September 1995, continued…
When I arrived in the Juvenile Department sometime later, I was enthusiastically greeted by everyone. Bob’s first task for me was to develop a wish list of things I might need for my office to work best. I was humble in my requests. That was followed by a train of juvenile probation officers coming in for their initial get-to-know you chats. They were a much more diverse and laid-back group than found amongst the D.A.’s Office, but they were also very professional and cared deeply about doing their jobs as best they could. None of them had any illusions about the dark side of the job, dealing on occasion with children who were rapists, pedophiles, even killers. I learned on that first day that many of them carried concealed weapons, and some were either volunteer or part-time police or sheriff’s deputies on the side. One guy I got to be friends with right away, I’ll call him Terry, explained to me the essential rule of self-defense, particularly in a law enforcement setting – “It is better to be judged by twelve than carried by six.” I took it to heart.
Another person I developed a quick friendship with was one of the full-time Victims’ Assistants, I’ll call her Sheryl. Like most of the people working in victims’ assistance, she had been a victim of sexual abuse herself. Also like Patty, Sheryl tended to be a bit flirty. Despite her past, she was energetic and enthusiastic to help those she could. She had four kids, and the job didn’t pay all that much, but the work for her was deeply satisfying even though often heartbreaking. Sheryl was a do-gooder and couldn’t help it.
One of the first cases Sheryl and I spent some time going over was a five-year-old possible arsonist (or worse) in the making. The little guy had a less than desirable home life, as far as we could tell, but no reported abuse of him to that point. One night, he lit his bedding on fire with a book of matches. They managed to get the fire out before too much damage was caused but the fire department and Sheriff’s Office had been called. The boy told the Sheriff’s deputy that he started the fire ‘because he was cold.’ But that was after wetting the bed,” Sheryl told me.
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We had both been through the recent training, so I knew what she was getting at. “Are you thinking he might have two of the three of the Macdonald triad?” I asked. I was referring to an old research paper we were presented with that essentially stated a large number of serial killers exhibited three predictors of future violent behavior – fire setting, wetting the bed (particularly after age 12), and abusiveness toward or torturing of animals.
“Well, we don’t have any information on the kid hurting animals yet, but yes, it’s kind of concerning. Isn’t it?” Sheryl asked.
“Definitely worth paying attention to down the road. The thing is that we can’t do anything for him right now unless we can show an abuse case,” I said. “The kid is too young to hold accountable in court for anything. He simply lacks capacity at that age to form mental culpability to commit a crime.”
“Yeah, I know. I just wish there was something we could do,” Sheryl lamented.
“Sadly, not until he’s either old enough and gets in trouble, or if we find he’s being abused, then we could get jurisdiction over the kid,” I said. “As it stands, we just gotta wait and hope for the best.”
Sheryl paused for a second before changing subjects.
“Have you seen the latest child sex-abuser case?” She asked.
“Which one?” I was only partly sarcastic.
“The twelve-year-old who was abusing his five- and seven-year-old brothers.”
“No, I haven’t,” I replied.
“It just came in this morning. You probably don’t have a report on it yet.” As was frequently the case, the victims’ assistance unit was brought in right away to help the family. Prosecutors had to wait for police reports, which weren’t always so prompt.
I hadn’t. “What’s the gist of it?” I asked.
“Oh God, it’s another really awful one. The twelve-year-old has been sneaking down the hallway to his little brothers’ room late at night…” she said.
“Diddling them or worse?” I asked.
“Worse. A lot worse. He’s been raping them regularly for months, at least.”
My stomach turned.
“Do we have any idea about who’s been perping the twelve-year-old?” I asked. “Perping” was shorthand for “perpetrating”; also short for being a “perpetrator”, i.e., the villain.
“None at all. Obviously, it was somebody the kid knew, but the kid’s not talking to anyone. Not to the police, anyway.”
“How did this one come to us?”
“It was a doctor’s referral. The seven-year-old was having his annual physical and the doctor noticed a little bruising on his bottom, you know, by the really sensitive area?” Sheryl said with a smirk.
“I hope we have more than that. According to those doctors in Ashland, a child can pass a poop the size of a baked potato, and they’re always playing around and getting bruised up, especially young boys,” I offered as counterpoint.
“Yeah, but there’s more. His doctor started doing a more thorough exam. He wrote in his report that the boy didn’t have an ‘anal wink.’”
“Jesus,” I stammered.
“The doctor made a referral to social services to investigate and when they showed up, both the five-year-old and the seven-year-old started letting it all out. The parents are both pretty torn up about it…both claimed to have no idea anything wrong was even happening.”
The next morning at juvenile arraignments/plea hearings, I saw my first twelve-year-old in an orange jumpsuit and shackles. Jennifer was right – it was heartbreaking. On that day, he was just a sad pathetic looking chubby little sixth grader in jailhouse garb. Yet it was my job – my duty – to put his pathetic sad little ass in prison for as long as I could. It was tough but I could handle it because I knew, deeply and personally, the lifetime of horrific impact on his little brother victims if I didn’t do my job. Because of the ongoing threat of abuse and the potential for witness intimidation or tampering, I requested no bail, and got it. His brothers would be safe for the time being (at least from the brother).
About a week later, Sheryl had arranged a visit for me with the two brothers at their grade school. It was my first witness interview as a prosecutor, and my first child-witness interview ever. The school principal and teachers knew what was happening and were doing their best to be supportive of the kids. The school staff provided a meeting room for us off of the library, complete with grade school sized plastic chairs to cram my 5’10” frame onto. We were attempting to make the boys feel as comfortable and relaxed as possible – that’s why we were doing the interviews at school – so we were in a room that had several board games, puzzles, and other similar types of toys geared toward children. I felt a bit out of place in my suit and tie.
The boys were brought in and I was introduced to them as a “lawyer who works with the police.” I did my best to try to put them at ease by letting them know they were not in any trouble at all, I just needed to talk to them for a while about what happened. After asking them to sit down across from me, I told them I wanted to help keep them safe so no one hurt them anymore. The boys were silent, so I tried the game approach, offering to play them both in “Connect Four.” While playing, I tried to casually talk about what happened with their older brother, careful not to push or put any words in their mouths. It didn’t matter, nor did it matter how many games I would let them win, the boys were just not ready to talk to another stranger about it. After almost an hour, I decided it was time to take the pressure off them and end the interview.
I asked for the principal to come back in as we were finished. I thanked her for letting us use the school and for arranging to meet the boys, then I thanked each child individually and shook his hand. The five-year-old was last. Right after I said “See you later” to him, the five-year-old started following his brother and the principal out the door. Just after they all had rounded the corner, he came darting back into the room. He stared into my eyes and in a bold whisper said, “It’s all true!” before darting back out again.
My mouth went parchment dry as my heart sank to my stomach for that child, and his brother. I would not fail them.
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“Orientation” for the juvenile prosecutor job was as informal (really, nonexistent), as one could imagine. I was given soft cover copies of the 1994 Oregon Criminal Code and the 1994 Oregon Motor Vehicle Code, shown how to fill out the charging paperwork, and… that’s about it! It was sink or swim all the way. I was introduced to my stack of cases that were currently before the court and my ever-growing stack of police reports, then left to sort through them. As Kevin had been handling all the juvenile cases to that point, I was heavily reliant on his input and advice, especially in the first couple of months.
On one of the weekends shortly after I started, I came into the office on Saturday morning to try to catch up on police reports. I saw Kevin outside the D.A.’s Office smoking a Camel, so I joined him and started puffing a Marlboro Light 100 (I had become a smoker during college and the stress of law school sealed the addiction). He was doing the same – trying to get caught up on police reports. I was about to find out that rather than an orientation, the deputy D.A.’s had more of an initiation, or test of sorts, to see how much of a stomach I had for the gory hell I would eventually witness and prosecute if I remained a prosecutor long enough.
Our conversation centered around a few of the cases he had charged that were coming to court in the next week. After a lull, he asked me if I had been to an autopsy before.
“No, not yet,” I replied.
“Well, it won’t be long until you do. They’re not much fun but you’ll learn a lot,” he continued. He took another puff before speaking again. “We had a really nasty murder just a couple blocks away from here that happened shortly before I started working here…Come into the office with me and I’ll see if I can find the file.” He was eager to try to gross me out.
The office was empty – we were the only people in the building. I followed Kevin inside to the file room, where he extracted two five-inch-thick case files. We went to his office, and he started thumbing through the autopsy photos while he explained what happened.
“Oh, this poor guy…He was a garbage man. He was at the bank on the other side of the courthouse with his truck and he was just going to pull out the garbage dumpster so he could dump it. Sadly for him, he got his brains blown out by this crazy guy sleeping in his car across the parking lot.” Kevin was going through the pictures looking for the best ones. “Yeah, here it is,” Kevin said. “This one is pretty bad, from the autopsy.”
The first color photo I was handed was of a man who had been essentially decapitated from above the eyeballs. The bullet that struck him was a perfect shot, landing about a quarter inch above and to the left of the top of his nose bridge, right between the eyes. Both eyes were still in their sockets, mostly covered by the eyelids but the left eye was partially visible through its barely cracked open eyelid. A top angle photo showed that the man’s brain pan was completely empty – the bottom half of the man’s brain was gone and I was looking at the detailed contours of the inside foundation of his bloody skull. I discovered why as Kevin laid more pictures out.
“Check these out, of the crime scene,” Kevin said excitedly. The photo he showed me next was just as graphic. The garbage man’s body was limp and slumped to the left while the bottom half of his brain lay beside him, as if cleanly extracted, on the right side. The top half looked like it had been shaved off clean – but it was blown off. Most of the skin of his head had remained ripped but attached to his head, flopped to the ground next to him. The explosion created by the .30-.30 caliber round looked like a hand grenade had detonated inside of his head. The garbage dumpster was located in a partially enclosed area – three walls and a ceiling – that had been painted all white. Now it was showered in brain, blood and bone fragments, literally dripping down the walls and off the ceiling.
My throat tightened and my stomach churned a tiny bit. The only thing lacking from the pictures in terms of being disgusting was the smell (as I would find out soon enough). No way was I going to let it get me sick.
“So what the fuck happened?” I asked.
“The shooter was a full-blown schizophrenic who was off his meds for quite some time. He was homeless and sleeping in his car. The garbage truck woke him and he said he thought it was a monster from Hell, and the garbage man was some kind of demon. The shooter claimed he was afraid for his life so he grabbed his old hunting rifle and just went for it.”
“Jesus fucking Christ…”
“Poor guy never knew what happened…just ‘lights out.’”
“What happened to the shooter?” I asked.
“Oh, this guy was nuts. Genuinely. I believe they pled him out as ‘guilty but insane’ to a Murder One charge. That’s the Oregon version of an insanity plea. What’s different than a lot of States is that here, if they are found guilty or plead to being ‘guilty but insane,’ they are held under the custody of the State’s Psychiatric Security Review Board for the entire length of the sentence.” Kevin continued. “Usually, they end up in the state nut house for a long haul, but if they’re ever found to be sane again, they go to jail instead of being released.”
“So the insanity defense doesn’t…” I started when he cut me off in typical Kevin fashion.
“Doesn’t relieve the defendant of criminal liability. That’s right. Convicted killers don’t just go free here no matter how crazy they claim to be. Or actually are sometimes. Anyway, Oregon decided this was a more balanced approach that took into account the impact on victims to a greater extent,” Kevin finished.
“Makes more sense to me than a John Hinckley, Jr., situation.” Kevin understood what I meant - if ever declared “sane,” Hinckley could theoretically be released.
“Exactly.
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Later that same week, I got to experience my first autopsy, to full effect.
I was in the D.A.’s office mid-morning after court when I ran into Chuck. He was perked up.
“Hey Wes, have you been to an autopsy yet?” Chuck asked.
“Nope,’” I answered.
“Today might be your lucky day then,” Chuck grinned. “We had a case come in last night that might be a negligent homicide. Don’t have all the facts yet.”
“Who’s the victim?” I inquired.
“Pretty sad – a twelve-year-old girl who got banged up on the jetty and drowned.”
“Why is it coming to us?”
“Yeah, not a typical case, that’s for sure. It turns out her stepdad, who has a spotted criminal record – you know, a few drug offenses and DUII’s (in Oregon, it was ‘driving under the influence of intoxicants,’ expanding the definition of impairment), couple old assault charges, run of the mill asshole stuff – anyway, we have witnesses saying he was loaded and enticed her out on the rocks. Don’t know yet if he was feeding her any booze or drugs, but it sounds like he coerced her into taking an unreasonable risk. I don’t know if we’ll be able to make a case out of it or not, but the learning experience is invaluable. Did you know that Keutzer’s been to every crime scene and autopsy for every murder case he’s ever tried?”
“No shit?”
“Yup, no shit. He’s a big believer in trying to see the crime through the eyes of both the victim and the perp. ‘Picture is worth a thousand words’ and all that. I’ll tell you this – it worked for him. The man has tried more murder cases than anyone in this State and he’s never lost one,” Chuck said confidently.
“Guess I better follow his lead then…What time is it set for?”
“1:30. Sheryl from victims’ assistance wants to tag along, too. Tell you what, meet me here after lunch and you can follow me over to the hospital.”
A few hours later we arrived at the Bay Area Hospital where we went to a lower-level room containing six metal-finished refrigerated units (two rows stacked three high) designed to store a human body in each. In the middle of the room was a stainless-steel autopsy table complete with head rest, drain, and suspended hose and microphone for the doctor to give notes during the procedure. While we waited for the doctor, we were joined by one of our office’s full-time law enforcement investigators, Gus Morton. Gus was a veteran homicide detective with the Sheriff’s Office who had been attached to our office as an investigator and deputy medical examiner. Sheryl and Gus filled us in on what they knew about the case.
“Yesterday morning she was out at the beach with her mom, stepdad, and a couple of siblings. Witnesses say the stepdad was drunk at least, maybe on something else too, and he was cajoling his stepdaughter here out on the jetty,” Gus started explaining. “Taunting, like. Calling her a chicken, just generally pushing her to come out too far for her comfort. Then a sneaker wave came along and washed her into the surf. The waves were too much for her and she kept getting smacked against the rocks. Coast guard came to help but she had drowned by then.”
“I heard she had been totally gone but they revived her…for a while,” Sheryl added.
“Yep. She was alert and responsive by the time they transported her to the hospital. I was told the girl seemed okay for at least three hours and then went south again. Hard,” Gus finished.
“She lost consciousness again, like out of nowhere. They think she went into cardiac arrest and they just couldn’t revive her a second time,” Sheryl added.
“Weird…you’d think she would have been okay at that point,” I offered.
“These things happen sometimes after big traumas,” Gus explained. “Shock can last quite a while. And it’s a hell of a trauma to be clinically dead for a few minutes.”
“I guess so…What are we looking for here?” I asked Gus.
“Well, if we can make a criminal negligent homicide case, I think we should. I mean, doesn’t this offend you? That some drunk asshole drags his kids out on the rocks, does stupid stuff and gets her killed?” Gus railed. He had a profound sense of Justice that I respected.
“Yeah, it does,” I said.
“Me too, but I’m not sure we’ll be able to make anything out of it from the facts I’ve heard so far,” Chuck interjected. “No matter, it’ll be a good learning experience for Wes anyway.”
It didn’t take long before the doctor presented himself, and he made quite an impression…The doctor was a large man, standing well over six feet and a bit stout in his mid- to late fifties. He wore a white dress shirt that was covered in the front by a rubber apron. Introductions were made, then he rolled the table over to the refrigerators. Our victim was on the second row up, near table height. Sheryl helped the doctor move the body from the refrigerator to the table relatively easily by using the sheet underneath to lift and carry. Immediately upon opening the refrigerator door, the distinct pungent, rotting smell of death wafted through the room. After being moved, the doctor rolled the body from side to side, removing the sheet, and then pushed the autopsy table back under the suspended microphone and hose. He commenced to first conduct a thorough visual inspection of both sides of her body.
“See all those purple patches on her back and lower sides that look kind of like big bruises?” Sheryl asked me. “That’s just from the blood pooling.” Sheryl had been to a few of these events before and wanted to share some knowledge. The overall appearance of the body was like the girl had one huge bruise throughout her back side, all the way up and down her body.
“We’ll have to look closer to identify actual bruising,’ the doctor said. “We can tell a lot more once we get inside.”
Having grown up watching the TV show Quincy (about a L.A. pathologist who always solved the crime via quirky autopsy results and follow-up investigations), I had a few expectations. Every one of them was then shattered.
The doctor first brought out a large wooden cutting board that he placed on the deceased girl’s lap. Then he rolled up his sleeves, revealing a large “USMC” tattoo across his right forearm.
Surreality began its reign.
Next was watching the man sharpen two large steak knives up and down a standard cutting block sharpening steel. It was exactly like watching a butcher getting ready to carve a side of beef.
“Hey, are we going to get any of that stuff to put under your nose?” I asked.
“Like in Silence of the Lambs?” Chuck quipped. “That would be ‘no.’ Usually that stuff is just Vick’s VapoRub or something like that, but it doesn’t help much anyway. The smell tends to linger, sometimes until you get a shower.”
“Great,” I replied.
The doctor got started by making a “T” cut, first making a cut across the top of the girl’s chest. Then he cut down her body from the middle of the first incision to just below her belly button. The sound of the cutting resembled a fast zipper-pull. The child was a bit chunky so as the doctor cut, fat beads that resembled large tapioca beads with the color of chicken fat was our first view inside the body (no blood because no heartbeat to push the blood). The doctor continued cutting down to the chest cavity and then he pulled and cut beneath the skin flaps back to reveal the rib cage. Then he grabbed the thicker butcher knife and proceeded to easily cut through the bones on both sides of her rib cage. After lifting off the severed portion of the rib cage and doing a visual inspection, he proceeded to flop all of the girl’s internal organs onto the cutting board after severing the esophagus high near the throat.
“I like to do these from the back to the front,” the doctor said.
For the uninitiated, there is no odor as distinct and potent as the metallic coppery smell of large quantities of rotting blood. Now we got it all, full strength.
“Ewe…” Sheryl started.
“Yeah, hey, I think I want some Vicks anyway. You got any, doc?” I asked.
“Waste of effort. You’ll get used to it,” he smirked back to me.
With her organs and intestines laying on the cutting board, the inside of the body was hollow with two large pools of blood on either side of her spine (which I was a bit surprised to see how mid-body the spine actually was, creating an equal elevated divide down the center). The doctor proceeded to remove and dissect her organs, taking several cuttings from near the center of each. The remainder of each organ was tossed back into the body cavity. Leftovers put back but not in place.
It was fascinating – after getting past the revulsion.
When the doctor cut open the lungs and windpipe, there was some evidence of having regurgitated. I was told that was an indication of asphyxiation or drowning. Dissection of the heart showed it to be mostly normal with some indication of recent stress. Our pathologist continued working his way through the organs, sectioning each and putting the cuttings to be saved into the same large cup-like container with a clear fluid (I assume formaldehyde). It seemed to me like a possible contamination issue but being the new guy, I decided to tread lightly.
“Hey doc, you making a stew there?” I asked in jest while gesturing toward the container of organ parts.
Chuck and Sheryl both laughed. “’Stew’…nice one, Wes,” chuckled Chuck.
“I mean, does it matter that they’re all mixed in together?” I asked, finishing my question.
“Not at all,” replied the doctor. “The cellular structure from each organ is quite different and distinct. There’s no mixing them up. Besides, we look at the middle of all these samples anyway, so it doesn’t matter that they’re all soaking together.”
When he started cutting open sections of the intestines, the stink reached a crescendo. But we weren’t done yet. We were going to have to endure it a while longer. Next up was the head.
The doctor used his scalpel to cut across the top of her head from above one ear to just above the other. He then got his fingers under the layers of flesh down to the skull and pushed back the skin and muscle on both sides, down her face and the back of her head. He pushed it on the front down to eyelid-level. I watched as his hands probed under her skin further down to her neck and chin area, examining. Inspection complete, he reached for the bone saw.
In the afore-mentioned TV show Quincy, the opening credits sequence used to show Quincy, the medical examiner, getting ready with this type of bone saw in front of a group of rookie police officers. One of the officers comically passes out as Quincy turns on the saw. That didn’t happen – nobody passed out – but the gross out factor was about to go to another level.
Our medical examiner proceeded to use the saw, which was sort of a jagged corner-circle saw blade on a motor that moved the blade side-to-side very rapidly to cause the cutting action. The sound was horrific as expected. Worse was the smell – very much like burning hair but with a kind of sweet or pungent addition. He cut around the circumference of the skull and removed the top half, exposing the child’s brain. After cutting through the thin sack around the brain, he removed it with ease. The doctor was gracious in taking the time to explain various parts and functions as he went along. Then the brain got the cutting board treatment. Dissections of the brain were interesting, and the doctor showed us the areas that had been active and what they did. He also noted how much ‘white’ matter there was, mostly toward the interior of the brain. “You can tell this is a child’s brain,” the doc said. “All this white stuff is basically undeveloped brain matter.” (At least, that was his theory at the time. It’s actually far more complex and active).
Following dissection of the brain, I was expecting the doctor to put the remainder of the brain back into the skull. I couldn’t have been more wrong – or more surprised – when he took the remainder of the brain over to the commercial-grade stainless-steel sink, turned on the garbage disposal, and gggrrrrr…there it went down the fucking drain! Now, I’m no expert on municipal or hospital plumbing, but I’m pretty sure that the hospital didn’t have a separate drainage or sewer system from the City’s. Those remnants of flesh were indignantly bound for the same place as all human waste, the sewage plant. I was revolted but I kept my mouth closed.
With the autopsy over, it was time to tidy up the corpse. Not really, that was the job of the embalmer and funeral home. The pathologist’s job was just to put it back together enough to transport for final servicing and then final burial services. How is that done, you ask? With a big fucking needle and carpet thread, that’s how! The doctor replaced the skull cap onto the empty skull, pulled the skin back to its normal position on the head, and then roughly sowed together the skin in broad loops with the carpet thread. Finally came the body. After having flopped all the remaining organs back into the body cavity, the doctor pulled the skin flaps back to cover her torso, then again used the carpet needle in large, uneven loops to close the cadaver. The funeral home folks had arrived by that time, and they helped pack the body into first a regular black rubber body bag followed by a nicer velvet-exterior body bag. They took charge of her body and left with it.
And that, dear reader, is how a typical autopsy in the USA is performed.
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The blood intoxicant screen came back a few days later negative for drugs or booze in the child. No case could be made and the stepfather was never charged.