Preface
In my memory, as I write, there is a montage of tragic scenes. The body of the beautiful Marilyn Monroe, her hand outstretched in death toward the telephone by her bed. Robert F. Kennedy, so vibrant and active in life, felled by an assassin’s bullet in a hotel kitchen. The grim scene at the secluded estate in Bel-Air where the pregnant Sharon Tate lay brutally massacred. The wastebasket in the hotel room where Janis Joplin met her death. The charred ruins of a little house in Los Angeles where the kidnappers of Patty Hearst perished in a hail of police bullets and a raging fire. The bizarre evidence at the scene of Albert Dekker’s “suicide.” The luxurious—and strangely tidy—apartment in which William Holden was discovered four days after he had died. The red down jacket that Natalie Wood wore when her body was found in the rain-swept waters off Catalina Island. The tiny pinpoints of blood on John Belushi’s arm that revealed he had not died of a heart attack.
Because my jurisdiction as Chief Medical Examiner/Coroner of the County of Los Angeles included the motion picture capital, Hollywood, my professional career has been highlighted by famous and controversial cases—controversies that persist even today. Did Marilyn Monroe commit suicide or were the drugs that killed her injected into her body by someone else? Did Sirhan Sirhan or another gunman fire the bullet which killed Robert Kennedy? Could the knives used in the murder of Sharon Tate be identified and traced to the Manson gang if they were never found? What were the real circumstances behind the drug-related death of Janis Joplin? Were the kidnappers of Patty Hearst victims of police brutality or of their own revolutionary zeal? How and why did Albert Dekker and William Holden die? How did Natalie Wood spend the last terrifying moments of her life? Was John Belushi murdered?
I conducted the forensic investigations of each of these cases. It was my job, as mandated by law, to establish the “manner, cause and circumstance” of death and to report my findings to the press and the public. But until now I have been unable to tell the full story behind my investigations. I am writing about them here from my own point of view as a coroner, not only to shed new light on the many troublesome questions that still remain, but to describe the techniques and goals of the little-known profession of forensic medicine itself.
In every death, there is a mystery until the cause is known. Was it natural or unnatural, a homicide, a suicide, an accident? A coroner is, if you will, a medical detective who is specifically trained to solve that mystery. He supervises the collection of evidence and interviews with witnesses at the scene. He is in charge of the autopsy on the body. And from other forensic specialists he assembles laboratory reports of the presence of minute bits of fiber or metal, the telltale traces of trauma in human tissue, and the characteristics of bone fragments, teeth, blood and body fluids—not only to determine the cause of death, but also to establish the identity of an unknown victim and, sometimes, of the person or persons who may have murdered him. Among my other cases, my staff and I were called upon to identify the badly burned and dismembered casualties of the disastrous collision of a jet airliner and a fighter plane. In a lucky flash of intuition, I was able to determine the cause of death of a young Hollywood actress who appeared to have been shot by a nonexistent bullet. And more than once I was able to uncover evidence of murder in so-called “perfect crimes.”
Forensic medicine has always been a fascinating and challenging profession for me. For I believe that every coroner performs a very necessary service both for his community and for society as a whole. I also strongly believe in the independence of the coroner’s office as a safeguard for the people. A coroner must be gutsy. His statements and rulings may not always be popular, but he must stand firm in his conviction and tell it as it is.
In every death there are lessons to be learned for the living. Teaching those lessons and translating them into laws are the heart of the coroner’s work. And where death stubbornly remains a mystery, we are guided by the thought expressed in a haiku I wrote not long ago:
The principle of forensic medicine.
There is no road to follow.
It is up to us to carve a new road.