forensic science in solving them. DNA
evidence is important in less than ten per cent
of murders. And also we have a situation now
where social changes--better transportation
and the ease of travel allow people to leave the
area very quickly. These days, everybody
knows when they watch television they expect
the crime to be solved within an hour, less
commercials. What the viewing public doesn't
understand is that most murders that are
solved today are not solved by forensic
evidence, but are by plea bargaining and
confessions. The great majority of murders
that are solved don't go to trial. And another
reason that there's been a decrease in solve
rates in some of the murders is because with
DNA and forensic evidence exclusions become
much more common.
Now also when people talk about perfect
murders as when for example somebody is
pushed out of a window or drowned in a pool.
In those cases, you can't also tell whether it's
homicide or suicide or accident because a
person going out the window has the same
kind of injuries and fractures. So you can't
tell it's a homicide just by the autopsy. You
have to go up and see was there a struggle?
Was he thrown out the window? Some
murders are perfect murders because you
can't determine the manner of death -
accident, suicide or homicide, because you
don't have enough information.
Other kinds of perfect murders can include
suffocation form dry ice, a poison that isn't
looked for. Cyanide on the other hand leaves a
discoloration in the skin that you can see.
But there are thousands of drugs that can
cause death. You can't look for every one of
them.
Of all your cases, which one haunts you to
this day and why?
There is one particular case that haunts me
and that's where an innocent man was
convicted for a murder that was a natural
death. It wasn't that a person was murdered
and they got the wrong person. This person is
still in jail in Massachusetts for killing his
wife. They were having a friendly divorce and
during the course of the divorce, the wife was
found dead at home face down. And the
medical examiner did the autopsy and found
an infection in the heart-an acute massive
myocarditis. And the medical examiner felt
that this was an actual death. The brother of
the dead woman was a prosecutor. He felt
that the brother-in-law killed his sister. And
he kept harassing and calling his buddy the
prosecutor, saying, I know he killed her. They
finally sent this out to other people. And two
years later he was arrested for suffocating her
on the basis of the maroon discoloration that
one can get from strangulation. When you
strangle somebody they can become cyanotic
and bluish. When I was asked to review it, the
problem was that there wasn't just a cyanosis
in the face which is what happens in
strangulation. The whole body was blue. And
it was blue because this was not evidence of
strangulation. It was just a normal color of
death, the lividity. And although I testified in
that case for the defense, there was a very
vigorous prosecution and prosecutor, very
passionate, very wrong. And the jury found,
found him guilty and he's still in jail.
Is there any way to determine a person's
identity if they were buried a hundred
years ago like William Bonnie?
Yes. Not just William Bonnie, but Thomas
Jefferson for example, who was much older.
DNA stays in tact for thousands of years.
Good DNA was able to be extracted from the
five thousand year old ice man found in the
Austrian Alps some years ago.
Have you ever had cases of people try to
fool a forensic pathologist?
The best example of that is the Ice Man (who
was featured on HBO) who used cyanide to
kill people because he knew that it wasn't
normally looked for at autopsy. Ultimately, it was discovered and he was
convicted for the murder.
What's the food most likely to choke
someone?
Steak is number one and shrimp is number
two. Un-chewed steak or shrimp that are
swallowed, and usually it's when a person has
been drinking and not chewing. Your mother
told you "Chew your food," she was absolutely
right.
How do you figure how long a person has
been deceased?
The cardinal sign after death, when somebody
dies is stiffening of the body which starts in
about an hour or so, which is called rigor
mortis. It starts in the jaw first and then
spreads through the whole body in about ten
to twelve hours, and remains stiff for about
twelve hours and then goes away, which takes
twelve hours to go away. So then the body's
totally limp after 36 hours. Whereas the color
of death, or liver mortis, starts coming on in
about two hours and gets more and more
intense for about eight to ten hours and then
just remains there; it doesn't go away. A third
way is algor mortis, which is a temperature
change from our normal 98.6 degree body
temp to room temperature which is
approximately 70 degrees or so.
There's also food in the stomach. It takes a
few hours for the stomach to empty itself of
food, so if you have a lot of food still in the
stomach and you know what and when the
person ate, and if he's still got a stomach full
of food, you know he died within two hours of
eating.
Insects and maggots can be very helpful
because they have certain life cycles that can
tell us approximately how long somebody's
been dead. So all these things are used in
different cases depending on the
circumstances.
What is the difference between a coroner
and a forensic pathologist?
Coroners are elected officials. This is a system
we inherited from England during colonial
days where coroners, originally "crowners"
were appointed by the crown to collect taxes
for people who committed suicide because
then they forfeited their property to the crown.
Forensic pathologists didn't come around
until recent times. We inherited coroners from
England in the 1600s, 1700s, and in our
country still about half of our country is
served by coroners. New York State has 62
counties, only about 12 are medical
examiner/forensic pathologist counties. The
other 50 are coroner counties. Anybody who
is of voting age and a citizen can run for
coroner. Most coroners in this country are
funeral directors.
In the 1880s Massachusetts and Maryland
were the first states to say, "Hey, you know
the person who should be examining dead
bodies to determine how they die...," which is
the coroner function, "should be a physician."
They established that physicians had to be
the type of person who would be in charge,
and that became known as the medical
examiner system--a physician system. And
medical examiners are appointed, they don't
run for office. They're appointed by the mayor,
the governor, the city council, you know,
some governing body appoints them.
So there's about 50/50 division between
medical examiners and coroners, although
most medical examiners are not forensic
pathologists.
What organ is the last to die?
The brain is the first to die. The heart tends to
be the last one to die. The heart can go
without oxygen for about 15, 20 minutes, and
still keep beating. By that time, most of the
organs are all dead. However, other tissues
are still alive. Corneas can live for 24 hours.
Tendons and bones and muscle can live for a
couple of days, and be used for transplants.
How often do you find unexpected
abnormalities when you do an autopsy?
About 30% of the time we find something that
was missed by doctors. Even with imaging
and all the new things, studies done on
autopsies comparing it to hospital diagnosis,
30% of the time there's something major or
significant that was overlooked when the
person was being treated at the hospital. So
that's why autopsies are so important and
that's one of the reasons why a lot of doctors
don't ask for autopsies. And doctors don't like
autopsies anymore because you're liable to
find something that you could sue them with.
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