December 6, 2023 • 39 mins
In this episode of "Zone 7," Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum, sits down with Forensic Pathologist, Dr. Michael Baden.
Together, they discuss Dr. Baden’s journey from childhood, to internal medicine to becoming a forensic pathologist. Dr. Baden also talks about his role in cases like the Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations, George Floyd's case, and Jeffrey Epstein's death with a focus on the evolution of Forensic Pathology.
Show Notes:
- [0:00] Welcome back to Zone 7 with Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum
- [1:40] Sheryl introduces the guest, Dr. Michael Baden to the listeners
- [4:15] Question: What made you go into pathology and not work with live patients?
- [8:25] “This is the place where death delights to help the living.”
- [10:55] Dr. Baden discusses the autopsy process
- [12:30] Question: How heavily do you rely, personally, on the police and detectives and the original police report and things like that?
- [13:00] Discussion on excited delirium
- [18:00] The iPhone has changed investigations forever
- [19:44] Question: Can you talk a little bit about your involvement in studying both President Kennedy and Dr. King's assassinations?
- [25:00] Question: How has your job changed your life or the way you live your life?
- [33:00] Dr. Baden gives an overview of Jeffrey Epstein’s death
- [39:15] “Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there is also a love of humanity.” -H
- Thanks for listening to another episode! If you’re loving the show and want to help grow the show, please head over to Itunes and leave a rating and review! How to Leave an Apple Podcast Review: First, Open the podcast app on your iPhone, Mac, or iPad. Then, hit the “Search” tab at the bottom right-hand corner of the page and search for Zone 7. Select the podcast, scroll down to find the subheading “Ratings & Reviews”. and select “Write a Review.” Next, select the number of stars you’d like to leave. Please choose 5 stars! Using the text box which says “Title,” write a title for your review. Then in the text box, write the review itself. The review can be up to 300 words long, but doesn’t need to be much more than: “Love the show! Thanks!” or Once you’re done select “Send” in the upper right-hand corner.
---
Sheryl “Mac” McCollum is an Emmy Award winning CSI, a writer for CrimeOnLine, Forensic and Crime Scene Expert for Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, and a CSI for a metro Atlanta Police Department. She is the co-author of the textbook., Cold Case: Pathways to Justice. Sheryl is also the founder and director of the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute, a collaboration between universities and colleges that brings researchers, practitioners, students and the criminal justice community together to advance techniques in solving cold cases and assist families and law enforcement with solvability factors for unsolved homicides, missing persons, and kidnapping cases.
You can connect and learn more about Sheryl’s work by visiting the CCIRI website https://coldcasecrimes.org
Social Links:
- Email: coldcase2004@gmail.com
- Twitter: @ColdCaseTips
- Facebook: @sheryl.mccollum
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Miss Powell, Miss Powell. This booming voice came all the
way across the department store, and my mom and I
turned to see this tall, slender man with a full
beard and mustache running toward her. I could tell she
did not readily recognize him, and he exclaimed as he
(00:31):
got closer to her, it's me.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
It's me, Scottie. And she went, oh, my word, Scotty.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
And as he got to her, he picked her up
and just spun her around in this bear hug, and
I'm like, what in the world.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
And then he said, do you remember me right the
seventh grade? And she said, of course, Scotty, Scottie Rollins,
I remember you. And he just hugged her again, and
he said, you were my favorite teacher of all times.
You have no idea how much you did for me. Well,
apparently he was kind of a trouble kid.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Had not a great home life, and as my mom
would say, was kind of on the wrong track. But
she knew how smart he was. And he said to her,
I'm a doctor now at Emory Hospital. Well, my mom
was beaming with pride because she had always seen it
in him. She knew it, and she winked at me
(01:29):
later and said I was right about another one today, y'all.
I am so excited to have doctor Michael Boden with
US America's position. He's a board certified forensic pathologist. He's
worked numerous high profile deaths. He was the host of
(01:50):
HBO's Autopsy. He was the chief medical Examiner for New
York City for a little bit, and he was chairman
of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. He looked at
the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the assassination of
doctor Martin Luther King. He's worked cases that you know,
such as OJ Simpson, John Belushi, the murder of George Floyd,
(02:14):
Aaron Hernandez, and others. The people in the media sometimes
refer to him as a death correspondent. But just like
my mother knew Scottie was destined for good things, I
believe doctor Biden's mama.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Knew that he was.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
To Please help me. Welcome doctor Michael Biden.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Thank you, Cheryl. Great to be to see you again
and be with you. Well.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
It's great to see you again. Last time we were together
with your lovely bride. I just did not have enough
time with y'all.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
That's all.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
There was to it, But I want people to know
something because I think this is so important. As a
mama and as a former college professor. You got into
a little bit of trouble as a kid yourself, didn't you.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Oh yeah, you do good research. I was a reform
in school as a kid, and I don't remember all
the details, but my parents had a great deal of
trouble dealing with me when I was growing up in
the Bronx. At six years of age, I was kicked
out of kindergarten in the Bronx public school system. I
(03:17):
guess were being disruptive.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
But your mom always said you should be a doctor.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
She saw it.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
She knew you're absolutely right. And there were two things
about it. Actually, she was the guiding force that I
should be a doctor. That's what she wanted. And in
those days when I grew up in the Bronx, doctors
made house calls and there was a pediatrician doctor named
(03:44):
Aaron and her last name Aaron, who came every time
I was sick, not sick, orphan, but and I was
very impressed with him. He was amazing, coming and looking
in my throat and taking out my councils on the
kitchen table in those days is they used to do that.
But it was my mother, who, like your mother, was
the guy. They knew things in advance.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Absolutely. So since you wanted to be a doctor and
you were, you know, enamored with doctor Aaron, what made
you go into pathology and not work with live patience.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
That's a very perceptive question, because my mother thought that
doctors made people healthy and that I would be an
internal medicine doctor. When I was admitted to NYU School
of Medicine in Manhattan. I went City College, New York,
admitted to ny Medical School, and I wanted to be
(04:43):
an internist. It so happened that at that time NYU
was still was associated with Bellevue Hospital right next door,
and the morgue for the medical with NYU Medical School,
for Bellevue Hospital and for the Medical Examiner's Office of
(05:06):
New York City was in the basement Bellevue Hospital, and
there was a morgue in a special pathology building at
Bellevue on of Bellevue Hospital grounds. As a medical students,
we were doing autops do dis sections of bodies that
have been soaked in from aldehyde for a year or so.
(05:26):
There was shriveled up bodies, and they didn't really look
like bodies. But in the Bellevue Morgue it was the
people looked like they were alive yesterday, and it was
amazed me of the wonders of the inside body, but
(05:48):
was also interesting to bring me up to date a
little bit. The first time I went down to see
an autopsy, there was a line of doctors in white
coats regular outside the medical the autopsy room, and I said,
I'm a medical student, and I was told I can
go see an autopsy. And when the doctors say, yeah,
(06:10):
you should, you should. There's a good place to see it,
but not on this body because it looks like it's
small pox. This is in nineteen fifty five. Nineteen fifty five,
I'm a first few medical student people are the doctors
are outside of the medical of the autopsy room because
(06:30):
they won't go inside because small pox is contagious. I
went in. I said, look, I'm told I could go in,
and I've got everybody had the smallpox vaccinations in those days,
little punctures on the outside of the upper arm. And
they went in and there was doctor Milton Helperrin, who
was the chief medical examiner, and nobody was there to
(06:52):
help them with the autopsy because everybody was afraid of
that might be small pox. So I helped him by
moving around the lights that he would using to take
photographs it looked like somebody with all these heemorrhagic parks
on it on their body, and helped him. It turned
out that wasn't smallpox, it was hemorrhagic chicken pox. But
because I was there and I helped him, he sort
(07:14):
of immediately took me under his wing and I could
go down anytime and see an autopsy. They taught me
how to do autopsies, and that's what really got me
interested in pathology rather than in internal medicine.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Well, you know, I often tell people the morg offers
mystery that even a hospital didn't offer, and it gives
you a chance, in your case, especially to be somewhat
fearless in your research because you walked.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Into a room.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
I mean, it could have been anything, but you did
it anyway for the greater good, the greater knowledge, And
I think there's no other place than a morgue to
get some of those answers, especially for your investigation.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
New building of the New York City Medical Examiner's office
a few years after I graduated, has over its admission
in Latin in the Latin phrase let talking cease. This
is the place where death delights to help the minute
the living translated loosely from Latin, this is a place
(08:22):
where death delights to help the living, because we learn
all kinds of new things from the dead body, both
about disease and how people how death can be avoided.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
And I think a lot of people don't understand that
if it weren't for medical examiners, we wouldn't have airbags.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
You're absolutely right. The recognition there was a high incidence
of death, and this goes back to the nineteen fifties.
People who died in auto accidents. A large percentage of
them died because of facial and head injuries do to
sudden stopping and UH, the head going against the dashboard,
(09:05):
and we would have people who would would have would
have in the foreheads, UH, the fractures and imprints of
the radio knobs that were on the dashboard at that time,
for example, and the very fact that holding the person
stationary by belt by UH could could avoid these deaths.
(09:28):
Prevent these deaths came from the autopsy and all. While
we were doing that kind of research, there was a
great deal of research search going on in the autopsy
room between Bellevue Hospital, n YU Medical School, and medical
examiners about the effects of cigarettes inhaling cigarettes. And it
(09:50):
was at that time also that the realization and understanding
was made smoking cigarettes wound up what people getting lung
cancer twenty thirty years later and led to all kinds
of prohibitions and the statements on the cigarette tacks and
all that.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Especially when you think in the early years, doctors promoted
cigarettes smoking to relax you.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Oh, yes, yes, And I still have a poster here
of Ronald Reagan when he was an actor. Doctors and
actors who were promoting lucky Strike.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Well, let's talk about your process when you take a
second look as a medical examiner. Now they've already had
an autopsy, but you're coming and doing your own work.
What is your process? How do you start that?
Speaker 3 (10:45):
The process is that somebody, usually a family member, is
concerned about the cause of death, concerned that the people
doing the first or autopsy, the medical examiner, the pathologist,
or the medical examiner is biased or is not knowledgeable
(11:12):
enough to give the proper diagnosis. That often happens with
the natural deaths. When the natural deaths of persons at
the hospital for weeks and individual dies, the first autopsy
doesn't show the cause of death. It's the cause of
death is still unknown, so the family member wants to
(11:34):
get a second autopsy like more experienced people they think
who might be able to find the cause of death.
And also they will suspect that the pathologists in the hospital.
It may be the autopsy may show the cause of death,
but it's not favorable for the hospital. So they're saying
they can't find the cause of death. So one way
(11:59):
we get contact. The family member next to the kid
wants to know what the cause of death is that
they don't think the hospital did it right. Now, when
is a forensic autopsy, which is most of the time
we do second autopsies. There are many families and many
defense lawyers especially who feel that medical examiner is a
(12:23):
forensic pathologists are bias toward police and aren't going to
give it a straight answer if the favor if it
doesn't favor the prosecutor of police theory of a case.
If it's a homicide, for example.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Now, how heavily do you rely personally on the police
and detectives and I would say the original police report
and things like that.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Cheryl, this is what you're so great. You have hit
at the heart of problems that are happening now, the divisiveness,
the fact that today I see in the news that
California has passed the law preventing the use of excited
(13:08):
delirium on death certificates, rightfully so when people died during
encounters with police. There are only about six hundred forensic
pathologists in the United States full time forensic pathologists, out
of about almost a million doctors. It's a very small
(13:29):
specialty US forensic pathologists. We're the only ones can do
autopsies on unnatural deaths. Ninety three percent of US die
of natural diseases, heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, cancer, that's the
expertise of the hospital pathologists natural disease. The expertise of
(13:55):
the forensic pathologist goes further in training. Accident, suicide, homicide,
and drug abuses fit in there, and mistakes are made
because oftentimes forensic pathologists doesn't do the isn't available. Some
states don't have a forensic pathologist in the host state
and the autopsy is done by a hospital pathologists who's
(14:18):
not trained in unnatural debt, but the forensic pathologists. When
I came in initially in the New York City Medical
Examiner's Office finishing my internship residency Chief Residency in Pathology,
I then chose my having worked in the with the
medical examiners, to become a forensic pathologist. They want a
(14:41):
forensic pathology. The chief medical Examiner, the disc Attorney's office,
the chief of Police met with me and two other
people starting in the New York City office, and the
first thing they tell us, we're glad you're here. We
want you to know that we're a team where we're
(15:04):
like a three legged stool. The police, the district attorney,
and the medical examiners are working together to determine what
happened to the dead body, and we're working as a
team to convict the bad guy who's done it. We're
the good the good guys on this team, and we're
(15:29):
have to make sure that justice is done and that
we're all working together. And we start out working closely
with the police and district attorneys. So we work up
and we train very closely with police. I have found
over the years that this is dangerous. Most of the
(15:51):
time the police are right, sometimes they aren't right in
the air in their investigations, so that those who fortunately
haven't had to deal with it. Excited delirium is a
diagnosis developed in the nineteen eighties that when somebody dies
during a police encounter, a physical police encounter, during the
(16:16):
restraint while they're trying to put handcuffs on, a cause
of death isn't found that autopsy. There's no fractures and
no neck injuries. The decedent produced too much adrenaline. He
was in a fight, he was going to struggle to
produce too much adrenaline, and he died, and the cause
of death is excited delirium was named as the cause
(16:40):
of death. It turns out that's it's a motique diagnosis
only applied by medical examiners because we're the ones who
determined the cause of death. And he said to a
person who died during physically while being restrained by police
and turn out to be largely black male decedents, it's
(17:05):
a biased kind of racist considered a racist diagnosis by
the and now just recently the American Medical Association and
others and still being used. And if something is called
excited delirium, that's considered a natural death and that's the
end of the investigation. The police don't have to investigate
(17:25):
it further. The district attorney doesn't have to investigate it further,
because the district attorney doesn't want to really investigate the
local police deaths if that could be avoided. And everybody's
happy about it, except the family members. And that's what
eventually I show led to the whole Floyd upset because
(17:51):
the initial medical examiner indicated that the police restraint had
nothing to do with the cause of death. The police
and the EMMY backed it up fully, and the family
and the family in the community made a fuss about
it and led to second autopsy. I was involved in
the second autopsy. But that's all changed largely because of
(18:16):
the iPhone. Twenty seven is when the iPhone with the
photos was a photograph possibilities was introduced, and that changed
things because what was captured on video often turned on
out to be what the police reported because the death
(18:36):
was and it's led to a lot of the division
among medical examiners and among them in the communities.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
I don't think there's any question that the I phone
in the video capability has assisted so greatly. And you know,
to me, you can't watch that video with George Floyd
and not see a very slow murder.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Before the iPhone, whatever the police said was just adopted
as being the truth, not the family. The iPhone has
changed that.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
So I want to head to nineteen seventy seven with you,
and I want to quote you. You said at one time,
even when an autopsy is done, the speculation doesn't stop.
I thought that was such a great quote, especially if
you're talking about President John Kennedy and doctor Martin Luther King.
(19:44):
Can you talk a little bit about your involvement with
studying those assassinations, because for me, President Kennedy and doctor King,
there's so many similarities. I mean, they were both shot
with a long gun by a lone gunman in the
middle of the day from a structor. They both left
(20:05):
weapons behind, both weapons had a partial palm print. They
were both shot from a distance. They were both surrounded
by people they trusted. They were both at the height
of their career, they were world leaders, they were both
public murders, and they were both caught on film A
little bit so to me, It's almost like if you're
(20:29):
studying both of these assassinations, some of it mirrors each other.
So I just want to hear from you the expert.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Now the differences though it happened. When Kennedy was assassinated,
he goes into the Texas hospital, is pronounced dead. They're
The surgeon who attended to him was then interviewed says
there was a bullet hole in the neck entrance bullet
hole in the neck, and that was the reason that
(20:58):
he died. The body is then illegally taken to Washington,
d C. Because the autopsy should have been done legally
in Texas. When somebody dies, the jurisdiction of the medical
examiner corner investigation depends on where a person dies. Wherever
(21:23):
the person dies, that jurisdiction does the autopsy examination. In
this situation, for various reasons, the body was taken up
to d C improperly. The Secret Service said that well,
they were concerned that maybe whoever shot Kennedy would also
(21:43):
shot shoot his wife or something, and they wanted to
get him out of the end. There was a confrontation
in the hospital more between the Secret Service and the
Medical Examiner's office before it was taken the body was
taken out. And I mentioned that because when the autopsy
was done indeed c by a naval excellent naval Navy physician,
(22:13):
hospital physician, he looked at the body, did not call
the doctors in Parkment Hospital in Texas to see what
did you do to the body and treatment, which medical
examiners always do because if you do, if you provide
medications or draw blood, it leaves needle marks and we
(22:36):
can't tell do the autopsy who did the needle marks,
drug addict or the doctor. They looked the same. In
this instance, the one doctor the sergeant looked at the neck,
saw there was a perforation of bullet hole of entrance,
and then did an incision through a tracheostomy, decision to
(22:57):
put down a breathing device. We medically. The doctor in
d C in Part who then brought to do the autopsy,
didn't appreciate that there was a hole in the neck.
He just thought it was the doctor did it. He didn't.
You could see it if you were closely, but it
(23:18):
was cut through. But that wasn't what he was used
to look at, look at cancer cells or so he
turns the body over to examine the back, which is proper,
and the autopsy always have to look at the back
and sees a bullet hole in the back. Uh, the
doctors in Park in Texas didn't do that because as
(23:39):
soon as they did their attempts to revive the president,
he didn't get revived and he died right right there
without the inspecting the back. He then announces in Washington,
d C. That there's a bullet hole in the back.
He doesn't appreciate that's the exit room. You see. The
(24:00):
bullgoes in the front, comes out the back, and he
announced it that there's an entrance wound in the back.
He doesn't know anything about an entrance wound in the front.
But the newspapers immediately immediately say, hey, he was shot
once in the front and once in the back. Two shooters. Therefore,
day one, Day two, there was a concern that this
(24:22):
was raised, that this was two shooters. Now. In addition
to that, when I grew up, there was a program
that we all use kids loved called The Lone Ranger.
The Lone Ranger was the one good guy who could
beat up lots of bad guys. He was my hero
a lot of heroes. It was on radio every evening.
(24:44):
The lone ranger. Part of that is and part of
that kids and grant if you have a good guy
like Kennedy being killed, that one bad guy can't kill
the president, and we have a concept then it's changing
even slowly nowadays that you need more than one bad
(25:05):
guy to kill a good guy.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
And it's interesting you say that about people not wanting
to accept one person can do great harm. You had
the same issue with OJ Simpson. People said there had
to be more than one person. One person couldn't kill
two people like that. Of course one person could tell
you kill two people like that.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
That's right, And I think with OJ Simpson there's still
a division.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Well, going back to doctor King, there was some black
powder around his neck and a lot of people thought, well,
he had to be shot up close then because that's gunpowder.
But that's not necessarily the case at all. We know that.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
Yeah, with doctor King, the initial concerns there was that
when the shooting occurred. The moment the shooting occurred, there
were witnesses on the terrorists on the motel terriffs with
King who pointed to different spots where it came from.
So that from that point there were newspaper articles about
(26:06):
more than one shooter.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Given your career, and you have looked at death more
than most people would ever be able to look at death,
and you've examined it, and you've researched it, and you've
given your opinion. How has your job changed your life
or the way you live your life?
Speaker 3 (26:26):
The most common misapprehension I think that people have, and
this you can see this not only from just thoughts,
but also from the old movies, that the Morgue is
a desperately terrible place to be working in, and frightening
and haunted and the ugly place to work in, and
(26:49):
it must make people depressed. I shouted out, as we
alluded to with my mother's idea that I would be
a doctor for living people, and I started an internal
medicine before switching to pathology. And the most troubling thing
(27:11):
to me, upsetting thing to me treating patients with those
people who are dying, that we could not help people
dying of cancer and people dying of brain damage. That
we weren't too familiar with diagnosing Alzheimer's disease then, but
(27:35):
we knew that people were getting older and confused, and
nothing that we could do about it. That was very
upsetting and troublesome going to the morgue and dealing with
a dead person right off. There's no pain involved. That
person on the autopsy table has no pain that we
(28:04):
have to deal with. And what our job is to
see how that body, how the autopsy will help the
family number one and society number two when they say
society society because like with covid or with smallpox decades ago,
(28:31):
if we were to to diagnose such causes of dead
that we know are very contagious, we're part of the
public health system to be able to try and limit
the number of people are going to get infected. But
you don't want to know to limit people until you
know they died from something that's contagious. That's public health.
(28:53):
When somebody dies of suicide, we try to find out
where there are any ways preventing it. This has been
a big issue in prisons. For example, I became got
involved with checking all prison deaths and jail deaths in
New York State after the Attica uprising because one of
(29:21):
the reasons for Attica in nineteen seventy one, where forty
three people died, including ten guards, was caused because the
inmates felt that when prisoners died the death of bad medicine,
of being beaten up by the gods guards, of suicide,
(29:45):
there was all covered. Everybody was called death from heart
disease and was covered up. And so it required that
Governor Rockefell passed cybal law that created a commission to
look into every death that occurs in New York State
(30:09):
and in prison jail at lock up and immediately when
we're able to get to do autopsies to get data
on all of the deaths were never available before we
could find out that, hey, there are ways to prevent
the deaths. Example, we found out that the most common
(30:29):
cause of death in those days was suicide, suicide by hanging.
The hanging occurred in the bathroom when there were no
gods present and then hang up to the shower curtain rods.
So once we found that out, we passed, we advised
and passed the legislation that all of the shower rods
(30:52):
should be collapsible so that if they go in there's
nobody watching them and they want to hang up, they
they can't cominsuicide. And that's true. We found out that
there was another looking at all the deaths, and I
say all the deaths in the prisons when people died
(31:12):
during tear gassing because they were uncontrollable, they weren't begging themselves.
A large number of deaths occurred because they were being
they couldn't breathe, they were being choked to death during
the tear gassing. And so we passed legislatives, passed rules
(31:36):
and regulations that tear gassing has to be watched by
a supervisor and it can't be done by the guards
who were going in there with tear gas because they
had a bad episode with the individual that cut out
all tear gassing deaths that were supervised. Same thing I
(31:57):
think happens now with deaths during during police encounters. That
in order to cut down on the death the medical
examiners can help by getting a database together. Remember all
those deaths during police restraint, great majority of them are
(32:20):
reported to the medical examiners, and so if we were
able to get some kind of a national database on
how people died during police encounters, we'd be able to
develop some kind of strategies to diminish the deaths. Well.
As happened in New York in the prison situation, very
(32:40):
few deaths now with more with more prisoners in New
York State prisons than were present time of Attica, when
they were a third as many inmates.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
President These stats that you know dis off the top
of your head because you live. That's why when you
look at a case like Jeffrey Epstein, you know that
there's something really unusual with the breaks in that neck
that if you've never seen it before, why would it
(33:13):
just be so easily accepted.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
Well, that Epstein's death is very interesting because he died
in a federal jail, federal prison jail really in the Manhattan.
The New York state law didn't cover that jail. If
he had died in a New York state jail, the
(33:37):
commission I was on would automatically investigate the death. There
all kinds of people to do investigations. Epstein died in
a federal prison. Therefore, the FBI investigates the death, and
the Justice Department investigates the death. They do not have
much experience investigating suicidal deaths. Number one, the New York
(34:00):
City Police do it. For example, And when the first
autopsy was done, though it showed that I was present
at the autopsy that there were three fractures and the
atoms apple and the hyoid bone which are just above it,
which is typical for homicidal strangulation. It's atypical for hanging
(34:23):
because in hanging the rope, as with Epstein, it would
have gone up under the jawbone. It's people hanging. The
literature slips up under the mandible the jawbone, and that's
where you see the mark. With Epstein, he had the
(34:43):
mark in the middle of the neck over the Adams
apple and there were three fractures, which extremely rare, which
I've never seen and I haven't seen reported in suicidal hanging.
And it turned out later which we just received as
(35:06):
the result of the Justice Department investigation, that he was
found seated. It wasn't even hanging up. With hanging up,
there's more pressure on the neck than being seated because
there's a less weight, and so it is even less
(35:27):
likely to get any fracture seated than hanging. And the
problem was, though, that the Justice Department and the FBI
investigation didn't focus on differences of opinion or so they
focus on security, and according to their investigation, nobody had
(35:50):
Nobody else had investigat access to Epstein. Therefore he must
have done it himself, which you know, which is powerful
evidence if it's true. But the fact is that the
(36:10):
videos of his cell and of his cell tier weren't
working that day and that night, and the two correct
the three or four correction officers were scheduled to watch it,
to watch the eight cells where they were special housing
(36:34):
didn't do it. They didn't do any And see there's
another situation where that probably happens. A lot I gather
from the investigation, where the guards that are supposed to
make fifteen minutes or half hour rounds don't make the rounds.
But because this was a prominent person, it came to
light and therefore there's established a certain amount of different
(37:00):
is an opinion. In my opinion about Epstein, his fractures
are much more typical for homicidal strangulation and not ligature
hanging suicide. But maybe there is some kind of There
always can be exceptions. But the general feeling has been,
(37:25):
the general media acceptance has been that it was suicide
because of the investigation by the FBI and Justice Department
into the security of his inability to are the people's
inability to get into do it to him.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Well, I often tell people, if you want to know
what's going on in your town, look in the jail.
And if you want to know the problems, as the
medical examiner, because they're going to know about the drugs
before anybody else's disease. Jesus homicides, car crashes. So again, doctor,
I appreciate so much you being with us and sharing
(38:08):
so many things with us, not just your career and
your opinions, but also you know your upbringing, because I
think your story of getting kicked out of preschool and
going on to be the top of your class at
NYU Medical School is just remarkable and it just goes
(38:29):
to show again, don't count nobody out just because they
may be misbehaving at six or fourteen or twenty, give
them a chance to correct that, you know, path and
you might just be surprised and in your case become
a world renowned forensic pathologist.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Well, I must say I very much appreciate you your
mom's inside. It's the Scotty that Scotti also had problems. Entirely,
I became a doctor amazing.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Thank you, Cheryl, absolutely thank you again, and please give
Linda my regards and I hope to see y'all and
talk again very soon.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Y'all.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
I'm going to end Zone seven like I always do,
with a quote. Wherever the art of medicine is loved,
there is also a love of humanity Hippocrates. I'm Cheryl
McCollum and this is Zone seven.
Miss Powell, Miss Powell. This booming voice came all the
way across the department store, and my mom and I
turned to see this tall, slender man with a full
beard and mustache running toward her. I could tell she
did not readily recognize him, and he exclaimed as he
(00:31):
got closer to her, it's me.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
It's me, Scottie. And she went, oh, my word, Scotty.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
And as he got to her, he picked her up
and just spun her around in this bear hug, and
I'm like, what in the world.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
And then he said, do you remember me right the
seventh grade? And she said, of course, Scotty, Scottie Rollins,
I remember you. And he just hugged her again, and
he said, you were my favorite teacher of all times.
You have no idea how much you did for me. Well,
apparently he was kind of a trouble kid.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Had not a great home life, and as my mom
would say, was kind of on the wrong track. But
she knew how smart he was. And he said to her,
I'm a doctor now at Emory Hospital. Well, my mom
was beaming with pride because she had always seen it
in him. She knew it, and she winked at me
(01:29):
later and said I was right about another one today, y'all.
I am so excited to have doctor Michael Boden with
US America's position. He's a board certified forensic pathologist. He's
worked numerous high profile deaths. He was the host of
(01:50):
HBO's Autopsy. He was the chief medical Examiner for New
York City for a little bit, and he was chairman
of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. He looked at
the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the assassination of
doctor Martin Luther King. He's worked cases that you know,
such as OJ Simpson, John Belushi, the murder of George Floyd,
(02:14):
Aaron Hernandez, and others. The people in the media sometimes
refer to him as a death correspondent. But just like
my mother knew Scottie was destined for good things, I
believe doctor Biden's mama.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Knew that he was.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
To Please help me. Welcome doctor Michael Biden.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Thank you, Cheryl. Great to be to see you again
and be with you. Well.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
It's great to see you again. Last time we were together
with your lovely bride. I just did not have enough
time with y'all.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
That's all.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
There was to it, But I want people to know
something because I think this is so important. As a
mama and as a former college professor. You got into
a little bit of trouble as a kid yourself, didn't you.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Oh yeah, you do good research. I was a reform
in school as a kid, and I don't remember all
the details, but my parents had a great deal of
trouble dealing with me when I was growing up in
the Bronx. At six years of age, I was kicked
out of kindergarten in the Bronx public school system. I
(03:17):
guess were being disruptive.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
But your mom always said you should be a doctor.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
She saw it.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
She knew you're absolutely right. And there were two things
about it. Actually, she was the guiding force that I
should be a doctor. That's what she wanted. And in
those days when I grew up in the Bronx, doctors
made house calls and there was a pediatrician doctor named
(03:44):
Aaron and her last name Aaron, who came every time
I was sick, not sick, orphan, but and I was
very impressed with him. He was amazing, coming and looking
in my throat and taking out my councils on the
kitchen table in those days is they used to do that.
But it was my mother, who, like your mother, was
the guy. They knew things in advance.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Absolutely. So since you wanted to be a doctor and
you were, you know, enamored with doctor Aaron, what made
you go into pathology and not work with live patience.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
That's a very perceptive question, because my mother thought that
doctors made people healthy and that I would be an
internal medicine doctor. When I was admitted to NYU School
of Medicine in Manhattan. I went City College, New York,
admitted to ny Medical School, and I wanted to be
(04:43):
an internist. It so happened that at that time NYU
was still was associated with Bellevue Hospital right next door,
and the morgue for the medical with NYU Medical School,
for Bellevue Hospital and for the Medical Examiner's Office of
(05:06):
New York City was in the basement Bellevue Hospital, and
there was a morgue in a special pathology building at
Bellevue on of Bellevue Hospital grounds. As a medical students,
we were doing autops do dis sections of bodies that
have been soaked in from aldehyde for a year or so.
(05:26):
There was shriveled up bodies, and they didn't really look
like bodies. But in the Bellevue Morgue it was the
people looked like they were alive yesterday, and it was
amazed me of the wonders of the inside body, but
(05:48):
was also interesting to bring me up to date a
little bit. The first time I went down to see
an autopsy, there was a line of doctors in white
coats regular outside the medical the autopsy room, and I said,
I'm a medical student, and I was told I can
go see an autopsy. And when the doctors say, yeah,
(06:10):
you should, you should. There's a good place to see it,
but not on this body because it looks like it's
small pox. This is in nineteen fifty five. Nineteen fifty five,
I'm a first few medical student people are the doctors
are outside of the medical of the autopsy room because
(06:30):
they won't go inside because small pox is contagious. I
went in. I said, look, I'm told I could go in,
and I've got everybody had the smallpox vaccinations in those days,
little punctures on the outside of the upper arm. And
they went in and there was doctor Milton Helperrin, who
was the chief medical examiner, and nobody was there to
(06:52):
help them with the autopsy because everybody was afraid of
that might be small pox. So I helped him by
moving around the lights that he would using to take
photographs it looked like somebody with all these heemorrhagic parks
on it on their body, and helped him. It turned
out that wasn't smallpox, it was hemorrhagic chicken pox. But
because I was there and I helped him, he sort
(07:14):
of immediately took me under his wing and I could
go down anytime and see an autopsy. They taught me
how to do autopsies, and that's what really got me
interested in pathology rather than in internal medicine.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Well, you know, I often tell people the morg offers
mystery that even a hospital didn't offer, and it gives
you a chance, in your case, especially to be somewhat
fearless in your research because you walked.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Into a room.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
I mean, it could have been anything, but you did
it anyway for the greater good, the greater knowledge, And
I think there's no other place than a morgue to
get some of those answers, especially for your investigation.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
New building of the New York City Medical Examiner's office
a few years after I graduated, has over its admission
in Latin in the Latin phrase let talking cease. This
is the place where death delights to help the minute
the living translated loosely from Latin, this is a place
(08:22):
where death delights to help the living, because we learn
all kinds of new things from the dead body, both
about disease and how people how death can be avoided.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
And I think a lot of people don't understand that
if it weren't for medical examiners, we wouldn't have airbags.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
You're absolutely right. The recognition there was a high incidence
of death, and this goes back to the nineteen fifties.
People who died in auto accidents. A large percentage of
them died because of facial and head injuries do to
sudden stopping and UH, the head going against the dashboard,
(09:05):
and we would have people who would would have would
have in the foreheads, UH, the fractures and imprints of
the radio knobs that were on the dashboard at that time,
for example, and the very fact that holding the person
stationary by belt by UH could could avoid these deaths.
(09:28):
Prevent these deaths came from the autopsy and all. While
we were doing that kind of research, there was a
great deal of research search going on in the autopsy
room between Bellevue Hospital, n YU Medical School, and medical
examiners about the effects of cigarettes inhaling cigarettes. And it
(09:50):
was at that time also that the realization and understanding
was made smoking cigarettes wound up what people getting lung
cancer twenty thirty years later and led to all kinds
of prohibitions and the statements on the cigarette tacks and
all that.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Especially when you think in the early years, doctors promoted
cigarettes smoking to relax you.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Oh, yes, yes, And I still have a poster here
of Ronald Reagan when he was an actor. Doctors and
actors who were promoting lucky Strike.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Well, let's talk about your process when you take a
second look as a medical examiner. Now they've already had
an autopsy, but you're coming and doing your own work.
What is your process? How do you start that?
Speaker 3 (10:45):
The process is that somebody, usually a family member, is
concerned about the cause of death, concerned that the people
doing the first or autopsy, the medical examiner, the pathologist,
or the medical examiner is biased or is not knowledgeable
(11:12):
enough to give the proper diagnosis. That often happens with
the natural deaths. When the natural deaths of persons at
the hospital for weeks and individual dies, the first autopsy
doesn't show the cause of death. It's the cause of
death is still unknown, so the family member wants to
(11:34):
get a second autopsy like more experienced people they think
who might be able to find the cause of death.
And also they will suspect that the pathologists in the hospital.
It may be the autopsy may show the cause of death,
but it's not favorable for the hospital. So they're saying
they can't find the cause of death. So one way
(11:59):
we get contact. The family member next to the kid
wants to know what the cause of death is that
they don't think the hospital did it right. Now, when
is a forensic autopsy, which is most of the time
we do second autopsies. There are many families and many
defense lawyers especially who feel that medical examiner is a
(12:23):
forensic pathologists are bias toward police and aren't going to
give it a straight answer if the favor if it
doesn't favor the prosecutor of police theory of a case.
If it's a homicide, for example.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Now, how heavily do you rely personally on the police
and detectives and I would say the original police report
and things like that.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Cheryl, this is what you're so great. You have hit
at the heart of problems that are happening now, the divisiveness,
the fact that today I see in the news that
California has passed the law preventing the use of excited
(13:08):
delirium on death certificates, rightfully so when people died during
encounters with police. There are only about six hundred forensic
pathologists in the United States full time forensic pathologists, out
of about almost a million doctors. It's a very small
(13:29):
specialty US forensic pathologists. We're the only ones can do
autopsies on unnatural deaths. Ninety three percent of US die
of natural diseases, heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, cancer, that's the
expertise of the hospital pathologists natural disease. The expertise of
(13:55):
the forensic pathologist goes further in training. Accident, suicide, homicide,
and drug abuses fit in there, and mistakes are made
because oftentimes forensic pathologists doesn't do the isn't available. Some
states don't have a forensic pathologist in the host state
and the autopsy is done by a hospital pathologists who's
(14:18):
not trained in unnatural debt, but the forensic pathologists. When
I came in initially in the New York City Medical
Examiner's Office finishing my internship residency Chief Residency in Pathology,
I then chose my having worked in the with the
medical examiners, to become a forensic pathologist. They want a
(14:41):
forensic pathology. The chief medical Examiner, the disc Attorney's office,
the chief of Police met with me and two other
people starting in the New York City office, and the
first thing they tell us, we're glad you're here. We
want you to know that we're a team where we're
(15:04):
like a three legged stool. The police, the district attorney,
and the medical examiners are working together to determine what
happened to the dead body, and we're working as a
team to convict the bad guy who's done it. We're
the good the good guys on this team, and we're
(15:29):
have to make sure that justice is done and that
we're all working together. And we start out working closely
with the police and district attorneys. So we work up
and we train very closely with police. I have found
over the years that this is dangerous. Most of the
(15:51):
time the police are right, sometimes they aren't right in
the air in their investigations, so that those who fortunately
haven't had to deal with it. Excited delirium is a
diagnosis developed in the nineteen eighties that when somebody dies
during a police encounter, a physical police encounter, during the
(16:16):
restraint while they're trying to put handcuffs on, a cause
of death isn't found that autopsy. There's no fractures and
no neck injuries. The decedent produced too much adrenaline. He
was in a fight, he was going to struggle to
produce too much adrenaline, and he died, and the cause
of death is excited delirium was named as the cause
(16:40):
of death. It turns out that's it's a motique diagnosis
only applied by medical examiners because we're the ones who
determined the cause of death. And he said to a
person who died during physically while being restrained by police
and turn out to be largely black male decedents, it's
(17:05):
a biased kind of racist considered a racist diagnosis by
the and now just recently the American Medical Association and
others and still being used. And if something is called
excited delirium, that's considered a natural death and that's the
end of the investigation. The police don't have to investigate
(17:25):
it further. The district attorney doesn't have to investigate it further,
because the district attorney doesn't want to really investigate the
local police deaths if that could be avoided. And everybody's
happy about it, except the family members. And that's what
eventually I show led to the whole Floyd upset because
(17:51):
the initial medical examiner indicated that the police restraint had
nothing to do with the cause of death. The police
and the EMMY backed it up fully, and the family
and the family in the community made a fuss about
it and led to second autopsy. I was involved in
the second autopsy. But that's all changed largely because of
(18:16):
the iPhone. Twenty seven is when the iPhone with the
photos was a photograph possibilities was introduced, and that changed
things because what was captured on video often turned on
out to be what the police reported because the death
(18:36):
was and it's led to a lot of the division
among medical examiners and among them in the communities.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
I don't think there's any question that the I phone
in the video capability has assisted so greatly. And you know,
to me, you can't watch that video with George Floyd
and not see a very slow murder.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Before the iPhone, whatever the police said was just adopted
as being the truth, not the family. The iPhone has
changed that.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
So I want to head to nineteen seventy seven with you,
and I want to quote you. You said at one time,
even when an autopsy is done, the speculation doesn't stop.
I thought that was such a great quote, especially if
you're talking about President John Kennedy and doctor Martin Luther King.
(19:44):
Can you talk a little bit about your involvement with
studying those assassinations, because for me, President Kennedy and doctor King,
there's so many similarities. I mean, they were both shot
with a long gun by a lone gunman in the
middle of the day from a structor. They both left
(20:05):
weapons behind, both weapons had a partial palm print. They
were both shot from a distance. They were both surrounded
by people they trusted. They were both at the height
of their career, they were world leaders, they were both
public murders, and they were both caught on film A
little bit so to me, It's almost like if you're
(20:29):
studying both of these assassinations, some of it mirrors each other.
So I just want to hear from you the expert.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Now the differences though it happened. When Kennedy was assassinated,
he goes into the Texas hospital, is pronounced dead. They're
The surgeon who attended to him was then interviewed says
there was a bullet hole in the neck entrance bullet
hole in the neck, and that was the reason that
(20:58):
he died. The body is then illegally taken to Washington,
d C. Because the autopsy should have been done legally
in Texas. When somebody dies, the jurisdiction of the medical
examiner corner investigation depends on where a person dies. Wherever
(21:23):
the person dies, that jurisdiction does the autopsy examination. In
this situation, for various reasons, the body was taken up
to d C improperly. The Secret Service said that well,
they were concerned that maybe whoever shot Kennedy would also
(21:43):
shot shoot his wife or something, and they wanted to
get him out of the end. There was a confrontation
in the hospital more between the Secret Service and the
Medical Examiner's office before it was taken the body was
taken out. And I mentioned that because when the autopsy
was done indeed c by a naval excellent naval Navy physician,
(22:13):
hospital physician, he looked at the body, did not call
the doctors in Parkment Hospital in Texas to see what
did you do to the body and treatment, which medical
examiners always do because if you do, if you provide
medications or draw blood, it leaves needle marks and we
(22:36):
can't tell do the autopsy who did the needle marks,
drug addict or the doctor. They looked the same. In
this instance, the one doctor the sergeant looked at the neck,
saw there was a perforation of bullet hole of entrance,
and then did an incision through a tracheostomy, decision to
(22:57):
put down a breathing device. We medically. The doctor in
d C in Part who then brought to do the autopsy,
didn't appreciate that there was a hole in the neck.
He just thought it was the doctor did it. He didn't.
You could see it if you were closely, but it
(23:18):
was cut through. But that wasn't what he was used
to look at, look at cancer cells or so he
turns the body over to examine the back, which is proper,
and the autopsy always have to look at the back
and sees a bullet hole in the back. Uh, the
doctors in Park in Texas didn't do that because as
(23:39):
soon as they did their attempts to revive the president,
he didn't get revived and he died right right there
without the inspecting the back. He then announces in Washington,
d C. That there's a bullet hole in the back.
He doesn't appreciate that's the exit room. You see. The
(24:00):
bullgoes in the front, comes out the back, and he
announced it that there's an entrance wound in the back.
He doesn't know anything about an entrance wound in the front.
But the newspapers immediately immediately say, hey, he was shot
once in the front and once in the back. Two shooters. Therefore,
day one, Day two, there was a concern that this
(24:22):
was raised, that this was two shooters. Now. In addition
to that, when I grew up, there was a program
that we all use kids loved called The Lone Ranger.
The Lone Ranger was the one good guy who could
beat up lots of bad guys. He was my hero
a lot of heroes. It was on radio every evening.
(24:44):
The lone ranger. Part of that is and part of
that kids and grant if you have a good guy
like Kennedy being killed, that one bad guy can't kill
the president, and we have a concept then it's changing
even slowly nowadays that you need more than one bad
(25:05):
guy to kill a good guy.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
And it's interesting you say that about people not wanting
to accept one person can do great harm. You had
the same issue with OJ Simpson. People said there had
to be more than one person. One person couldn't kill
two people like that. Of course one person could tell
you kill two people like that.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
That's right, And I think with OJ Simpson there's still
a division.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Well, going back to doctor King, there was some black
powder around his neck and a lot of people thought, well,
he had to be shot up close then because that's gunpowder.
But that's not necessarily the case at all. We know that.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
Yeah, with doctor King, the initial concerns there was that
when the shooting occurred. The moment the shooting occurred, there
were witnesses on the terrorists on the motel terriffs with
King who pointed to different spots where it came from.
So that from that point there were newspaper articles about
(26:06):
more than one shooter.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Given your career, and you have looked at death more
than most people would ever be able to look at death,
and you've examined it, and you've researched it, and you've
given your opinion. How has your job changed your life
or the way you live your life?
Speaker 3 (26:26):
The most common misapprehension I think that people have, and
this you can see this not only from just thoughts,
but also from the old movies, that the Morgue is
a desperately terrible place to be working in, and frightening
and haunted and the ugly place to work in, and
(26:49):
it must make people depressed. I shouted out, as we
alluded to with my mother's idea that I would be
a doctor for living people, and I started an internal
medicine before switching to pathology. And the most troubling thing
(27:11):
to me, upsetting thing to me treating patients with those
people who are dying, that we could not help people
dying of cancer and people dying of brain damage. That
we weren't too familiar with diagnosing Alzheimer's disease then, but
(27:35):
we knew that people were getting older and confused, and
nothing that we could do about it. That was very
upsetting and troublesome going to the morgue and dealing with
a dead person right off. There's no pain involved. That
person on the autopsy table has no pain that we
(28:04):
have to deal with. And what our job is to
see how that body, how the autopsy will help the
family number one and society number two when they say
society society because like with covid or with smallpox decades ago,
(28:31):
if we were to to diagnose such causes of dead
that we know are very contagious, we're part of the
public health system to be able to try and limit
the number of people are going to get infected. But
you don't want to know to limit people until you
know they died from something that's contagious. That's public health.
(28:53):
When somebody dies of suicide, we try to find out
where there are any ways preventing it. This has been
a big issue in prisons. For example, I became got
involved with checking all prison deaths and jail deaths in
New York State after the Attica uprising because one of
(29:21):
the reasons for Attica in nineteen seventy one, where forty
three people died, including ten guards, was caused because the
inmates felt that when prisoners died the death of bad medicine,
of being beaten up by the gods guards, of suicide,
(29:45):
there was all covered. Everybody was called death from heart
disease and was covered up. And so it required that
Governor Rockefell passed cybal law that created a commission to
look into every death that occurs in New York State
(30:09):
and in prison jail at lock up and immediately when
we're able to get to do autopsies to get data
on all of the deaths were never available before we
could find out that, hey, there are ways to prevent
the deaths. Example, we found out that the most common
(30:29):
cause of death in those days was suicide, suicide by hanging.
The hanging occurred in the bathroom when there were no
gods present and then hang up to the shower curtain rods.
So once we found that out, we passed, we advised
and passed the legislation that all of the shower rods
(30:52):
should be collapsible so that if they go in there's
nobody watching them and they want to hang up, they
they can't cominsuicide. And that's true. We found out that
there was another looking at all the deaths, and I
say all the deaths in the prisons when people died
(31:12):
during tear gassing because they were uncontrollable, they weren't begging themselves.
A large number of deaths occurred because they were being
they couldn't breathe, they were being choked to death during
the tear gassing. And so we passed legislatives, passed rules
(31:36):
and regulations that tear gassing has to be watched by
a supervisor and it can't be done by the guards
who were going in there with tear gas because they
had a bad episode with the individual that cut out
all tear gassing deaths that were supervised. Same thing I
(31:57):
think happens now with deaths during during police encounters. That
in order to cut down on the death the medical
examiners can help by getting a database together. Remember all
those deaths during police restraint, great majority of them are
(32:20):
reported to the medical examiners, and so if we were
able to get some kind of a national database on
how people died during police encounters, we'd be able to
develop some kind of strategies to diminish the deaths. Well.
As happened in New York in the prison situation, very
(32:40):
few deaths now with more with more prisoners in New
York State prisons than were present time of Attica, when
they were a third as many inmates.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
President These stats that you know dis off the top
of your head because you live. That's why when you
look at a case like Jeffrey Epstein, you know that
there's something really unusual with the breaks in that neck
that if you've never seen it before, why would it
(33:13):
just be so easily accepted.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
Well, that Epstein's death is very interesting because he died
in a federal jail, federal prison jail really in the Manhattan.
The New York state law didn't cover that jail. If
he had died in a New York state jail, the
(33:37):
commission I was on would automatically investigate the death. There
all kinds of people to do investigations. Epstein died in
a federal prison. Therefore, the FBI investigates the death, and
the Justice Department investigates the death. They do not have
much experience investigating suicidal deaths. Number one, the New York
(34:00):
City Police do it. For example, And when the first
autopsy was done, though it showed that I was present
at the autopsy that there were three fractures and the
atoms apple and the hyoid bone which are just above it,
which is typical for homicidal strangulation. It's atypical for hanging
(34:23):
because in hanging the rope, as with Epstein, it would
have gone up under the jawbone. It's people hanging. The
literature slips up under the mandible the jawbone, and that's
where you see the mark. With Epstein, he had the
(34:43):
mark in the middle of the neck over the Adams
apple and there were three fractures, which extremely rare, which
I've never seen and I haven't seen reported in suicidal hanging.
And it turned out later which we just received as
(35:06):
the result of the Justice Department investigation, that he was
found seated. It wasn't even hanging up. With hanging up,
there's more pressure on the neck than being seated because
there's a less weight, and so it is even less
(35:27):
likely to get any fracture seated than hanging. And the
problem was, though, that the Justice Department and the FBI
investigation didn't focus on differences of opinion or so they
focus on security, and according to their investigation, nobody had
(35:50):
Nobody else had investigat access to Epstein. Therefore he must
have done it himself, which you know, which is powerful
evidence if it's true. But the fact is that the
(36:10):
videos of his cell and of his cell tier weren't
working that day and that night, and the two correct
the three or four correction officers were scheduled to watch it,
to watch the eight cells where they were special housing
(36:34):
didn't do it. They didn't do any And see there's
another situation where that probably happens. A lot I gather
from the investigation, where the guards that are supposed to
make fifteen minutes or half hour rounds don't make the rounds.
But because this was a prominent person, it came to
light and therefore there's established a certain amount of different
(37:00):
is an opinion. In my opinion about Epstein, his fractures
are much more typical for homicidal strangulation and not ligature
hanging suicide. But maybe there is some kind of There
always can be exceptions. But the general feeling has been,
(37:25):
the general media acceptance has been that it was suicide
because of the investigation by the FBI and Justice Department
into the security of his inability to are the people's
inability to get into do it to him.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Well, I often tell people, if you want to know
what's going on in your town, look in the jail.
And if you want to know the problems, as the
medical examiner, because they're going to know about the drugs
before anybody else's disease. Jesus homicides, car crashes. So again, doctor,
I appreciate so much you being with us and sharing
(38:08):
so many things with us, not just your career and
your opinions, but also you know your upbringing, because I
think your story of getting kicked out of preschool and
going on to be the top of your class at
NYU Medical School is just remarkable and it just goes
(38:29):
to show again, don't count nobody out just because they
may be misbehaving at six or fourteen or twenty, give
them a chance to correct that, you know, path and
you might just be surprised and in your case become
a world renowned forensic pathologist.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Well, I must say I very much appreciate you your
mom's inside. It's the Scotty that Scotti also had problems. Entirely,
I became a doctor amazing.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Thank you, Cheryl, absolutely thank you again, and please give
Linda my regards and I hope to see y'all and
talk again very soon.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Y'all.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
I'm going to end Zone seven like I always do,
with a quote. Wherever the art of medicine is loved,
there is also a love of humanity Hippocrates. I'm Cheryl
McCollum and this is Zone seven.
Host
Sheryl McCollum
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