The World’s Weirdest Death! Was It a Homicide or a Suicide? You Be the Judge

The answer is….Suicide! Here’s the article:

At the 1994 annual awards dinner given by the American Association for Forensic Science, AAFS President Don Harper Mills astounded his audience in San Diego with the legal complications of a bizarre death.

“On 23 March 1994, the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound of the head. The decedent had jumped from the top of a ten- story building intending to commit suicide (he left a note indicating his despondency). As he fell past the ninth floor, his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast through a window, which killed him instantly. Neither the shooter nor the decedent was aware that a safety net had been erected at the eighth floor level to protect some window washers and that Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide anyway because of this.” >>”Ordinarily,” Dr. Mills continued, “a person who sets out to commit suicide ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he intended. That Opus was shot on the way to certain death nine stories below probably would not have changed his mode of death from suicide to homicide. But the fact that his suicidal intent would not have been successful caused the medical examiner to feel that he had homicide on his hands. “The room on the ninth floor whence the shotgun blast emanated was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing and he was threatening her with the shotgun. He was so upset that, when he pulled the trigger, he completely missed his wife and the pellets went through the window striking Opus.

“When one intends to kill subject A but kills subject B in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject B. When confronted with this charge, the old man and his wife were both adamant that neither knew that the shotgun was loaded. The old man said it was his long-standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her – therefore, the killing of Opus appeared to be an accident. That is, the gun had been accidentally loaded.

“The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple’s son loading the shotgun approximately six weeks prior to the fatal incident. It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son’s financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot his mother. The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus.

There was an exquisite twist. “Further investigation revealed that the son [Ronald Opus] had become increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother’s murder. This led him to jump off the ten-story building on March 23, only to be killed by a shotgun blast through a ninth story window.

“The medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.”

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Dr Ken Romeo is a forensic scientist and board-certified physician. His research interests are in the fields of experimental criminology, crimes of drug diversion, fraud and financial crimes. He has conducted field experiments on finding ways to reduce drug diversion by health care workers and detect financial crimes in the US health care system. In conjunction with governmental authorities, Dr Romeo is currently developing new methods and tools for detecting physician and pharmacy driven drug diversion at the earliest stages.

Was it a Homicide or a Suicide? You Be the Judge

THIS IS AN ACTUAL CASE in which the Medical Examiner had to determine if the following events constituted a suicide or homicide.

Here are the facts of the case:

• The subject decided to commit suicide and jumped off the top of a 10 story building which would have resulted in his death.
• The subject obviously didn’t look down because on the ninth floor, a safety net had been installed to protect the window washers who were working at the building earlier that day.
• The subject jumped and fell into the safety net on the ninth floor and was unharmed.
• On the ninth floor, a married couple was having a heated argument. The irate husband shot at his wife with a shotgun, missed the wife, and the shotgun blast resulted in the death of the subject who had jumped attempting to commit suicide but was now standing unharmed in the safety net.

The Medical Examiner obviously stated that the cause of death was due to the shotgun blast, but was the death ruled a homicide or a suicide????

You be the judge! The answer will be in the next post.

Dr Ken Romeo is a forensic scientist and board-certified physician. His research interests are in the fields of experimental criminology, crimes of drug diversion, fraud and financial crimes. He has conducted field experiments on finding ways to reduce drug diversion by health care workers and detect financial crimes in the US health care system. In conjunction with governmental authorities, Dr Romeo is currently developing new methods and tools for detecting physician and pharmacy driven drug diversion at the earliest stages.

Does Law Enforcement Have Access to My Health and Medical Records? Doesn’t HIPPA Protect Me?

Can law enforcement get my tax returns? I answered this question in an earlier post. Now the question is what access does law enforcement have to my medical and health records? Actually, law enforcement officials have very limited access to your health and medical records except under specifically defined circumstances.

Under HIPPA’s general rules, a covered entity (like a hospital, doctor’s office, health plan, etc) is authorized to release protected health information if it meets specific requirements established by HIPPA and if the entity provides the individual an opportunity to agree or object to the authorization. The HIPPA rules further allow covered entities to disclose protected health information to law enforcement officials, without the patient’s written consent, when the information is released under any one of the following conditions:

• The disclosure is required by state law, including the reporting of injuries such as gunshots or stab wounds.
• The disclosure is necessary to comply with a court order or a court-ordered warrant, a subpoena, or a summons issued by a judicial officer or a grand jury.
• The disclosure is in response to an administrative request, such as an administrative subpoena, investigative demand, or other written request from a law enforcement official. Law enforcement officials can make this request without judicial involvement but must include a written statement that the information is relevant and material to a legitimate law enforcement inquiry, that it is specific and limited in scope, and that information is stripped of personal identifiers that cannot be used.
• The disclosure is in response to a request for information to identify or locate a suspect, fugitive, witness, or missing person. The information released is limited to pedigree information, injury type and date of treatment, date and time of death, and any distinguishing physical characteristics. The covered entity is not authorized to release an individual’s DNA or dental records in these circumstances. A covered entity may also release such information if an individual admitted to committing a violent crime and the entity believes that this person may have caused serious physical harm to the victim.
• The disclosure is required by law enforcement to investigate a possible violation of law, and the victim cannot consent due to emergency or incapacity. In this instance, law enforcement agencies cannot use the information against the victim and must show that waiting for victim consent will materially and adversely affect the investigation (the covered entity must judge that it is in the victim’s best interest to release the information).
• The situation involves child abuse or neglect, adult abuse, neglect, or domestic violence as required by law, or where law enforcement officials are notified of a suspicious death possibly involving criminal activity.
• If a health-care provider is rendering emergency services off its premises, it may disclose protected health information to the extent necessary to alert law enforcement officials to the commission, nature, or location of a crime or a crime victim as well as the identity, description, and location of the perpetrator
  
• It is my understanding that law enforcement is not entitles to any information that relates to AIDS or HIV

It should be noted that the release of private health-care information to law enforcement officials by a covered entity does not authorize those officials to disseminate the records beyond what is needed for the investigation or in court proceedings.

As always, it’s best to check with the DA or AUSA any time you want to access a suspect’s health information.

Dr Ken Romeo is a forensic scientist and board-certified physician. His research interests are in the fields of experimental criminology, crimes of drug diversion, fraud and financial crimes. He has conducted field experiments on finding ways to reduce drug diversion by health care workers and detect financial crimes in the US health care system. In conjunction with governmental authorities, Dr Romeo is currently developing new methods and tools for detecting physician and pharmacy driven drug diversion at the earliest stages.

Secrets of the Autopsy: How Medical Examiners Help Police Solve Crimes

Part Four – Basic Forensics of Decomposition

Notice: This is a sensitive topic and may not be for everyone. Read on at your own risk! Also, you can’t fit all the “Secrets of the Autopsy” into a single post, so we’ll take it one step at a time.

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Again, I’ll pick up where I left off. For further information on the earlier stages of decomposition and forensic science, see the previous posts.

About three weeks after death, we hit the big time as the body begins to “fall apart.” The soft organs such as the brain, liver and kidneys liquefy. The hair, nails and skin come loose from the body. In a body that is far along in the decomposition process, the skin will literally slide off the hands and feet intact. As far as the hands go, the skin looks like a glove which is known to Medical Examiners as the “glove configuration.” An ME fact: in some cases the “gloves” are so intact that you can get fingerprints from them! Do you think that this information might be of help to police investigators???

The heart and muscular organs (including the uterus) remain more or less intact for quite awhile. If a body is entombed correctly, several years…or even decades can pass before the body totally decomposes.

I’ll end body decomposition with this: in extremely dry climates, the corpse’s skin can become highly resistant to decomposition. In the world’s great deserts like the Gobi, it would not be unusual to find a body that has been naturally mummified by dryness.

The Medical Examiners job is usually nothing like what is portrayed on TV. A pathologist is a highly trained scientist with expert knowledge in determining the cause and approximate time of death of a person. I hope that this short series has shed some light on what a forensic pathologist really faces and how he or she goes about their jobs. And it’s a tough one!

There’s a good deal more that I could write about concerning the autopsy of a homicide victim, but it’s time to get back to my first love: drug diversion, financial crimes and fraud.

How many of you guessed right at the approximate time of death of the body in the picture?

Dr Ken Romeo is a forensic scientist and board-certified physician. His research interests are in the fields of experimental criminology, crimes of drug diversion, fraud and financial crimes. He has conducted field experiments on finding ways to reduce drug diversion by health care workers and detect financial crimes in the US health care system. In conjunction with governmental authorities, Dr Romeo is currently developing new methods and tools for detecting physician and pharmacy driven drug diversion at the earliest stages.

Secrets of the Autopsy: How Medical Examiners Help Police Solve Crimes

Part Three – Basic Forensics of Decomposition

Notice: This is a sensitive topic and may not be for everyone. Read on at your own risk! Also, you can’t fit all the “Secrets of the Autopsy” into a single post, so we’ll take it one step at a time.

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I am going to pick up right where I left off. If you’re lost, read Parts 1 and 2.

YOU’RE THE MEDICAL EXAMINER:
Given what you know now, what’s your guess as to how long this person has been dead?.
Hint: Look for coloring and bloating (or lack thereof).
Why do you suppose the torso is the color that it is? Was the person wearing clothes? Was the body moved?
Not so easy is it?????

In some homicides the time of death is pretty obvious. Eyewitnesses can provide an accurate approximation of the hour, or at least the day. Victims can also turn up who have not yet gone into rigor mortis, indicating that they have probably been dead less than 6 hours. An then the ultimate fantasy of every Medical Examiner could occur: a stray bullet from the murderer’s gun strikes a wall clock and stops the hands at the precise instant that the victim was shot (this, of course, only happens on TV in an old episode of Columbo).

So here’s the real medical science on estimating time of death by body decomposition as a sole indices:

Stage 1 of Body Decomposition

The first indications of observable decomposition begin when a person’s stomach and genitals turn green or greenish-red. (Believe it or not, light or dark skin types make no difference)

This is the early period of decomposition and dark blue interlacing vein lines appear as well. These vein line networks mottle the person’s neck, shoulders and groin in a process that Medical Examiners call “marbling.”

Here’s where TV and reality meet: by visual observation of the marbling process and given the right weather conditions and the absence of animals, an ME could estimate the time of death with some degree of accuracy. By observing the greenish-red colorations along the web of veins that is slowly emerging on the skin, the ME will tell police that the body has likely been dead for 48 to 72 hours.

Stage 2 of Body Decomposition – (about a week)

The greenish-red discoloration begins to spread across the abdomen, chest and thighs. It will begin to cover most of the body and estimating the time of death is a heck of a lot more complicated now. Still, such body discoloration, as a rule – and again, given optimum conditions –the Medical Examiner will tell the police that the body has been dead for about a week.

Stage 3 of Body Decomposition – (Up to about three weeks)

For up to a week, a dead body looks pretty much like what it is – a dead, but drastically discolored human body. Then things start to change…

In the period of two to three weeks after death, physical and tissue putrefaction kick into high gear. The skin now becomes pocked with watery blisters. The rectum voids, and fluids empty from the lungs and stomach, channeling up and out through the mouth and nose. The decay dramatically modifies facial features and it turns them into sometime that looks like it came out of a horror movie. This makes facial identification more difficult. The skin darkens from reddish green to purple and then finally black. Internal gases are released by fermentation which causes the limbs and trunk to puff up. The body will look inflated or bloated.

I remember one poor soul – a diver – that was fished out of the San Francisco Bay.  When we unzipped his wet suit, the gases which had been held in check by the wet suit were released and the body damn near blew up on us. Believe me, it was not a good day at the Coroner’s Office.

What about the gases generated by the body? They are immense and some ME’s go so far as to say that they are volatile.

Could a dead body that was sealed in an airtight container blow up if you took the lid off the container? Maybe. I’ve never heard of it, but that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t happen.

I’ll take you through Stages 4 and 5 in the next post.

Dr Ken Romeo is a forensic scientist and board-certified physician. His research interests are in the fields of experimental criminology, crimes of drug diversion, fraud and financial crimes. He has conducted field experiments on finding ways to reduce drug diversion by health care workers and detect financial crimes in the US health care system. In conjunction with governmental authorities, Dr Romeo is currently developing new methods and tools for detecting physician and pharmacy driven drug diversion at the earliest stages.

Secrets of the Autopsy: How Medical Examiners Solve Crimes

Part Two – Basic Forensics of Decomposition

Notice: This is a sensitive topic and may not be for everyone. Read on at your own risk! Also, you can’t fit all the “Secrets of the Autopsy” into a single post, so we’ll take it one step at a time.

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I am going to pick up right where I left off in the first post so if you’re lost, read Part 1 below.

Tissue disintegration can be accelerated and/or delayed, depending on the numbers and types of organisms at work (Staph, Strept, E. Coli, etc). Disintegration can also be delayed by weather conditions. But temperature is a very big deal to a Medical Examiner when trying to estimate a time of death based on body decomposition (the ME will examine all the factors that we spoke about in the first post and not just body decomposition).

At 70 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, putrefaction proceeds at optimum speeds. However, as temperature drops below the 50 degree mark, body decomposition slows. The lower the temperature becomes, the slower body decomposition will be. In fact, a point of suspended animation occurs at the deep freeze level. We’ve all heard the stories of people paying big bucks to have their bodies stored in a frozen state and they’re true. Who knows? Maybe one day science will be able to bring these people back to life…but I wouldn’t bet on it anytime in the near future. Also, the deep freeze brings to mind the image of the classic mafia hit victim that is seen on TV hanging on a hook in a meat locker.

Most of the bacteria at the beginning stages of decomposition are already in your body – particularly the bowels. When you’re alive, these bacteria aid in the digestion of food. When you die, these very same bacteria become the predators that nature intended them to be. They devour flesh at incredible speeds reducing cellular tissue to liquid. These man-eating bacteria, left unchecked by our natural immune system (remember, you’re dead now) are soon joined by many other organisms from the outside environment and your body becomes an ocean of scavenging bacteria and microorganisms.

Now listen up all you blossoming ME’s…despite the swarms of microorganisms that begin digesting flesh at almost the moment of death, under normal conditions it takes two to three days before visible results of putrefaction start to appear!

That’s it for this post. In the next two posts I’ll take you through the 5 stages of decomposition and EXACTLY what they mean to a Medical Examiner. It’s going to get a little gross from here on out……

Stay tuned…if you dare!

Dr Ken Romeo is a forensic scientist and board-certified physician. His research interests are in the fields of experimental criminology, crimes of drug diversion, fraud and financial crimes. He has conducted field experiments on finding ways to reduce drug diversion by health care workers and detect financial crimes in the US health care system. In conjunction with governmental authorities, Dr Romeo is currently developing new methods and tools for detecting physician and pharmacy driven drug diversion at the earliest stages.

Secrets of the Autopsy: Body Decomposition

Part One – Basic Forensics of Decomposition

Notice: This is a sensitive topic and may not be for everyone. Read on at your own risk! Also, you can’t fit all the “Secrets of the Autopsy” into a single post, so we’ll take it one step at a time.

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No matter what crime series I watch on TV, whenever a murder is committed and the Medical Examiner arrives at the scene the police invariably ask, “What’s the time of death, Doc?” In true Hollywood fashion, the Medical Examiner says something like, “Yesterday afternoon around 3:00 pm!” Now that’s darn good work and that’s also complete baloney! Can a Medical Examiner really perform this seemingly impossible task on the spot? Most likely, not.

In the real world, gauging time of death with any accuracy, especially in a homicide case is one of the most complex and challenging tasks that an ME will face. Attempts to establish the time of death are usually difficult because of the lack of witnesses, moved bodies, variable weather, moisture, temperature conditions, evidence that has been tampered with, poorly collected evidence, or alterations intentionally made to the body (freezing or dissolving in acid…mafia and gang stuff).

There are no entirely dependable medical tests or lab procedures that exist to pinpoint the time of death after the first few days. A real ME will never talk about “time of death,” rather they will speak of the “estimated time of death.”

There are a lot of signs that will lead a Medical Examiner to state an estimated time of death. Body decomposition is one of them, so let’s start the autopsy with the topic of body decomposition.

Here’s how body decomposition works:

Let’s say that the police arrive at a crime scene where the body is “ripe” (you can smell it long before you see it). Believe me, this is not a good start for the police or the Medical Examiner. And let’s say further that the ME guesses that the body has been dead from eight to eleven days.

Would an ME make a guess of 8 to 11 days on the spot in his report? No way! The guess would carry absolutely no weight in a court of law. There are a host of factors that are involved in body decomposition. Factors such as temperature, age, size, clothing (or lack thereof) and moisture all play a part in decomposition. And unlike Hollywood, the reality of an 8 to 11 day old corpse is that they are bloated, blackened and if found in an open area have usually been worked over by insects, animals and vermin. The truth is that it is virtually impossible to identify a person – sometimes you can’t tell what color, race or even sex they happened to be.

Even a mildly competent lawyer would make an ME seem totally incompetent in court for presenting an estimated time of death based solely on the visual examination of decomposition alone.

What the heck is “decomposition?” Let’s just say that the body is rotting and even more accurately, the body is being eaten. We are eaten daily by the assorted flora and fauna that exists in our body when we are alive, and when we die the process continues uninterrupted by the replacement of new cells. This bacterial feast, known as “putrefaction,” is substantially helped along by fermentation produced by enzymes that are already inside our body.

In a living person, enzymatic digestive juices in the intestines reduce solid foods to essential nutrients. After death, these same enzymes continue their reductive ways, but now they work on the cellular structure of the body itself. In warmer climates, a significant contribution to decomposition is also made by fungi. Since these tiny organisms require robust supplies of oxygen to live, they propagate on exposed skin surfaces only. Fungi are rarely, if ever, found on corpses enclosed in tightly sealed coffins or tombs.

Next up: Tissue Disintegration and Temperature

Dr Ken Romeo is a forensic scientist and board-certified physician. His research interests are in the fields of experimental criminology, crimes of drug diversion, fraud and financial crimes. He has conducted field experiments on finding ways to reduce drug diversion by health care workers and detect financial crimes in the US health care system. In conjunction with governmental authorities, Dr Romeo is currently developing new methods and tools for detecting physician and pharmacy driven drug diversion at the earliest stages.