Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - The Case For An Autopsy: Who Decides?

Episode Date: February 9, 2025

n Nebraska a 56-year-old man dies alone in his apartment. He seemed to be in good health and his family wants to know what happened. A police officer decides the man died of "Natural Causes" so no autopsy is performed. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack talk about legal death investigation and who makes the call when it comes to the "Manner of Death".   Transcribe Highlights 00:00.00 Introduction 04:38.56 Story of regret 10:35.89 Things that appear to be "natural" 15:35.28 When the coroner is elected position 20:18.72 Who makes a great legal death investigator 25:37.62 Determining manner and cause of death 30:50.66 Discussion of Coroner state 35:20.27 What qualifies a police officer to determine "natural causes"? 37:06.32 ConclusionSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Moore. The old adage, once bitten, twice shy, holds a different meaning when you consider that most of the time, as a death investigator, you get one shot at what you're doing. but can impact family members and even local citizenry based upon that choice that you made as a government official moving forward that will change the dynamic, the landscape of how people view not only your office, but death investigation overall. Some of these decisions remain with us and like everybody out there, I have a couple over the course of my history that have in fact haunted me

and still haunt me to this day. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bags. All right, so right out of the box, if you're going to tell me, Joe, that there is something that haunts you to this day that happened while you were in the course of your job, you have something like that even now? Yeah, yeah, still to this day. And it was, it's kind of one of these, I don't know if I can actually call it an anomaly, but I'd say that it is. And if you want me to run it down to you, I'll run it down to you very briefly. Yeah. Actually, now I need you to run it down for me. It's not a want, it's a need. Well, here's the thing. I got a call to a private residence. This is when I was still working in New Orleans. And I can't recall if I've told the story before, but it doesn't matter. Well, I'll tell it for the purposes of kind of illustrating what we're about today. I got a call and this was very early on in my career. I was young and did not have a

lot of experience and had a guy that had drowned in his swimming pool. Now, it's a weird thing in New Orleans down there because everything's below sea level. I would say that you have more above ground pools than you do below ground pools because we're below sea level. But this was a rather large in-ground pool where I had a gentleman that lived next door to the owner of the pool, this fellow crossed over into his neighbor's backyard and jumped off into the deep end and drowned himself. Okay. Now, here's kind of where one of the problems arises. This gentleman that decided to take his life was an Orthodox Jew. And you don't have a lot of Orthodox Jews in the deep South. Like, you know, if you go to New York, you can go to the Diamond

District, you can walk around town, you'll see, you know, you'll see people that are in that lifestyle that dress in a very particular way. Well, this gentleman, you know, he had the ringlets. He always wore a yarmulke. And, let's see, I think he was involved in the antique business in New Orleans. And if you've ever been to the French Quarter, there's a street, everybody thinks about Bourbon Street, there's a street called Royal Street. And Royal Street has antique shops that are renowned worldwide. You have European antiques on the street. And of

course, they're valued more so than they're probably worth, but they're fascinating to walk in. And I think that that was his business, if I remember correctly. But he was having trouble in business. And he went to great lengths in order to facilitate his death. Obviously, if I remember correctly, he didn't own a firearm. And he was wearing a heavy black overcoat, which in and of itself, and I'll never forget, this was in the late spring, which is brutally hot in New Orleans. He took five-pound plates from bench press that he had in his garage and put multiple of these in the deep pockets on the outside of his trench coat and went fully clothed and jumped into the deep end of the pool and drowned. Facilitated his own death.

Didn't leave a note or anything like that. Well, as time went by, we finished the investigation. The family obviously showed up and they said, where, what are you going to do with a body? Why is there, you know, a vehicle here from the corner? And we're like, well, we're going to go back. We autopsy, you know, suicides. That's what we do because I wasn't here to witness it. You don't have a doctor that's going to sign a death certificate.

It's actually going to fall to us as the coroner. We are, in fact, the certifier of death. And so that's what we do. And with that task upon us, we have to examine the body. And they raised 40 kinds of hell over it. They got their attorneys involved. We did take the remains back to the shop. And since he was Orthodox, and many people are not aware of this, they have kind of this indwelling principle, and I'm probably going to get this wrong, but you have to be buried by sundown. And many people don't realize that. And it's a big deal, you know, particularly in the Orthodox community. Well, we really stirred the pot because we were holding him.

This was in the morning. We were holding him, you know, over a long night. And we had, I know it was an onslaught of attorneys. There had to be three. And I get in, you know, I've been involved in cases where I would have one or two. But this was three. And we wound up to our great shame, releasing his body the next morning directly to the to the funeral home of the family's choice. And never even drew blood on this guy, period.

We never even took his clothing off. I think we may have snapped some photos, and he was buried. Six months go by, and we get sued. I have to go in and give a deposition. The pathologist has to go in and give a deposition that was on call. The coroner had to go in and get a deposition that was on call. The coroner had to go in and get a deposition. And the big question in the deposition is, why didn't you do your job? You know, you have the force of law behind you.

And it was the family that were off the lawsuit. Yeah, I know. That's the shocking thing about it. If you don't know, right now I'm staring into Dave's eyes and he has a look of shock. And so, yeah. And and so when I say once bitten twice shy, I would rather see the adage of dying on this hill is not necessarily apropos. But I will I I will fight tooth and nail to do everything that I have to do in order to not just look out for the family, but the continuity of an investigation.

So I appreciate and I respect your religious views, perhaps, and I'm going to try to honor them as best we can. However, you have to look at this very much more broadly. First off, no one witnessed this. They found him at the bottom of the pool. He was in financial trouble. And there was some indication per the police that there were some sketchy events that surrounded his business practice. And you take all that in total and you think, well, you know, the guy's fully clothed. He puts plates, five pound plates into the pockets of his overcoat. I don't know about you, Dave. I don't think I could break the surface in a 10

foot pool with all of that hanging off of me, soaking wet, trying to drag myself up to the top. So how did, yeah, it is. So how do we know that somebody didn't stick something in his pockets and push him off into the pool? It's just a, you know, and I know that many naysayers would probably say, well, what are the odds that that would happen? Well, there are odds and things like that have happened. And that's the thing about medical legal death investigation, Dave. You truly get one shot at what's going to happen or where you can determine the course of the future. You know, it's like stepping up to the plate in baseball where you're trying to prove yourself and you get one shot against a really premier pitcher. And if you don't adhere to the basic understanding of what you've learned as a batter, you're going to run into problems. And we know these. We know these problems because

they've happened elsewhere and from a variety of sources. It can either be families that decide that they don't want an autopsy. And look, all I have to do is point at Tammy Daybell. Remember her? She got carried across state lines and buried in Utah as opposed to there having been an autopsy. And David, that wound up being a homicide. So you can see where this can get train wrecked really, really quickly. And you really ask these questions, who makes these decisions? Who's going to make these decisions about that terminal diagnosis? Who's going to have the authority to sign off on the terminal diagnosis?

Because even if you have somebody that, say, for instance, things appear to be natural, if you don't have an attending physician, and for our friends that don't know, anytime you're involved with a coroner or medical examiner and you have somebody that dies and they're what's referred to as, and this is an actual industry term called unattended death. And unattended can mean a lot of things. It can mean there was no one with them when they died or it has been used to say they didn't have a physician. Well, guess who the de facto physician is at that point in time? It's the certifier of death. It's going to be the coroner slash medical examiner. And so that individual has to make a decision as to what the cause and manner of death is going to

be. And if you do not do it at minimum, an external examination where you take the clothes off, photograph the body, draw vitreous fluid out of the eye, draw urine directly out of the bladder, which you can do externally, draw heart blood directly from the aorta, which you can do externally, and you submit all of that. At least you have that baseline and you do a total body examination externally and you do x-rays. But sometimes that doesn't even get – you know, Dave, I've actually worked with coroners. line and you do a total body examination externally and you do x-rays. But sometimes that doesn't even get, you know, Dave, I've actually worked with coroners over the course of my career. And this is one of my biggest, biggest things. I never like to bury bodies with bullets in them. And you will have people that will work suicides and somebody will self-inflict a gunshot wound or shoot, you know, to the head or to the chest and the projectile won't exit and they will bury that body with a bullet

in the body. And I think that that is egregious, absolutely egregious, because you're talking about a real traumatic event. And I can't tell you how many times I've given talks or have been places where somebody would say, well, it's obviously a suicide. Why do you need to do an autopsy? Or they died in a car accident. Why do you need to do an autopsy? Well, car accidents become many times vehicular homicide or negligent homicide.

Suicides sometimes turn out to not be suicides. They turn out to be something else. Or in the case of Tammy Daybell, sometimes things that appear to be natural turn out to be wholly something else. And in her case, homicide. So you're left with this big question that winds up going unanswered. And guess what? Once you place that body in the ground, or once you place, God help you, that body into a crematory, all of the evidence is gone.

Dave, over the course of my career now in academia, which believe it or not, my hair is as gray as yours. I've been in academia now as long as I was a death investigator. I'm 20 years on. So as a professor, and I have kids that have come up to me year after year, and they will say, Professor Morgan, tell me what you did. Tell me, how do I do for a living what you did? And the first thing I always tell them is, think about doing something else. Go be a fingerprint analyst.

Go be a DNA person. That's a really cool job, man. But still, you know, they get that twinge and they want to become a death investigator. Or they'll say, I want to go back home in my little rural county and run for coroner. I want to be a coroner full time. And no, they don't get paid a lot of money for that. And no, you don't have to be a physician necessarily to be a coroner. Can I ask you about this, Joe? Yeah, sure. All right. I didn't know this until a friend of mine ran for coroner in a county. And I thought, I like him. He's a nice enough fella.

But I wouldn't let him put a Band-Aid on a kid. You know, he's not a medical mind. And anyway, he ran for coroner and I, for the life of me, couldn't figure out why I still to this day, don't know why he did because they not qualified at all. No medical training, no medical background. He just ran for the office because he could. And I thought that's not even a real thing, but it is in some areas, people don't have to have any kind of background at all to serve. Please tell me there's a difference between what we call a coroner and a medical examiner.

Oh, yeah. Not just semantics. There's a difference. No, no, no. It's not semantics. And there is a real, there is a definitive line with coroners. And listen, I'm not denigrating in any way coroners. I love coroners. I've got a lot of friends that are coroners. However, the standard for a coroner in most locations is

completely different than that of a medical examiner. And just to briefly break it down, I think we've done a previous episode on this. We did. But we do have form and function relative to this episode because something has occurred in the news that we need to discuss. With coroners as kind of a refresher, depending upon the state that you're in, there's little or no educational requirements. Some states, there are some states that still only require GED to run for the office. And you can't be a felon. Okay, thank God. Wow.

And you have to be a resident of the county for a prescribed amount of time. You have to be above a certain age. Most places it's like, I don't know, I think it's like 26 or something. You have to have a valid state driver's license. And then dependent upon the state, you may or may not go to what's referred to as a coroner academy. Now, I've taught at coroner academies all over the country, and I've taught at police academies. I teach death investigation still to this day at police academies, just to give young cops a taste of what we do in the medical legal world, trying to understand manner and cause of death and how we ID bodies and recognizing certain trauma.

However, you know, police go through a rather lengthy police academy, you know, and just to become kind of a baseline law enforcement practitioner. And that doesn't necessarily exist with coroners. So it's going to be hit or miss relative to the state that you're in as to what the training requirement is going to be and what your capabilities are. Now, look, I've had coroners that I have come across that are probably some of the finest death investigators I've ever encountered. People that have these really solid medical legal backgrounds that may have been nurses, by the way, in my opinion, I think that nurses probably make the best medical legal death

investigators anywhere. In my recent hospitalization, I was talking to three young nurses that came into the room, by the way, and Kim had to remind me of this because I was on so many narcotics. She said all three of these young nurses came into the room and they wanted to talk to you, but you were on medication and they all listened to body backs. Oh, wow. And so, yeah, I know. And the only thing I remember telling them is nurses make the best death investigators because you're all naturally nosy people.

Wow. And that is the truth. The thing is that now I understand why you have the red cap and jacket in case Kim walks in. You're just Santa. The white beard, white hair. They're just sitting in my lap. We're talking Christmas presents. That's it. There you go. And, you know, nurses, they have to ask questions all the time. And listen, they deal with trauma. Obviously, all you got to do is walk into any emergency room. But, you know, most of the time they deal with trauma. Obviously, all you got to do is walk into any emergency room. But you know, most of the time they deal with natural deaths, Dave. That's what they're dealing with in hospitals. Whether they work in a private doctor's office or whether they work on a med search floor

or in surgery or wherever it is, they're primarily dealing with natural disease pathology. And that's what makes them such great medical legal death investigators. And for me, if I have somebody that has that inquisitive mind, has a baseline of medical knowledge, you can train them with all of the forensic ins and outs, you know, what trace evidence and fingerprints and all that other stuff that we do. And even blood examination at the scene, the dynamics of blood flow and all of that, that can be trained. But it's really hard to find somebody, a clinician, that, you know, is going to show up, or a layperson is going to show up and has that clinical background.

Paramedics make great medical legal death investigators as well. So with that said, here's something that I want to throw out at you, and this has to do with what we're talking about today. Out of all of these practices that I've kind of mentioned and what happens relative to a death investigator and what you need to show up, I can tell you what you did not, Dave, have on your bingo card. You didn't have lawyer. No, I didn't have any of those.

I've learned way too much today that I wish I didn't know. There's things I'm not going to be able to forget that I really like to that are actually legal in this country that I'm going to be honest, if it was a third world nation where they still had, you know, a Dr. Feelgood living in a cave that passes, I would expect it from them, not us, you know? Well, as it turns out, you know, we've got a case and this kind of caught my eye. And it's involving a gentleman who I believe is like 56 years old, Dave. Yes, 56. His name is Pete. That's what his family calls him. It's not his real name. His real name is like Pedto, P-E-D-T-O. Not Pedro, Pedto. And he never went by that. They

called him Pete. But when you got a name like pete and you live in omaha nebraska you're 56 years old you're talking to your sister on the phone planning a road trip to arkansas that you do every year yeah to go visit family yeah and everything's fine you know everything's fine and then in less than a week going from sunday to monday i, in a seven-day period of time to go from that to being wheeled out on a gurney, something's not right, Joe. You don't just drop dead of natural causes at 56 like that, I don't think. Well, let me pause you because, yeah, I mean, there are a number of people over the years, and I've worked on where people will have these certain cardiac events, but he's on the upper end of that area where you're starting to get a little bit beyond that,

and then you would expect somebody to have an MI. What's an MI? I'm sorry, a myocardial infarction. It's a fancy term for a heart attack. Heart attack is not something that physicians use unless they're talking to families. They'll say, well, yeah, he had a heart attack. And that way, they're not going to have to go down the road and explain all of the clinical stuff. They'll talk about how he had a blockage and part of the heart muscle died, which is what an infarcted area in the heart is.

But, you know, Dave, we don't even have that to make a diagnosis with Pete. Okay? Because the coroner in Nebraska, who by law is not merely a coroner, they're a county attorney. Now, it comes down, this law is kind of interesting because you can have a prosecuting attorney, you can have a county attorney. And county attorneys many times are for folks that don't know and you've never worked in government. The county gets sued all the time. So the county actually has legal representation and they become a de facto coroner. It's not de facto. They actually are the coroner.

And it seems like a major. Well, first off, it's a huge conflict of interest because you begin to think about the awesomeness of – is that actually a good word? It is a great word for what you're talking about, Joe. Well, you're talking about death. Yes. And being able to rule that it's a – look, you don't like somebody, hey, that's not a natural death.

I mean, Dave Mack somehow put air in that guy's blood vein, you know, in his veins. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, prove he didn put air in that guy's blood vein, you know, in his veins. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, prove he didn't. Yeah, I know. And so you're with no training or little or no training. And what's amazing about this office is that, you know, we're talking in the greater Omaha area. You were thinking Omaha is, you know, Omaha has a lot of deaths. They have homicides, you know, as any larger city would.

But you begin to think about this and you think, so how does this work? You're the coroner and you're going to certify death. You're going to list manner and cause of death and make a scientific determination relative to that. And it extends out. you're going to list manner and cause of death and make a scientific determination relative to that. And it extends out. It's amazing. Some of the numbers that were kind of floated out, they are way beyond the national average relative to the number of autopsies that this office involves itself in.

And then as you move westward in Nebraska, you're going to get down to like, I think it's like 1% in some of the bodies where you're making pretty broad assumptions scientifically about what was the manner and cause of death. And listen, with Pete, you know, he's found days later. He's deceased in his home and is found dead there. And the family has no answers whatsoever. And the family even asked, they said, are you going to do an autopsy? No. Well, can we at least have a private autopsy done? Which means that you go out and you hire a forensic pathologist or a hospital pathologist, which would generally happen, and you would pay for it.

And sometimes the cost of these things is rather steep. You know, I've seen private autopsies, and again, a lot of it depends upon how involved they are. I've seen them be upwards of a couple of thousand bucks. I've seen them, you know, in the $1,400 range. A lot of it is dependent upon where you are. What access do you have to a pathologist? And if they're willing to do it, hospital pathologists, contrary to what people think, don't like to do autopsies.

You know, they examine tissue that comes in from surgery. Autopsies, they're trained to do them, but it ain't their bag most of the time. It's not like a forensic pathologist who spends their life in the autopsy suite doing autopsy after autopsy. And that's how they build up these huge numbers. I mean, me alone, I'm just this guy. And I've participated in over 7,000 autopsies. I was physically there in the room as autopsies are being done and, you know, around them, assisting, taking notes, doing all the stuff that you do associated with autopsies.

Sounds like working in a factory or something. It's almost like you expect to have a car come by that needs its doors put on. You put the doors on, check the heart, put the wheels on, check the name. Exactly. I've walked into an autopsy suite early in the morning and had bodies lined up. Literally, I can remember being at the state medical examiner's office in Georgia. And I was assigned out there for eight or nine very, very, very long months. And walking in and having, I know there were a couple of days we did 20 autopsies in one day. And those are all in varying degrees of trauma, severity, or complications relative to natural deaths. And so it requires a keen eye. It requires somebody. But now you have the county attorney slash DA that's actually the person who is the certifier of death. And let's just couple that with the idea that if you are a, let's just say you're a prosecutor. Think about this just for a second. You're the prosecutor

and you're also in charge of the examination or certifying the death because obviously the attorney is not going to do the attorney slash coroner is not going to do the autopsy. You're going to have a pathologist that's hired by them to do it. But the pathologist, yeah, they're going to sign off on it, but it's going to be up to the coroner what the manner and cause of death is. Do you see? I mean, and I think most people can appreciate what a conflict that is. That's like if you go to, well, we were talking about Tammy just a moment ago, Tammy Daybell. I talk about her like she's on a first-name basis.

I feel like I got to know her over those years when we were covering the case. But with Utah, thank God they went from Idaho to Utah because Utah has a state medical examiner. There are no coroners. Okay, so there's just one guy that's over all of it? Yeah, and they'll have it broken down in districts. Utah's a big place. They might have satellite down in St. George's, maybe in Utah. And then, of course, you got Salt Lake City and a variety of places. And they're going to have people that do the autopsies there.

They're board certified forensic pathologists. You go to New Mexico, for instance, which is a fine example. They are a state medical examiner's office, no coroners. And the state medical examiner's office is actually managed by the state health department. And that makes sense. I mean, it truly makes sense because most of the deaths that you're going to certify are going to be natural. You go to Oklahoma, you know, Oklahoma is a non-coroner state. You know, it has, it has, you know, it has a state medical exam. But you go north to go to Kansas, you hit Kansas. Well, buddy, Kansas is a corner state. Nebraska is a corner state. South Dakota, corner state.

North Dakota is a corner state. Montana, corner state. Wyoming, corner state. Colorado, corner state. So you can go down the list. Then you get to these kind of anomalous places like California and people go on and on about how progressive California is and all these sorts of things. Did you know in a lot of places in California, the coroner and the sheriff are one and the same? No. Yeah. So you think about that and how bizarre that is. So, you know, back to Pete in Nebraska, you're thinking, well, that's not surprising, you know, when you put it into that context, you know. And listen, this is nothing new under the sun, Dave. You know, I think it was, I might get this date wrong. Prior to the Civil War, this is how far back this goes. Did you know the state of Maryland, they first had a statute that was written up, and it's the first time they had coroners. They no longer have coroner in Maryland.

They have state medical examiner. Matter of fact, I think that's where Dr. Zumwalt was. And he was one of the finest forensic minds anywhere. But anyway, back in 1860, they saw the need back then to say, you know what? We need to bring a physician in to consult. Wow. All right. That's an awful idea. That's 1860, Dave.

Once a year, I lose track. It's it's 2025 2025 we're in george jetson time now you know we're supposed to have flying cars and we we still have these weird amalgams and you you know you you go all around the corner the the states and things are so kind of out of you go to texas and the justice of the peace is the coroner. You know, and so you have all of these oddities. Now, certain things have evolved. You know, Tennessee, for instance, has gotten rid of coroners. You know, the coroner is the final person, you know, is the final ruler. I mean, look at what we're dealing with with Ellen Greenberg right now. OK, because, you know, with with Ellen, they had they had stated that, I think, in one of the early rulings in this case that, listen, state can't tell the medical examiner how to rule.

Right. OK. They cannot compel him to change his decision. They cannot. No, this is it's not a law enforcement entity. It's a separate entity there. Okay. And you are dealing with the Philly medical examiner, which is interesting because Pennsylvania is one of those states that has both medical examiners and coroners. It's a weird. So you'll get these kind of weird, weird mixtures that are all over the place. You know, you go to Ohio, for instance, Cuyahoga County, I think that's Cleveland, if I'm not mistaken.

They have a medical examiner. But you can go other places and they'll have coroners. You go to New York, again, a state that's so, so progressive, right? Well, they have the OCME in New York City, but there's a hell of a lot more to New York than just Manhattan and New York City itself. They've got coroners all over the state. But you go to Virginia, and Virginia has a state medical examiner system. They no longer have coroners there. So it's kind of hit or miss.

And with Pete's family in Nebraska, you sit there and you think, well, what's left for him? What's left for him? Where do they go? And of course, unfortunately for them, they don't have too many choices. There's a term that kids use nowadays. My college students have used it for a number of years. I don't feel comfortable because I'm not quite hip enough to do it, but I like the term, and it says, I'll holla back up. And with Pete Chappell in Omaha, that's what he was known for, Dave. He had a catchphrase where he would say, I'll holla at you later. And he was known for this.

He was beloved by his family members who cared deeply for him. He lived in public housing called the Underwood Tower there in Omaha. And here's what's interesting, Dave. Pete was found dead on a welfare check back on July the 3rd of 2024. And the police report, notice I didn't say coroner report. The police report stated that there was no foul play. And the police report stated that he died of natural causes. Now, I don't know about you, but the question I would have is what qualifies a police officer to say that an individual died of natural causes? Sounds to me like any corner that you have, you can just kind of throw that out the window.

You don't need a corner. You'll just call the local constabulary, the local cops that have just come out of the academy or whatever the case might be, and have them make the ruling. I mean, because that's what it comes down to. And there is a high – there is, I guess, maybe as far as probability goes, there's a chance that maybe Pete died of natural causes. How soon after he entered that apartment did he, in fact, pass away? But, you know, Pete's death is horrific relative to the family because these things, at least in my estimation, will never be put to rest. There are critical moments that we come across in forensics, death investigation, where we have to be brave enough to make a decision to sally forth into maybe the protest of a family or getting past what's inconvenient for you. I look back and I reflect upon that young man all those years ago when I pulled that man out of the bottom of that pool.

And I think that if I'd had the intestinal fortitude at that moment in time and had stood full face against the family and be as respectful as I could and said, no, we're going to go ahead and do an autopsy. Six months later, I wouldn't have been deposed along with everybody else that was involved in the case in the office. Sometimes you just have to go with the science and make a strong decision and make sure that you're trained up in the right way so that when it comes down to it, you can do the most important thing of all, and that's provide answers to not just the family, but the general public. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags.