February 16, 2012 • 49 mins
In the 400th episode of Stuff You Should Know, Josh and Chuck take a trip through the morgue and look over the shoulders of the often controversial coroners and medical examiners that open cadavers to determine how someone died.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know?
From House toff works dot Com. I would say, hey,
(00:21):
welcome to the podcast, but I'm not going to yet
because this is add on to what you're about to hear. Right, Chuck,
let's be quiet because we don't want our our normal
selves to hear us. Oh gotcha? I wonder why we
were talking about that. Do you understand now, Chuck? Did
you know what this is? Do you know why we're doing?
What is? It is pretty freaking exciting, what Josh, we
(00:44):
are about to release in just a few seconds show?
Remember four zero zero? That's huge. There should be some
sort of fancaire. I hope there was just now I
think so there are four episodes of stuff you should know.
That's a big deal to did I can't even like
when people ask the requisite a, what's your favorite show?
(01:06):
I can't even just melt my brain now, I can't
even think of it. I used to have stock answers,
and now there's so many I look through and I
don't even remember some of them, Like what we did
that we talked about that? I'm with you crazy. Well,
let's let's hope we can do another four shows exactly.
Here's two years four more. Congratulations Buddy, right back, and Jerry,
(01:27):
thank you. You've been here since day one, aside from
a few guest episodes where you're lazy, Jerry, congratulations to you.
Pretty much been Jerry the whole time. Um, what what
would it be without the three of us? You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it would be crud? Yeah. Um well, thank you, dear
listener for listening to all four hundred. You know some
(01:49):
of you out there have because we would not be
around if you never listened in the first place. We
would have done four shows. Yea. And yeah, those of
you who have listened to one or two or just
discovered us or whatever, this is your one. Welcome to
the Dullhouse. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
(02:27):
With me is Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and that makes
this stuff you should know, dead and rowdy. I just
made you shudder before we pressed record. I'm out it
was an actual one. No, I thought you did that well, yeah,
but I was doing in response to your face. You
made that face, but you didn't make annoy were you
doing it on my behalf of exactly. Okank you so much.
(02:48):
I feel so cared for so chuckers. Yes, Um, this
is a little kind of a boo podcast. This this
has got to complete our suite on death. You would
think so, but it doesn't. No. No, we still have
how dying works left. Um, we still have um, what
(03:11):
it's like to be dead. We've got a lot of
stuff we haven't even touched, like what happens to the
nails after that. So, um, we're getting closer that we're
creating a larger body of work. Um, and this one,
this is gonna be a big one. You predicted. I
think I agree with you. It's detailed too. Yeah. It
(03:34):
was based in part on the an interview with the
Fulton County Deputy Medical Examiner, who knows what he's talking about. Hey,
if you're in Fulton County, you're gonna be investigating a
lot of foul play. Yeah. Atlanta and Detroit used to
go back and forth for the murder. Capital of the
US used to shoot out and then bullets a false
(03:57):
somewhere in the middle. DC is up there too, I think, Yeah,
do you see us up there? I don't. I think
Atlanta's out of the running the last several years. I
know it lost this place. We just don't murder like
what used to. But I mean, like the numbers all
pale in comparison to like Warez. It's like, do you
think that's a big number? How about fifteen times that
(04:17):
you know? Um, so chuck. Have you ever seen an autopsy,
like a real deal film of one? No? I saw that,
but that was that was quite fake. Have you not
seen Faces of Death? The original? I never saw that
there's an autopsy in there, and um, I can't remember
if we talked about it during the Exploitation Films episode,
(04:41):
but um, part of Faces of Death was real and
some was staged and fake, but the autopsy was definitely real.
And you can tell after reading this, it's like, oh yeah,
they do pull the skin flat from the top of
the scalp down over the face and under the chest.
I felt really bad for the human base reading this
(05:02):
because it's liable. Yeah, it's well, and it's always got
some flap of skin folded over it. Yeah, like, I
don't know, we don't want to look at that, so
let's just fold the chest over it. Exactly what what
is this what's that called the scalp scalp? Yeah, but
say skull, Sorry, the skulls under the scalp. No I
knew that. That's the fact of the podcast. Um, So,
(05:23):
why why do people do autopsis, Chuck? It's not just
so ghouls can be paid to do their thing. Now,
there's actual reasons for an autopsy, which, by the way,
it doesn't say it's in the article, but autopsy is
Greek based on the Greek autopsia, which means to see
for one's own eyes. Yeah. Yeah, Do they want to
(05:44):
see for oneself how somebody died? Yes, the manner of
death and time of death, which we'll get into. But
I think there are five certain types of death one five,
uh six that that they require an autopsy if you
die by injury, delayed complication of injury, poisoning, infectious complications,
(06:09):
foul play, or if you die with no attending positions,
So that those are the reasons that they were requested autopsy, right,
And if the cops come out or somebody the funeral
home comes out and says, whoa, whoa, whoa, this guy
may have been poisoned or he's injured and he died,
we need to call the corner the medical examiner. They're
(06:29):
going to perform an autopsy, and there's um, there's a
couple of types of autopsies. There's two really, and the
one where the cops are involved, where the medical examination
is carried out on behalf of law enforcement. That's a
UM well a medical examination of forensic autopsy a k a.
The the sexiest of all autopsies, because that's what you're
(06:52):
gonna see in movies and on TV quite often, unless
it's like contagion or something right exactly so, in a
move like um, oh contagion, Uh, the any autopsy you
performed is going to be a clinical autopsy, which is
usually performed by doctors who are trying to figure out
what the heck happened, what went wrong in the treatment,
(07:14):
how a disease took its course, and they're basically documenting
maybe an interesting case through autopsy for the medical literature
and for well, in the case of a contagion, even
though I haven't seen it, for the good of humanity,
immediate good of humanity, if there's some fast spreading disease
or something, or there's faulty cribs. Um autopsies were instrumental
(07:38):
in finding getting to the bottom of like product recalls
like faulty cribs that killing kids. I didn't think about that. Yeah,
that's one of the benefits of autopsies. Yeah, makes total sense.
So those are the two kinds of autopsies you got
for forensic and clinical. And basically we're gonna be talking
mainly about um law enforcement autopsies. So when we say autopsy,
(07:58):
for the rest of the podcast, we're too much talking
about a forensic autopsy. One that's trying to figure out
if somebody died uh naturally, accidentally or someone's hand, yeah,
foul play, um at their own hand, suicide or undetermined.
Those are the five legally defined manners of death. I
didn't see very sleepy on here. I thought those six
(08:21):
that would be naturally where they go to cut into
you and you're like, oh, you wake up and they're like, oh,
he's not dead. Right, Well, there's no manner of death
then yet. Uh, that's gonna be done by a forensic
pathologist most often, or a medical examiner or a coroner,
and we'll we'll get into that towards the end, right, Yeah,
(08:43):
about the difference. Yeah, Well, ideally it's going to be
carried out by a forensic pathologist, which is somebody who's
trained to perform autopsies looking for a mode of death. Right,
quite often a doctor, but not always almost always. Yeah,
to be a forensic pathologist, you have to be a doctor.
Oh really Yeah. To be a medical examiner, you have
(09:06):
to be a doctor. You don't have to be a
forensic pathologist to be a medical examiner. Well, and you
ideally should be uh accredited, but that's not always the
case either. You want to have to be Um. So
let's say you're forensic pathologist or a corner you're going
to try to assign one of these one of these
(09:28):
manners of death to a dead person. Yeah, like Quincy, Yeah, exactly. Um,
and what you're gonna do is, uh, you're gonna take
not just the findings from your autopsy, but you're going
to put them in a context with say a police
report or something. Right, Yeah, but you're not cops. Like
TV as usual overstates it as far as how involved
(09:50):
the medical examiner is, like as far as being on
the scene and collecting DNA and all that stuff. It's
it's not usually the case as Mr. What's his name,
doctor U Kaisel or keisel, let's go with the let's
go the k um. So you take all this stuff
like so so, for example, Robert Valdez who wrote this article,
(10:13):
UM says, so there's there's head trauma on a dead
man or a dead woman. Doesn't quite make sense. You know,
is it a homicide? Is it's probably not a suicide.
But is it accidental? Um? You know, it's definitely injury, right,
which is why somebody called the corner or the medical
(10:33):
examiner in the first place. But the exactly whether it
was at someone else's hand or accidental is still up
for debate. Well, you take those head that head trauma,
those head wounds, and you put them together with the
police report that said that there was an iced over
ladder laying beside the dead body when it was found.
There's probably an accident. The corner of the medical examiner
(10:56):
is going to say, this guy's probably it was probably
just slipping off the ladder, like the gutters are half
cleaned out, right, He has like a big hunk of
leaves in his hand, and he didn't write someone's name
in blood on the sidewalk. It was um. And then
you know, if you have the the old that old
(11:18):
yarn about a gunshot wounded the head. Is it a homicide? Well,
I don't know. Is there a burn pattern really close by?
Is there gunshot residue on the on the hand, the
dominant hand of the victim, that's probably a suicide. Yeah.
And as we'll point out here in a minute, one
of the steps uh which I didn't even realize this,
you always see him ziping them up in the body bag,
(11:39):
but actually bagged the hands and in a in a
suspected suicie homicide, Yeah, because you bagged the hands because
you want to just make sure that you can check
under the fingernails to make sure that there's not like
skin cells from the guy who attacked you under your
under your fingernails. People get real grabby when they're being murdered. So, um,
(12:00):
so we apparently I didn't realize this, but ductor keisel,
we don't have keisel, right. Yeah, he pointed out that.
So he gave an example of how it's not really
that clear cut right with the gunshot wound. Yeah, it
was interesting to say, you say I shot you in
the head. That would be very sad thirty years ago,
and um, you survived, but you developed the seizure disorder.
(12:24):
So you're fine, but you you have seizures. Thirty years later,
today you keel over dead from your seizure disorder. That
death would be ruled a homicide because you developed a
seizure disorder as the result of a gunshot wound, which
is an unnatural event that I inflicted on you. So
even though Emily can't come after me and be like,
(12:45):
I'm gonna assue you, she could be like, I'm gonna
kill you. She couldn't sue me because the apparently the
um the courts don't allow that after thirty years of survival,
but the the corner or the medical examiner would rule
it a homicide. Yeah, it's not, like he points out,
it's not their call to say, like, you gotta go
after and prosecute this dude, or Emily can sue you,
(13:06):
or she can bring you flowers and candy. They're just saying,
this is how it died, how it went exactly supposedly
in an ideal vacuum world, we should say that's right.
So you were talking about the difference between medical examiners
and corners. You want to you want to give up? Yeah,
from what I understand, and especially by reading that article
that you sent. Um corners are sort of the more
(13:33):
part time although they can do it full time, but
a lot of times it's in these underfunded counties and
counties where they don't have a lot of crime. Uh,
there will be a corner because there's only what did
that articles say, like four to professional medical examiners in
the United States. Yeah, that's crazy. There's plenty of medical examiners,
(13:54):
but they're not forensic pathologists, which in this case is
like the most highly qualified person in that field. Right,
So that's the main difference. It all depends on the
county where you live. There's different laws as you know,
as far as what they require. But if you're not
in a big city, you may not have the resources
or the equipment, or you may be so far out
(14:16):
of town that you know, it's hard to get people there,
so you might just have a corner driving up. That
was is also your contractor for your house as the
case was setting? Where was that? Was that in Louisiana
or Texas? Was in Washington? Washington? Yeah? Uh, there's sixteen
hundred counties in the US, and there's like thirty counties
total and six hundred of them used the corner system,
(14:39):
and you know medical examiners, an appointed physician. UH. County
coroner is an elected official who in most cases just
has to have a high school degree for UM to
be qualified for the position. Sometimes it's the sheriff. Saw
in that one county it was the local county prosecutor
is also the corner. Yeah, you're not supposed to do
(15:00):
that because you want an impartial person ruling on the
manner of death, especially say if like it's a police death.
You know, the police killed somebody. You don't want the
sheriff judging whether or not his deputies were to blame.
Looks like suicide to me, exactly, Well that happened. That
was a pretty good example in UM, New Orleans of
(15:20):
there's the corner. There has been corner for like thirty
five years. He um he's very very cozy with law enforcement,
or has been accused of it many times. And there
was a guy who stole one cops gun and shot
another cop to death and started to get away and
was finally caught. And when he was caught and brought
(15:40):
in finally he died supposedly after being given iodine for
X rays, but really he died because he was beaten
to death. He had like a bruce testicle and like, um,
all these cracked ribs in the corner. Still this day
refuses to rule it a homicide. It's like a movie plot.
All of a sudden, Richard gear gets called in to
invest to gate and then things get sexy exactly because
(16:04):
of course the cop is you know, Angelina Jolie. Is
that how it goes down all eighty pounds of her.
He's one tough cop. Um. So there there are problems
with the Corners thing. And um that you read that
article too from PBS Frontline. That was awesome, by the way,
people should read that. Yeah, I can't remember what it
was called. Um, I got it right here. Okay, good.
(16:25):
It is called the Real c S I Colin, How
America's patchwork system of death investigations puts the living at risk.
It's a it's a very eye opening um article. Yeah,
where basically they say that this the members of this
field quite literally bury their mistakes. There's some really bad
(16:46):
people who are really bad at their jobs out there
doing it. But the problem is it's like if you
have a coroner who doesn't know what he's looking at
and rules something a homicide. Then there's somebody who's going
to be put on trial eventually. Well, exactly right or
wrong if you have medical examiners who don't know what
they're doing or do a terrible job. One guy, um
in Tennessee, was accused of his dog eating some human
(17:10):
remains because it was allowed to roam free in the
examination room. You can't do that. Another guy supposedly allegedly
was drunk while he was doing like thousands of these things. Um,
that's probably the only way he could get through it
because he wasn't a real forensic pathologist. Right. But there's
a huge there's this huge battle going on between you
(17:31):
know how qualified you have to be. It's the medical
establishment trying to take over this lucrative field er. Well,
it's not so lucrative, because that's one reason it said
in the article that there's a shortage is because they
get paid on average less than a doctor would. So
if you're gonna go through medical school plus I think
an extra year of training for this to get paid
(17:53):
less money. And the one guy pointed out, so like
you really do this because of love for your fellow man. Yes,
that was the guy who refused to rule the homicide. Yeah, yeah,
I don't know what that means in but also i'll
bet their UM, I'll bet their malpractice insurance. It's like
next to nothing compared to a regular physicians. Yeah, because
(18:15):
you're using Well, we'll get to that um. So the
coroner also is responsible for identifying a body, notifying the
next of king's billy, collecting uh and returning any personal
belongings that's found on the body, which I'm sure in
rural counties that you know, there's probably been more than
one wallet go missing during that protest, maybe maybe not
(18:35):
calling out corners, never trusted farmers, have you, um? And
then signing the death certificate. And this kind of goes
along with the origin of coroner, which is derived from
the old English crowner. Yeah. I think Richard the lion
Heart was when it first really came into effect, because
he wanted I guess he wanted the money of dead people,
(18:56):
so he would send out his crowner so to gather
it up. Right, He's like a demo, and they would say, well,
he died of of a wound from a sword, and
then take his gold trinkets, yes, and return it to
Richard yeah, exactly. And then apparently over time they were like, well,
while you're out there, why don't you just start taking
vital records and and let's make you like an official guy.
(19:19):
And that's how the crowner became the coroner. It's right.
And Dr Dr Diesel even knew that. Dr Keisel because
he's the one in the article that even pointed that out.
And I thought, well, that's good. He knows about the
history of his profession. He seemed like a pretty sharp guy,
I imagine. So so, Chuck, we've been beating around the
bush quite long enough. Do you feel like it's time
(19:40):
for people to put down their lunches and us to
go through the autopsy procedure step by step? Yes, I
think that's a great idea. Step one, as I have
it is a body bag or an evident cheat got
to use a new, brand new body bag and a
brand new evident sheet. I don't want to reuse this, No,
I didn't. That was worth pointing out. But it wouln't
(20:02):
even bring myself the highlight. I know he was thorough though,
so you definitely want to use new ones because you
don't want, obviously any contamination. The body is moved by
a deaner. Uh, make about thirty seven grand a year.
I look that up on average. If you're a morgue
atendent or a deaner and that is a d I
E N E R. And they will take the body
(20:24):
in the bag or sheet to the examination sweet and
it stays in the bag, uh for a little while
at first at least. Isn't that right? I didn't run
across that. Yeah, because if you have to, uh, you
can unseal the bag, but you have to take note
of the clothing and oh yeah, the cloth they just
(20:45):
put the body. Well that if they do put it
in the fridge. If if there is some delay, like
if the bodies are stacked up or something, or I
would imagine to let rigger stop. Sure right to cease exactly,
very good shock. But you leave it in the bag
at first. You want to take note of the clothing
(21:07):
after unzipping it and the position of the clothing. It's
very important because the guy had let's say his turtle
night pulled up over his nose. He might have died
by some stinky chemical in the air. That's good. You
paint a heck of a picture. I imagine a Frenchman
with a little mustache. Uh, you want to begin with
(21:28):
the this is the external examination is obviously what comes first.
You don't want to go cutting into the body. You
want to look at hair samples, fingernails, gunshot residue, fibers,
paint chips, anything on the body, hairs that that is
worth noting. Right in the bag itself or the evidence
sheet is kept as evidence as well, Yeah, because stuff
(21:48):
might have stuck to it. Um, that's gross. Yeah, it
is kind of gross, but it happened, you know. Uh.
You also want to keep the body in the bag,
Uh to X ray as well. Yeah, X ray or
cat scan the body in the bag. I didn't think
about that, No, but it's true. I mean things get
lost in the bank. You want to make sure they're there. True,
(22:08):
you wouldn't be able to see through the human being
find maybe a bullet or something that's missing. It's in
the bag. Uh, it says in here. Sometimes I'll use
a UV radiation special technique to basically make secretions glow
in the dark or become fluorescent, like, hey, this guy's
got some sort of spot him on his turtleneck as well,
(22:29):
and it's glowing now and I see that right, Well,
you'd have to use the correct reagent to make spot
him glow under a black light. But I'm sure it's
out there, right, Yeah, sure you can get it into
Spencer Gifts. Um, so after you've made this, uh this
initial external examinations, time to get the body nude out
of the body bag. That's right, we want to weigh it. Yeah,
you don't clean the body up to No, not yet,
(22:51):
very important. You gotta leave it as is. So you
make your first examination with the body fully clothed, make
a second examination with the body undressed but still bloody, right,
and then after that, um, you clean the body up
and make a third external examination. Well, the diner will
clean the body up while you go have coffee, insert
(23:13):
the internet. You're like Rusty Gene clean that body off.
And then finally after that, the cleaned naked body is
placed on the autopsy table, which is I mean, everybody's
seen one of these. It's a big stainless steel table
with raised sides and it's slanted towards the middle with
(23:34):
why would it be st and stuff? Well, there's a
lot of blood and fluids that come out when you
cut into a body that they probably figure that out
after prototype one that was exactly to allow sense. Uh.
So yeah, you, um, you have the body prepared. Also,
I forgot, I'm sorry. You want to note the characteristics
(23:56):
of the body, race, height, tricks, scar tattoos, all that
kind of color age, and all the time they're looking
for things like wounds, modes of injury, anything that could
kind of give them an idea of what, uh this
person died from. Um. And then the body's on the
examination table, chuck, and it's time for well, it's time
(24:19):
for the internal exam. Well, yeah, it's time for something
called the body block. Which I tried to get a
picture of this but I could not find one. Imagine
it's just a I guarantee it's a yoga block. Do
you think. I'm sure maybe that's the exact same thing.
So they put this body block under the back. At first,
the body's face up and that will be trude the
(24:40):
chest and have the arms kind of fall down to
your chest is sticking out, which makes it much easier
to get into. Yeah, your chest is raised up. Yep. Okay,
So um, Dr Bryant, would you like to make the
first decision? Sure, Josh, I'm gonna take that scalpel or
that kitchen knife, but probably the a scalpel initially, although
(25:01):
they use all sorts of stuff. We'll find out, uh,
and I will make a large and deep, y shaped
decision and incision from shoulder to shoulder, meat at the
breast bone, and then down to the pubic bone. So
you've got a big wine in your chest. You fold
that front flap up over the face, and I guess
the other ones just fold over to the side. Well,
I mean, it's not that easy. You have to kind
(25:23):
of pull it back and dissect with the scalpel the
connective tissue as you pull back. But then yes, that
that V shaped chest flap goes back over the face
and then what uh the next step you're um, right
now you've got the rib cage and neck muscles all exposed.
(25:43):
Also probably pulled open the stomach flaps too. Yeah, the
figure those are just off to the side because you
you know where else are they gonna go? Um, the
organs are exposed. At this point, You're gonna make a
series of cuts. You're gonna detach. Your goal here is
to get the organs out in a big unit it
and to wait, wait, you didn't take the rib cage
off yet. Oh I didn't. I'm sorry. You're gonna You're
(26:05):
gonna cut the rib cage off using everything from pruning
shears that you would use in your backyard, the special
rib cage cutters what it was called rib cutters, of
course they are. Yeah, uh so okay, now the ribs gone,
your organs are exposed. You're gonna make cuts that detach
the larynx, esophagus, arteries, and ligaments. Then you're going to
(26:27):
detach it from the spinal cord. Then you're gonna detach
everything from the bladder and the rectum. And then after that,
your whole organ set is able to be lifted out
as one whole, as one whole unit. Pretty cool, Pretty cool.
So um, now it's kind of time to get busy
on the organs. You want to take slices of them.
(26:50):
Want to weigh him first though, Oh yeah, you want
to weigh You want to note their appearance, character color, yeah,
if they're funny. Um, And then you're gonna to take
some slices uh thin enough to be um viewed under
a microscope, right, because that's part of this too. It's
not all fun in games like you have to look
into microscopes and stuff like that. Um. And then also
(27:14):
the star probably is the stomach. You're gonna cut the
stomach open and examine the gastric contents because that will
tell you something about the time of death. It will
see or costs of death. Maybe possibly there's a there's
a small watch in your stomach, right, they maybe swallowed
it and choked or something like that. Yeah, you never know. Uh.
(27:37):
And also they're probably going to examine the heart for
cardiac bands. Um. They're gonna bisect major arteries to see
if there's any kind of blockage. Maybe it was a
heart attack, maybe there's some sort of poison, who knows.
But basically they're just gonna go through all of your
internal organs one by one. Uh. So you've got the
chest cavity cut open, but the heads just sit in
(27:59):
there like what are you gonna do? What are you
gonna do? Now, Well, he's gotta flap a face over
the skin, skin over the face, I am. So the
body would say, hey, what's up with my brain? And
then the the examiner will say, hold tight, I'm getting
right to that, sir. And then you're going to use
(28:20):
that scalpel to make incisions um from behind one ear,
across the forehead to the other ear, all the way
around like a candleoup, let's say, or let's say a grapefruit.
That's what you typically split into and uh, you divide
that cut as well, so it's uh you have two
separate flaps, one going over the face again, yeah, and
(28:43):
then fold that rear flap back over the neck. And
then you've got an exposed skull. And they use a
special kind of stall called the striker saw um, which
is capable of cutting through the skull but doesn't pierce
the brain. It's pretty cool. Yeah, Is that what they
use when they take casts off? Probably is? Isn't that
same deal? We'll cut through your cast, but not through
(29:04):
your skin, I would imagine. I mean it looks like this.
Have you ever had a cast? I have it, But yeah,
I bet you that's may not be the exact same thing, though,
um blow at any rate. They use that. And then
they use a claude hammer, not the kind of you
think it's a it's a hammer or at the bottom
of a handle there's a claw. They use that to
pride the cap of the skull off. Right. If you
(29:26):
once you get the skull cap off. If you look
inside of it, you're going to see that the dura,
which connects the brain to the skull, and by the way,
which shrinks when you have a hangover UM, is stuck
to the inside of the skull cap. Right, So if
a shrunken they could determine if he was hung over
when he died, they could UM. They'll also cut away
(29:47):
the tentorium, which connects the um, UH, the cerebellum, and
the occipital lobes right, and all of a sudden, voila,
you have an exposed brain where once you detach it
from the UH spinal cord, you are absolutely ready for
it to just be lifted right out of the skull.
And again, this whole time you're taking notes on your
(30:10):
little voice recorder or you're telling Rusty the deaner to
write that down. And so it's not just UM, you're
not just taking all this stuff out willingly. You're you're observing,
noting anything you see, UM. And then what do you do.
You're done. It's been four hours. You did a really
detailed examination inside and out, and you have this body
(30:32):
that's just all kinds of messed up. Now, But the
families like, we've got a funeral tomorrow. We can't do this.
We shouldn't even be here seeing this. Put uncle ted
back together, and the the corner or the medical example,
and will say, just chill out. Way of procedures for this.
So the internal organs either go back into the chess
(30:56):
cavity or the abdomen. Why would they do that really
of just purposes? Oh really? Yeah, interesting, I didn't think
about that. Or more typically they're incinerated, or in the
case of really horrible medical examiners, they're fed to their dogs,
right yeah, or or the bodily fluids are pumped back
into the body because their draining system is clogged up. Yeah.
(31:20):
In Massachusetts State Medical Examiner's office, Um, the chest flaps
are closed and so back together, the skull caps placed
back on and then held in place by sewing the
scalp back. And any decent corners should make their incisions
along the hairline or at least in well enough precise
(31:41):
enough that um, it should be discreete once sewn back together.
And you're doing this with a hagadorn needle, which is uh,
apparently when you're sowing human skin, he can't just use
an ordinary sewing needle and you gotta go Jamee Gum
style and get this beefy skin needle. M what nice.
(32:05):
It's just great all over the place. Thank you. Um. So,
like I said, it takes four hours by Dr Kesel's estimate.
I love that he said that includes paperwork. Yeah. Well,
I mean, you know, like the initial examination, then writing
it up and all that. He said for a homicide
it could take four to six hours. Um. And what's
what's behind? I guess probably the lengthier ones are examining
(32:30):
the wounds because you can't just say, well, here are
the bullet holes. So this guy, you know, died from
being shot. What do you want from me? Shut up?
I'm a I'm a corner. Um. Today you have to
trace the path of each bullet hole and show where
it went from entrance to exeter, from entrance to where
it stopped. Yeah. And and in the case of any
(32:52):
sort of police action, and especially I mean if there's
any sort of a shootout with like three or four
guys and like ten cops in there's people end up
dead all over the place. It's a bad day for
a corner. It's a bad day for a corner, because
you got to determine, he said. Uh. Keisel said that
you know what they want to know very specifically, especially
in the case of police shootings, is all right, this
(33:13):
bullet in this guy's shoulder, where did who's gun did
it come from? And this other bullet in his chest?
Whose bullet did that come from? And see that guy,
He's got five different kinds of bullets from these twelve cops,
and we we need to know where each of them
came from. He gets really convoluted, right, and same with
um blunt force trauma. Uh. They he has to determine,
not just like well, something really heavy killed this person,
(33:35):
has to be this thing is probably what killed this person, right,
because say that they police find a bloody hammer at
the scene, but the medical examiner says it was a
hockey stick likely that killed this person. That's not going
to help in the prosecution or vice versa. You don't
want somebody, you know, who has their prints on a
(33:57):
hammer that the cops are trying to use against them
to be used wrongly when it was actually that hockey
stick that killed that person. True, that poor poor person.
And while you can get some schooling for this stuff,
I think I think it said a year extra h
A lot of it is just experience seeing the stuff like, hey,
(34:18):
I've seen that before. That's definitely a hockey stick. Yeah,
you can go from Rusty the deaner to Rusty the
medical examiner, well, Rusty the coroner um or Rusty the
medical examiner without having to go to med school. Like
the head of the um Washington d c Emmy's office
is not a physician. That's crazy or not a forensic
(34:38):
he's not a forensic pathologist. I'm sorry. I don't want
to sound like I'm disrespecting corners. I'm sure a lot
of them do great work, so h I hope it
doesn't sound like we're slagging corners in the whole Hornet's
nest man. It is. It's a big thing going on
right now. So these are You know, if the cops
UH or the police department is doing some kind of investigation,
you can get a private autopsy if Uncle Ted dies
(35:01):
seemingly naturally, but we just want to know what killed him.
Was it his artery blockage or was it his awful
liver because he was a raging alcoholic, Like we just
want to know. You can hire it out and uh
who wrote this? Was it the grabstor now Robert Valdez
Valdez und I saw thirty five and up. Yeah, so
(35:23):
you spend a little change on that, you are, Um,
and it's especially frustrating if you're doing a secondary Um oh,
I bet basically getting a second opinion via autopsy because
you don't think the first one worked. How do you
do that? Like everything's already been prodded and yeah, it's
gonna be incomplete. But um, apparently there's this guy in
New Orleans under the main coroner who's like whose work
(35:46):
is routinely followed up by second autopsies, and apparently his
are easier because um the secondary autopsy. The secondary medical examiners,
um say, like he just like half autopsies. Some people though,
surprising cage and corner Yeah wow yeah, uh so, Josh,
we mentioned a couple of tools like the haggard or
(36:08):
needle and the bone saw. Uh they use something called
in and taratone. I look these up there. The scissors
used to open intestines. It's sort of like one one
side of the scissor is longer than the other and
it has a little little hook type thing on that end.
It looked baffling to me, but apparently that's what you need. Um,
(36:32):
you talked about the hammer with a hook and the
rip cutter scalpel obviously regular old scissors. Gotta have a
skull chisel if you want to pry that that skull open,
or that hammer with the hook, hammer with a hook
forceps too, forceps to pick up the heavier organs. And uh,
Keisel goes on to elaborate a little bit and say,
(36:52):
you know what, You put the words medical examine or
knife in front of it, and you're gonna be paying
triple buddy. Here's a little hit from your own from
your uncle Kiesel. You go to the hardware store and
you get yourself a hack saw or some pruning shears,
or you go to the restaurant supply store and get
a nice cheap chef's NiFe, and you're good to go.
(37:13):
Because again, they don't really have to worry about the
person coming out of the procedure. On the other end,
alive still is the big challenge for physicians, and not
to say they do a hack job, but they don't
have to worry about the precision obviously of a surgeon. Right, So, um,
there's a lot of guessing involved in this, Like if
(37:34):
you think about it, the ladder with ice next to
the frozen body with head trauma, um that it's a
suggestion that that's how that guy died, or the melted
puddle with the old riddle, Yeah, that's a great one. Um,
these are all guesses, ultimately, is Dr Keisel puts it, like,
(37:54):
you have to have somebody videotaped dying next to the
time at clock to ever establish a certain time of death.
And even as our understanding of death as a process
rather than as a moment um increases, even that wouldn't
necessarily give you anything. So basically they're they're trying to
um make an educated guess at the manner of death.
(38:15):
But also the time of death is a big one.
And we mentioned um, gastric contents, stomach contents. Why would
those be important? Well, because if there's a cheeseburger that
still looks like a cheeseburger, and that means you died
within the amount of time it takes for that cheeseburger
to become kind nice, it's still bullus. But let's say
(38:37):
that you found also in that person's apartment receipt from
McDonald's that had the time stamp on the Put that together,
you're gonna get an even clear time of death. And
they work under something called the time of death certainty principle,
which is um, the laughing stock of principles. Well, it's
it's about as simple as it gets. If you know
(38:58):
for sure when the person was us known to be alive,
Say he was in the bar and he left, I
saw him, he was loaded. Uh, and then you know
for sure when he was found dead. A found him
at ten thirty frozen, well maybe not frozen yet, but
in the back alley he was dead as a stump.
Then you know for sure that he died sometime between.
(39:20):
And then they try to narrow it down from there.
That's the time of death certainty principle. That really makes sense. Yeah. Um,
and there's we've talked before about Rigor Morris. We made
an excellent podcast on Rigor Mortris. We've talked about um
lividity um from the Body Farm podcast. UM, the vitreous humor,
that corny is getting cloudy, that happens after death. Um.
(39:43):
And then again the gastric contents, bot flies, all that stuff,
full bladder bottle flies not bot flies, full bladder. I
never really thought about that. That makes sense. So if
you have like full bladder of urine or a lot
of poop near your w rectum ready to come out,
and I don't know what that tells you. Besides, stand back,
they didn't be they didn't be your boot before they died.
(40:06):
But I'm sure it could help an investigation. Um. And
then also they'll use some kind of non scientific ones,
like you know, if somebody's possibly been dead for a
few days, you know what day is their TV guide
sitting next to them open to That makes sense, It
makes a lot of sense. Is it on NBC? Did
they have dirty rock highlighted in their TV guide? Quite possibly?
(40:30):
They died laughing. So have we got uh, well, we
should mention that a lot of those variables that happened
to the body, they can they can change according to
like how hot or cold it is, and what other
chemicals you might have had in your blood stream. So
it's not super se hide that's gonna that's gonna delay
(40:52):
the onset of these things. Um, you got anything else? Well,
I mean I guess we could follow up a little
bit more on that article. Um, apparently just the system
in the United States is sort of a big mess
right now as a whole. And they you know, you
told a couple of the stories. Um but Tim Brown
(41:13):
a construction manager in Marlborough County, South Carolina. It's a
fourteen thousand all your part time job to be the
county corner. And I'm sure he does a find job
and hopefully there's not a lot of mouth peasants going
on there, you know, where he's not investigating like these
big homicides. But um, but the well, the problem is is,
you know, if he is investigating a homicide, the state
(41:34):
will generally provide a medical examiner to carry out an autopsy.
They're not gonna be like, well, you're the coroner. Sorry,
here's a scalpel. They'll they'll say, you can send this
body to the state medical examiner and they'll give you
an idea of you know, what you're looking at. But
it's also up to the coroner to decide whether or
not an autopsy should be performed. Oh it is, yeah, Okay,
(41:55):
the cops can't call for it. I'm sure other people can,
but I think ultimately it's the corner ner who is
able to decide or rule on that right, And we
did mention that not all doctors have even passed the test.
I think MPR found that a hundred and five throughout
the country have not passed the exam, and some aren't
(42:16):
going to retake it. They're just like, well, I have
failed it and I'm still totally employed. It's my career. Bagel, bagel. Yeah.
L Another part of the problem also is there's like
four to five officially qualified medical examiners who are forensic pathologists,
and it's about half of what's needed by estimates for
(42:38):
the US, right, so they're underfunded, overworked, overworked. The National
Association of Medical Examiners recommends no more than two d
and fifty UM autopsies per per medical examiner per year
and UM, I mean that's easily exceeded by a lot
of people these days. In Oklahoma stopped performing autopsies on
(43:00):
anybody over forty and UM, anybody uh suspected of being
a suicide. The Magic Massachusetts seemed like a big mess.
I think they said they had lost five bodies. They
incinerated one before the autopsy even took place. Yeah, it
(43:21):
was that the state where they got the two people
mixed up, you know, that was that was a death
in a fire that was a different one. And then
there was one case where they pulled the body out
of a lake and uh, well he drowned and they
didn't notice the bullet once in his neck. Yeah, and
suburban Detroit. Yeah, it sounds like a gross point. And
oh yeah, I don't know. I'm just guessing. So, yeah,
(43:43):
I got nothing else. I don't either. I think it's
a noble profession to get into if you've got the
stomach for it. Yeah, and uh, you don't like your
patients talking smack back to you, right, you don't like
that to spend a lot of magazine subscriptions. Don't have
to worry about your bedside manner does uh? Uh? Your
dog is free to come in and out apparently, I guess.
(44:06):
So that's just so crazy to um. This one was
surprising to me, Like remember when we did the bail system. Yeah,
that was surprising. It's like this seems like this innocuous,
normal thing, and then all of a sudden you start
looking into You're like, whoa, there's a lot of problems
with this system. So you can great if you want
to know more about autopsies, um, including a lot of
(44:30):
photos of dead bodies with sheets draped over him. Um,
you can find that by typing autopsy A U T
O P S I E S in the search bar
how stuff works dot com, which means the time for listenings.
Hold on Josh before listener mail. We want to announce
our south By Southwest goings On year. We will be
(44:51):
podcasting this year live from three thirty to four thirty
on Sunday, March eleven. And uh, we don't know the
location yet. I'm hoping it's a Driscal hotel again. Yeah. Uh,
and if you're a badgeholder, please come out and see
his podcast live. There'll be a lot of fun. And
if you're not in town and you can't make it,
we will release the live podcast so you'll join in
(45:13):
on the fun. Yeah, Posthumes. Yeah, like if you never
leave the state of Kansas. Uh, Monday the following day,
March twelve, we're gonna be throwing a party. And we're
not quite firm on the details yet, but there will
be likely some live music and some live comedy and
US and some other very and when I say very
(45:33):
special treats, you're really gonna want to be there for
this one? Yes, you know it's gonna be a good party.
It is. It's not like you're thinking though, I mean, like, Chuck,
this means it's gonna be a good party. He's not
like trying. There's no wink wink, nudge nudge for you
call it. Not like an eyes wide chut kind of thing.
Nothing like that. It's going to be a nice, wholesome,
(45:55):
fun party exactly. Uh plus beer. Yes, so this will
be count interacted by um dropping the clothes pin in
the milk bottle. Games. That's right, okay, now, listener mail
a listener mail, Josh. This is from Austin and I'm
gonna call this health scare and you helped me through
my health scare. Guys really appreciate the show. Went through
(46:18):
a pretty rough health scare recently, and this is how
I came to listen to your show. UM, I had
some limp swelling along with other health issues, and my
doctor says, you know, we should test for the worst
of the worst. Um. It took a couple of weeks
for this. Uh, these tests to get turned around, and
it was pretty much the longest time of my life.
(46:38):
To me, all signs pointed pointy to cancer. Couldn't believe it,
sitting across from a doctor I didn't know telling me
we need may need to look into a possible death sentence.
And then my wife is at home, uh, losing both
of her grandparents. It's Christmas time, and her parents are
stuck in two different hospitals and had to cancel plans
to business, all the while feuding with blood relatives who
(47:01):
were taking advantage of the financials of their dying parents. Here,
I was a new father of a spectacular baby, an
incredible wife, overwhelmed with her own terrible issues, and I
think I could soon be having to tell her I
could be terminally ill having a new baby. She would
often go to bed early, and I would be left
to try and sleep with my own frightening imagination of
(47:21):
what was going on my body. I started listening to
your podcast to take my mind off of everything, and
it was really the most calming distraction I could ever
have wished for. Laughing, wondering, learning, and enjoying all of
it until I would fall asleep. UH. Long story short,
I got my scans back. My olymphatic system was normal,
but my immune system was hyperactive, causing symptoms of note swelling, pain,
(47:43):
and fatigue, weight loss. Great news compared to the mindset
that I had of the worst thing imaginable. So he's okay,
very lucky. But still I look forward to laying down
early with my wife and now the two of us
listened to you guys before we go to bed to
help clear her mind in her tough turn. Wow, I
can't believe we can do that. It is crazy. I'm
(48:07):
sure they fall asleep six to eight minutes later, right,
tops stops. So that's from Austin and Austin. We're very
glad to hear about your diagnosis, my friend. Yeah, way
to go, Austin. Um, that was great. It was a
good wa Chuck, I think it? Uh it Austin. Thanks Austin,
I already did, thank me, I did, did you? Thank Jerry?
(48:28):
Thank you? Jerry? All right? Thank you to everybody for
listening to this one. If you have an interesting story
of how stuff you should have put you to sleep,
or anything weird that it's done for you, we want
to hear it. We like that kind of thing. You
can tweet to us at s Y s K Podcast.
You can join us on Facebook at facebook dot com
slash Stuff you should Know, and you can Send us
(48:50):
a good old fashioned email to stuff podcast at how
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
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learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon
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(49:16):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know?
From House toff works dot Com. I would say, hey,
(00:21):
welcome to the podcast, but I'm not going to yet
because this is add on to what you're about to hear. Right, Chuck,
let's be quiet because we don't want our our normal
selves to hear us. Oh gotcha? I wonder why we
were talking about that. Do you understand now, Chuck? Did
you know what this is? Do you know why we're doing?
What is? It is pretty freaking exciting, what Josh, we
(00:44):
are about to release in just a few seconds show?
Remember four zero zero? That's huge. There should be some
sort of fancaire. I hope there was just now I
think so there are four episodes of stuff you should know.
That's a big deal to did I can't even like
when people ask the requisite a, what's your favorite show?
(01:06):
I can't even just melt my brain now, I can't
even think of it. I used to have stock answers,
and now there's so many I look through and I
don't even remember some of them, Like what we did
that we talked about that? I'm with you crazy. Well,
let's let's hope we can do another four shows exactly.
Here's two years four more. Congratulations Buddy, right back, and Jerry,
(01:27):
thank you. You've been here since day one, aside from
a few guest episodes where you're lazy, Jerry, congratulations to you.
Pretty much been Jerry the whole time. Um, what what
would it be without the three of us? You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it would be crud? Yeah. Um well, thank you, dear
listener for listening to all four hundred. You know some
(01:49):
of you out there have because we would not be
around if you never listened in the first place. We
would have done four shows. Yea. And yeah, those of
you who have listened to one or two or just
discovered us or whatever, this is your one. Welcome to
the Dullhouse. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
(02:27):
With me is Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and that makes
this stuff you should know, dead and rowdy. I just
made you shudder before we pressed record. I'm out it
was an actual one. No, I thought you did that well, yeah,
but I was doing in response to your face. You
made that face, but you didn't make annoy were you
doing it on my behalf of exactly. Okank you so much.
(02:48):
I feel so cared for so chuckers. Yes, Um, this
is a little kind of a boo podcast. This this
has got to complete our suite on death. You would
think so, but it doesn't. No. No, we still have
how dying works left. Um, we still have um, what
(03:11):
it's like to be dead. We've got a lot of
stuff we haven't even touched, like what happens to the
nails after that. So, um, we're getting closer that we're
creating a larger body of work. Um, and this one,
this is gonna be a big one. You predicted. I
think I agree with you. It's detailed too. Yeah. It
(03:34):
was based in part on the an interview with the
Fulton County Deputy Medical Examiner, who knows what he's talking about. Hey,
if you're in Fulton County, you're gonna be investigating a
lot of foul play. Yeah. Atlanta and Detroit used to
go back and forth for the murder. Capital of the
US used to shoot out and then bullets a false
(03:57):
somewhere in the middle. DC is up there too, I think, Yeah,
do you see us up there? I don't. I think
Atlanta's out of the running the last several years. I
know it lost this place. We just don't murder like
what used to. But I mean, like the numbers all
pale in comparison to like Warez. It's like, do you
think that's a big number? How about fifteen times that
(04:17):
you know? Um, so chuck. Have you ever seen an autopsy,
like a real deal film of one? No? I saw that,
but that was that was quite fake. Have you not
seen Faces of Death? The original? I never saw that
there's an autopsy in there, and um, I can't remember
if we talked about it during the Exploitation Films episode,
(04:41):
but um, part of Faces of Death was real and
some was staged and fake, but the autopsy was definitely real.
And you can tell after reading this, it's like, oh yeah,
they do pull the skin flat from the top of
the scalp down over the face and under the chest.
I felt really bad for the human base reading this
(05:02):
because it's liable. Yeah, it's well, and it's always got
some flap of skin folded over it. Yeah, like, I
don't know, we don't want to look at that, so
let's just fold the chest over it. Exactly what what
is this what's that called the scalp scalp? Yeah, but
say skull, Sorry, the skulls under the scalp. No I
knew that. That's the fact of the podcast. Um, So,
(05:23):
why why do people do autopsis, Chuck? It's not just
so ghouls can be paid to do their thing. Now,
there's actual reasons for an autopsy, which, by the way,
it doesn't say it's in the article, but autopsy is
Greek based on the Greek autopsia, which means to see
for one's own eyes. Yeah. Yeah, Do they want to
(05:44):
see for oneself how somebody died? Yes, the manner of
death and time of death, which we'll get into. But
I think there are five certain types of death one five,
uh six that that they require an autopsy if you
die by injury, delayed complication of injury, poisoning, infectious complications,
(06:09):
foul play, or if you die with no attending positions,
So that those are the reasons that they were requested autopsy, right,
And if the cops come out or somebody the funeral
home comes out and says, whoa, whoa, whoa, this guy
may have been poisoned or he's injured and he died,
we need to call the corner the medical examiner. They're
(06:29):
going to perform an autopsy, and there's um, there's a
couple of types of autopsies. There's two really, and the
one where the cops are involved, where the medical examination
is carried out on behalf of law enforcement. That's a
UM well a medical examination of forensic autopsy a k a.
The the sexiest of all autopsies, because that's what you're
(06:52):
gonna see in movies and on TV quite often, unless
it's like contagion or something right exactly so, in a
move like um, oh contagion, Uh, the any autopsy you
performed is going to be a clinical autopsy, which is
usually performed by doctors who are trying to figure out
what the heck happened, what went wrong in the treatment,
(07:14):
how a disease took its course, and they're basically documenting
maybe an interesting case through autopsy for the medical literature
and for well, in the case of a contagion, even
though I haven't seen it, for the good of humanity,
immediate good of humanity, if there's some fast spreading disease
or something, or there's faulty cribs. Um autopsies were instrumental
(07:38):
in finding getting to the bottom of like product recalls
like faulty cribs that killing kids. I didn't think about that. Yeah,
that's one of the benefits of autopsies. Yeah, makes total sense.
So those are the two kinds of autopsies you got
for forensic and clinical. And basically we're gonna be talking
mainly about um law enforcement autopsies. So when we say autopsy,
(07:58):
for the rest of the podcast, we're too much talking
about a forensic autopsy. One that's trying to figure out
if somebody died uh naturally, accidentally or someone's hand, yeah,
foul play, um at their own hand, suicide or undetermined.
Those are the five legally defined manners of death. I
didn't see very sleepy on here. I thought those six
(08:21):
that would be naturally where they go to cut into
you and you're like, oh, you wake up and they're like, oh,
he's not dead. Right, Well, there's no manner of death
then yet. Uh, that's gonna be done by a forensic
pathologist most often, or a medical examiner or a coroner,
and we'll we'll get into that towards the end, right, Yeah,
(08:43):
about the difference. Yeah, Well, ideally it's going to be
carried out by a forensic pathologist, which is somebody who's
trained to perform autopsies looking for a mode of death. Right,
quite often a doctor, but not always almost always. Yeah,
to be a forensic pathologist, you have to be a doctor.
Oh really Yeah. To be a medical examiner, you have
(09:06):
to be a doctor. You don't have to be a
forensic pathologist to be a medical examiner. Well, and you
ideally should be uh accredited, but that's not always the
case either. You want to have to be Um. So
let's say you're forensic pathologist or a corner you're going
to try to assign one of these one of these
(09:28):
manners of death to a dead person. Yeah, like Quincy, Yeah, exactly. Um,
and what you're gonna do is, uh, you're gonna take
not just the findings from your autopsy, but you're going
to put them in a context with say a police
report or something. Right, Yeah, but you're not cops. Like
TV as usual overstates it as far as how involved
(09:50):
the medical examiner is, like as far as being on
the scene and collecting DNA and all that stuff. It's
it's not usually the case as Mr. What's his name,
doctor U Kaisel or keisel, let's go with the let's
go the k um. So you take all this stuff
like so so, for example, Robert Valdez who wrote this article,
(10:13):
UM says, so there's there's head trauma on a dead
man or a dead woman. Doesn't quite make sense. You know,
is it a homicide? Is it's probably not a suicide.
But is it accidental? Um? You know, it's definitely injury, right,
which is why somebody called the corner or the medical
(10:33):
examiner in the first place. But the exactly whether it
was at someone else's hand or accidental is still up
for debate. Well, you take those head that head trauma,
those head wounds, and you put them together with the
police report that said that there was an iced over
ladder laying beside the dead body when it was found.
There's probably an accident. The corner of the medical examiner
(10:56):
is going to say, this guy's probably it was probably
just slipping off the ladder, like the gutters are half
cleaned out, right, He has like a big hunk of
leaves in his hand, and he didn't write someone's name
in blood on the sidewalk. It was um. And then
you know, if you have the the old that old
(11:18):
yarn about a gunshot wounded the head. Is it a homicide? Well,
I don't know. Is there a burn pattern really close by?
Is there gunshot residue on the on the hand, the
dominant hand of the victim, that's probably a suicide. Yeah.
And as we'll point out here in a minute, one
of the steps uh which I didn't even realize this,
you always see him ziping them up in the body bag,
(11:39):
but actually bagged the hands and in a in a
suspected suicie homicide, Yeah, because you bagged the hands because
you want to just make sure that you can check
under the fingernails to make sure that there's not like
skin cells from the guy who attacked you under your
under your fingernails. People get real grabby when they're being murdered. So, um,
(12:00):
so we apparently I didn't realize this, but ductor keisel,
we don't have keisel, right. Yeah, he pointed out that.
So he gave an example of how it's not really
that clear cut right with the gunshot wound. Yeah, it
was interesting to say, you say I shot you in
the head. That would be very sad thirty years ago,
and um, you survived, but you developed the seizure disorder.
(12:24):
So you're fine, but you you have seizures. Thirty years later,
today you keel over dead from your seizure disorder. That
death would be ruled a homicide because you developed a
seizure disorder as the result of a gunshot wound, which
is an unnatural event that I inflicted on you. So
even though Emily can't come after me and be like,
(12:45):
I'm gonna assue you, she could be like, I'm gonna
kill you. She couldn't sue me because the apparently the
um the courts don't allow that after thirty years of survival,
but the the corner or the medical examiner would rule
it a homicide. Yeah, it's not, like he points out,
it's not their call to say, like, you gotta go
after and prosecute this dude, or Emily can sue you,
(13:06):
or she can bring you flowers and candy. They're just saying,
this is how it died, how it went exactly supposedly
in an ideal vacuum world, we should say that's right.
So you were talking about the difference between medical examiners
and corners. You want to you want to give up? Yeah,
from what I understand, and especially by reading that article
that you sent. Um corners are sort of the more
(13:33):
part time although they can do it full time, but
a lot of times it's in these underfunded counties and
counties where they don't have a lot of crime. Uh,
there will be a corner because there's only what did
that articles say, like four to professional medical examiners in
the United States. Yeah, that's crazy. There's plenty of medical examiners,
(13:54):
but they're not forensic pathologists, which in this case is
like the most highly qualified person in that field. Right,
So that's the main difference. It all depends on the
county where you live. There's different laws as you know,
as far as what they require. But if you're not
in a big city, you may not have the resources
or the equipment, or you may be so far out
(14:16):
of town that you know, it's hard to get people there,
so you might just have a corner driving up. That
was is also your contractor for your house as the
case was setting? Where was that? Was that in Louisiana
or Texas? Was in Washington? Washington? Yeah? Uh, there's sixteen
hundred counties in the US, and there's like thirty counties
total and six hundred of them used the corner system,
(14:39):
and you know medical examiners, an appointed physician. UH. County
coroner is an elected official who in most cases just
has to have a high school degree for UM to
be qualified for the position. Sometimes it's the sheriff. Saw
in that one county it was the local county prosecutor
is also the corner. Yeah, you're not supposed to do
(15:00):
that because you want an impartial person ruling on the
manner of death, especially say if like it's a police death.
You know, the police killed somebody. You don't want the
sheriff judging whether or not his deputies were to blame.
Looks like suicide to me, exactly, Well that happened. That
was a pretty good example in UM, New Orleans of
(15:20):
there's the corner. There has been corner for like thirty
five years. He um he's very very cozy with law enforcement,
or has been accused of it many times. And there
was a guy who stole one cops gun and shot
another cop to death and started to get away and
was finally caught. And when he was caught and brought
(15:40):
in finally he died supposedly after being given iodine for
X rays, but really he died because he was beaten
to death. He had like a bruce testicle and like, um,
all these cracked ribs in the corner. Still this day
refuses to rule it a homicide. It's like a movie plot.
All of a sudden, Richard gear gets called in to
invest to gate and then things get sexy exactly because
(16:04):
of course the cop is you know, Angelina Jolie. Is
that how it goes down all eighty pounds of her.
He's one tough cop. Um. So there there are problems
with the Corners thing. And um that you read that
article too from PBS Frontline. That was awesome, by the way,
people should read that. Yeah, I can't remember what it
was called. Um, I got it right here. Okay, good.
(16:25):
It is called the Real c S I Colin, How
America's patchwork system of death investigations puts the living at risk.
It's a it's a very eye opening um article. Yeah,
where basically they say that this the members of this
field quite literally bury their mistakes. There's some really bad
(16:46):
people who are really bad at their jobs out there
doing it. But the problem is it's like if you
have a coroner who doesn't know what he's looking at
and rules something a homicide. Then there's somebody who's going
to be put on trial eventually. Well, exactly right or
wrong if you have medical examiners who don't know what
they're doing or do a terrible job. One guy, um
in Tennessee, was accused of his dog eating some human
(17:10):
remains because it was allowed to roam free in the
examination room. You can't do that. Another guy supposedly allegedly
was drunk while he was doing like thousands of these things. Um,
that's probably the only way he could get through it
because he wasn't a real forensic pathologist. Right. But there's
a huge there's this huge battle going on between you
(17:31):
know how qualified you have to be. It's the medical
establishment trying to take over this lucrative field er. Well,
it's not so lucrative, because that's one reason it said
in the article that there's a shortage is because they
get paid on average less than a doctor would. So
if you're gonna go through medical school plus I think
an extra year of training for this to get paid
(17:53):
less money. And the one guy pointed out, so like
you really do this because of love for your fellow man. Yes,
that was the guy who refused to rule the homicide. Yeah, yeah,
I don't know what that means in but also i'll
bet their UM, I'll bet their malpractice insurance. It's like
next to nothing compared to a regular physicians. Yeah, because
(18:15):
you're using Well, we'll get to that um. So the
coroner also is responsible for identifying a body, notifying the
next of king's billy, collecting uh and returning any personal
belongings that's found on the body, which I'm sure in
rural counties that you know, there's probably been more than
one wallet go missing during that protest, maybe maybe not
(18:35):
calling out corners, never trusted farmers, have you, um? And
then signing the death certificate. And this kind of goes
along with the origin of coroner, which is derived from
the old English crowner. Yeah. I think Richard the lion
Heart was when it first really came into effect, because
he wanted I guess he wanted the money of dead people,
(18:56):
so he would send out his crowner so to gather
it up. Right, He's like a demo, and they would say, well,
he died of of a wound from a sword, and
then take his gold trinkets, yes, and return it to
Richard yeah, exactly. And then apparently over time they were like, well,
while you're out there, why don't you just start taking
vital records and and let's make you like an official guy.
(19:19):
And that's how the crowner became the coroner. It's right.
And Dr Dr Diesel even knew that. Dr Keisel because
he's the one in the article that even pointed that out.
And I thought, well, that's good. He knows about the
history of his profession. He seemed like a pretty sharp guy,
I imagine. So so, Chuck, we've been beating around the
bush quite long enough. Do you feel like it's time
(19:40):
for people to put down their lunches and us to
go through the autopsy procedure step by step? Yes, I
think that's a great idea. Step one, as I have
it is a body bag or an evident cheat got
to use a new, brand new body bag and a
brand new evident sheet. I don't want to reuse this, No,
I didn't. That was worth pointing out. But it wouln't
(20:02):
even bring myself the highlight. I know he was thorough though,
so you definitely want to use new ones because you
don't want, obviously any contamination. The body is moved by
a deaner. Uh, make about thirty seven grand a year.
I look that up on average. If you're a morgue
atendent or a deaner and that is a d I
E N E R. And they will take the body
(20:24):
in the bag or sheet to the examination sweet and
it stays in the bag, uh for a little while
at first at least. Isn't that right? I didn't run
across that. Yeah, because if you have to, uh, you
can unseal the bag, but you have to take note
of the clothing and oh yeah, the cloth they just
(20:45):
put the body. Well that if they do put it
in the fridge. If if there is some delay, like
if the bodies are stacked up or something, or I
would imagine to let rigger stop. Sure right to cease exactly,
very good shock. But you leave it in the bag
at first. You want to take note of the clothing
(21:07):
after unzipping it and the position of the clothing. It's
very important because the guy had let's say his turtle
night pulled up over his nose. He might have died
by some stinky chemical in the air. That's good. You
paint a heck of a picture. I imagine a Frenchman
with a little mustache. Uh, you want to begin with
(21:28):
the this is the external examination is obviously what comes first.
You don't want to go cutting into the body. You
want to look at hair samples, fingernails, gunshot residue, fibers,
paint chips, anything on the body, hairs that that is
worth noting. Right in the bag itself or the evidence
sheet is kept as evidence as well, Yeah, because stuff
(21:48):
might have stuck to it. Um, that's gross. Yeah, it
is kind of gross, but it happened, you know. Uh.
You also want to keep the body in the bag,
Uh to X ray as well. Yeah, X ray or
cat scan the body in the bag. I didn't think
about that, No, but it's true. I mean things get
lost in the bank. You want to make sure they're there. True,
(22:08):
you wouldn't be able to see through the human being
find maybe a bullet or something that's missing. It's in
the bag. Uh, it says in here. Sometimes I'll use
a UV radiation special technique to basically make secretions glow
in the dark or become fluorescent, like, hey, this guy's
got some sort of spot him on his turtleneck as well,
(22:29):
and it's glowing now and I see that right, Well,
you'd have to use the correct reagent to make spot
him glow under a black light. But I'm sure it's
out there, right, Yeah, sure you can get it into
Spencer Gifts. Um, so after you've made this, uh this
initial external examinations, time to get the body nude out
of the body bag. That's right, we want to weigh it. Yeah,
you don't clean the body up to No, not yet,
(22:51):
very important. You gotta leave it as is. So you
make your first examination with the body fully clothed, make
a second examination with the body undressed but still bloody, right,
and then after that, um, you clean the body up
and make a third external examination. Well, the diner will
clean the body up while you go have coffee, insert
(23:13):
the internet. You're like Rusty Gene clean that body off.
And then finally after that, the cleaned naked body is
placed on the autopsy table, which is I mean, everybody's
seen one of these. It's a big stainless steel table
with raised sides and it's slanted towards the middle with
(23:34):
why would it be st and stuff? Well, there's a
lot of blood and fluids that come out when you
cut into a body that they probably figure that out
after prototype one that was exactly to allow sense. Uh.
So yeah, you, um, you have the body prepared. Also,
I forgot, I'm sorry. You want to note the characteristics
(23:56):
of the body, race, height, tricks, scar tattoos, all that
kind of color age, and all the time they're looking
for things like wounds, modes of injury, anything that could
kind of give them an idea of what, uh this
person died from. Um. And then the body's on the
examination table, chuck, and it's time for well, it's time
(24:19):
for the internal exam. Well, yeah, it's time for something
called the body block. Which I tried to get a
picture of this but I could not find one. Imagine
it's just a I guarantee it's a yoga block. Do
you think. I'm sure maybe that's the exact same thing.
So they put this body block under the back. At first,
the body's face up and that will be trude the
(24:40):
chest and have the arms kind of fall down to
your chest is sticking out, which makes it much easier
to get into. Yeah, your chest is raised up. Yep. Okay,
So um, Dr Bryant, would you like to make the
first decision? Sure, Josh, I'm gonna take that scalpel or
that kitchen knife, but probably the a scalpel initially, although
(25:01):
they use all sorts of stuff. We'll find out, uh,
and I will make a large and deep, y shaped
decision and incision from shoulder to shoulder, meat at the
breast bone, and then down to the pubic bone. So
you've got a big wine in your chest. You fold
that front flap up over the face, and I guess
the other ones just fold over to the side. Well,
I mean, it's not that easy. You have to kind
(25:23):
of pull it back and dissect with the scalpel the
connective tissue as you pull back. But then yes, that
that V shaped chest flap goes back over the face
and then what uh the next step you're um, right
now you've got the rib cage and neck muscles all exposed.
(25:43):
Also probably pulled open the stomach flaps too. Yeah, the
figure those are just off to the side because you
you know where else are they gonna go? Um, the
organs are exposed. At this point, You're gonna make a
series of cuts. You're gonna detach. Your goal here is
to get the organs out in a big unit it
and to wait, wait, you didn't take the rib cage
off yet. Oh I didn't. I'm sorry. You're gonna You're
(26:05):
gonna cut the rib cage off using everything from pruning
shears that you would use in your backyard, the special
rib cage cutters what it was called rib cutters, of
course they are. Yeah, uh so okay, now the ribs gone,
your organs are exposed. You're gonna make cuts that detach
the larynx, esophagus, arteries, and ligaments. Then you're going to
(26:27):
detach it from the spinal cord. Then you're gonna detach
everything from the bladder and the rectum. And then after that,
your whole organ set is able to be lifted out
as one whole, as one whole unit. Pretty cool, Pretty cool.
So um, now it's kind of time to get busy
on the organs. You want to take slices of them.
(26:50):
Want to weigh him first though, Oh yeah, you want
to weigh You want to note their appearance, character color, yeah,
if they're funny. Um, And then you're gonna to take
some slices uh thin enough to be um viewed under
a microscope, right, because that's part of this too. It's
not all fun in games like you have to look
into microscopes and stuff like that. Um. And then also
(27:14):
the star probably is the stomach. You're gonna cut the
stomach open and examine the gastric contents because that will
tell you something about the time of death. It will
see or costs of death. Maybe possibly there's a there's
a small watch in your stomach, right, they maybe swallowed
it and choked or something like that. Yeah, you never know. Uh.
(27:37):
And also they're probably going to examine the heart for
cardiac bands. Um. They're gonna bisect major arteries to see
if there's any kind of blockage. Maybe it was a
heart attack, maybe there's some sort of poison, who knows.
But basically they're just gonna go through all of your
internal organs one by one. Uh. So you've got the
chest cavity cut open, but the heads just sit in
(27:59):
there like what are you gonna do? What are you
gonna do? Now, Well, he's gotta flap a face over
the skin, skin over the face, I am. So the
body would say, hey, what's up with my brain? And
then the the examiner will say, hold tight, I'm getting
right to that, sir. And then you're going to use
(28:20):
that scalpel to make incisions um from behind one ear,
across the forehead to the other ear, all the way
around like a candleoup, let's say, or let's say a grapefruit.
That's what you typically split into and uh, you divide
that cut as well, so it's uh you have two
separate flaps, one going over the face again, yeah, and
(28:43):
then fold that rear flap back over the neck. And
then you've got an exposed skull. And they use a
special kind of stall called the striker saw um, which
is capable of cutting through the skull but doesn't pierce
the brain. It's pretty cool. Yeah, Is that what they
use when they take casts off? Probably is? Isn't that
same deal? We'll cut through your cast, but not through
(29:04):
your skin, I would imagine. I mean it looks like this.
Have you ever had a cast? I have it, But yeah,
I bet you that's may not be the exact same thing, though,
um blow at any rate. They use that. And then
they use a claude hammer, not the kind of you
think it's a it's a hammer or at the bottom
of a handle there's a claw. They use that to
pride the cap of the skull off. Right. If you
(29:26):
once you get the skull cap off. If you look
inside of it, you're going to see that the dura,
which connects the brain to the skull, and by the way,
which shrinks when you have a hangover UM, is stuck
to the inside of the skull cap. Right, So if
a shrunken they could determine if he was hung over
when he died, they could UM. They'll also cut away
(29:47):
the tentorium, which connects the um, UH, the cerebellum, and
the occipital lobes right, and all of a sudden, voila,
you have an exposed brain where once you detach it
from the UH spinal cord, you are absolutely ready for
it to just be lifted right out of the skull.
And again, this whole time you're taking notes on your
(30:10):
little voice recorder or you're telling Rusty the deaner to
write that down. And so it's not just UM, you're
not just taking all this stuff out willingly. You're you're observing,
noting anything you see, UM. And then what do you do.
You're done. It's been four hours. You did a really
detailed examination inside and out, and you have this body
(30:32):
that's just all kinds of messed up. Now, But the
families like, we've got a funeral tomorrow. We can't do this.
We shouldn't even be here seeing this. Put uncle ted
back together, and the the corner or the medical example,
and will say, just chill out. Way of procedures for this.
So the internal organs either go back into the chess
(30:56):
cavity or the abdomen. Why would they do that really
of just purposes? Oh really? Yeah, interesting, I didn't think
about that. Or more typically they're incinerated, or in the
case of really horrible medical examiners, they're fed to their dogs,
right yeah, or or the bodily fluids are pumped back
into the body because their draining system is clogged up. Yeah.
(31:20):
In Massachusetts State Medical Examiner's office, Um, the chest flaps
are closed and so back together, the skull caps placed
back on and then held in place by sewing the
scalp back. And any decent corners should make their incisions
along the hairline or at least in well enough precise
(31:41):
enough that um, it should be discreete once sewn back together.
And you're doing this with a hagadorn needle, which is uh,
apparently when you're sowing human skin, he can't just use
an ordinary sewing needle and you gotta go Jamee Gum
style and get this beefy skin needle. M what nice.
(32:05):
It's just great all over the place. Thank you. Um. So,
like I said, it takes four hours by Dr Kesel's estimate.
I love that he said that includes paperwork. Yeah. Well,
I mean, you know, like the initial examination, then writing
it up and all that. He said for a homicide
it could take four to six hours. Um. And what's
what's behind? I guess probably the lengthier ones are examining
(32:30):
the wounds because you can't just say, well, here are
the bullet holes. So this guy, you know, died from
being shot. What do you want from me? Shut up?
I'm a I'm a corner. Um. Today you have to
trace the path of each bullet hole and show where
it went from entrance to exeter, from entrance to where
it stopped. Yeah. And and in the case of any
(32:52):
sort of police action, and especially I mean if there's
any sort of a shootout with like three or four
guys and like ten cops in there's people end up
dead all over the place. It's a bad day for
a corner. It's a bad day for a corner, because
you got to determine, he said. Uh. Keisel said that
you know what they want to know very specifically, especially
in the case of police shootings, is all right, this
(33:13):
bullet in this guy's shoulder, where did who's gun did
it come from? And this other bullet in his chest?
Whose bullet did that come from? And see that guy,
He's got five different kinds of bullets from these twelve cops,
and we we need to know where each of them
came from. He gets really convoluted, right, and same with
um blunt force trauma. Uh. They he has to determine,
not just like well, something really heavy killed this person,
(33:35):
has to be this thing is probably what killed this person, right,
because say that they police find a bloody hammer at
the scene, but the medical examiner says it was a
hockey stick likely that killed this person. That's not going
to help in the prosecution or vice versa. You don't
want somebody, you know, who has their prints on a
(33:57):
hammer that the cops are trying to use against them
to be used wrongly when it was actually that hockey
stick that killed that person. True, that poor poor person.
And while you can get some schooling for this stuff,
I think I think it said a year extra h
A lot of it is just experience seeing the stuff like, hey,
(34:18):
I've seen that before. That's definitely a hockey stick. Yeah,
you can go from Rusty the deaner to Rusty the
medical examiner, well, Rusty the coroner um or Rusty the
medical examiner without having to go to med school. Like
the head of the um Washington d c Emmy's office
is not a physician. That's crazy or not a forensic
(34:38):
he's not a forensic pathologist. I'm sorry. I don't want
to sound like I'm disrespecting corners. I'm sure a lot
of them do great work, so h I hope it
doesn't sound like we're slagging corners in the whole Hornet's
nest man. It is. It's a big thing going on
right now. So these are You know, if the cops
UH or the police department is doing some kind of investigation,
you can get a private autopsy if Uncle Ted dies
(35:01):
seemingly naturally, but we just want to know what killed him.
Was it his artery blockage or was it his awful
liver because he was a raging alcoholic, Like we just
want to know. You can hire it out and uh
who wrote this? Was it the grabstor now Robert Valdez
Valdez und I saw thirty five and up. Yeah, so
(35:23):
you spend a little change on that, you are, Um,
and it's especially frustrating if you're doing a secondary Um oh,
I bet basically getting a second opinion via autopsy because
you don't think the first one worked. How do you
do that? Like everything's already been prodded and yeah, it's
gonna be incomplete. But um, apparently there's this guy in
New Orleans under the main coroner who's like whose work
(35:46):
is routinely followed up by second autopsies, and apparently his
are easier because um the secondary autopsy. The secondary medical examiners,
um say, like he just like half autopsies. Some people though,
surprising cage and corner Yeah wow yeah, uh so, Josh,
we mentioned a couple of tools like the haggard or
(36:08):
needle and the bone saw. Uh they use something called
in and taratone. I look these up there. The scissors
used to open intestines. It's sort of like one one
side of the scissor is longer than the other and
it has a little little hook type thing on that end.
It looked baffling to me, but apparently that's what you need. Um,
(36:32):
you talked about the hammer with a hook and the
rip cutter scalpel obviously regular old scissors. Gotta have a
skull chisel if you want to pry that that skull open,
or that hammer with the hook, hammer with a hook
forceps too, forceps to pick up the heavier organs. And uh,
Keisel goes on to elaborate a little bit and say,
(36:52):
you know what, You put the words medical examine or
knife in front of it, and you're gonna be paying
triple buddy. Here's a little hit from your own from
your uncle Kiesel. You go to the hardware store and
you get yourself a hack saw or some pruning shears,
or you go to the restaurant supply store and get
a nice cheap chef's NiFe, and you're good to go.
(37:13):
Because again, they don't really have to worry about the
person coming out of the procedure. On the other end,
alive still is the big challenge for physicians, and not
to say they do a hack job, but they don't
have to worry about the precision obviously of a surgeon. Right, So, um,
there's a lot of guessing involved in this, Like if
(37:34):
you think about it, the ladder with ice next to
the frozen body with head trauma, um that it's a
suggestion that that's how that guy died, or the melted
puddle with the old riddle, Yeah, that's a great one. Um,
these are all guesses, ultimately, is Dr Keisel puts it, like,
(37:54):
you have to have somebody videotaped dying next to the
time at clock to ever establish a certain time of death.
And even as our understanding of death as a process
rather than as a moment um increases, even that wouldn't
necessarily give you anything. So basically they're they're trying to
um make an educated guess at the manner of death.
(38:15):
But also the time of death is a big one.
And we mentioned um, gastric contents, stomach contents. Why would
those be important? Well, because if there's a cheeseburger that
still looks like a cheeseburger, and that means you died
within the amount of time it takes for that cheeseburger
to become kind nice, it's still bullus. But let's say
(38:37):
that you found also in that person's apartment receipt from
McDonald's that had the time stamp on the Put that together,
you're gonna get an even clear time of death. And
they work under something called the time of death certainty principle,
which is um, the laughing stock of principles. Well, it's
it's about as simple as it gets. If you know
(38:58):
for sure when the person was us known to be alive,
Say he was in the bar and he left, I
saw him, he was loaded. Uh, and then you know
for sure when he was found dead. A found him
at ten thirty frozen, well maybe not frozen yet, but
in the back alley he was dead as a stump.
Then you know for sure that he died sometime between.
(39:20):
And then they try to narrow it down from there.
That's the time of death certainty principle. That really makes sense. Yeah. Um,
and there's we've talked before about Rigor Morris. We made
an excellent podcast on Rigor Mortris. We've talked about um
lividity um from the Body Farm podcast. UM, the vitreous humor,
that corny is getting cloudy, that happens after death. Um.
(39:43):
And then again the gastric contents, bot flies, all that stuff,
full bladder bottle flies not bot flies, full bladder. I
never really thought about that. That makes sense. So if
you have like full bladder of urine or a lot
of poop near your w rectum ready to come out,
and I don't know what that tells you. Besides, stand back,
they didn't be they didn't be your boot before they died.
(40:06):
But I'm sure it could help an investigation. Um. And
then also they'll use some kind of non scientific ones,
like you know, if somebody's possibly been dead for a
few days, you know what day is their TV guide
sitting next to them open to That makes sense, It
makes a lot of sense. Is it on NBC? Did
they have dirty rock highlighted in their TV guide? Quite possibly?
(40:30):
They died laughing. So have we got uh, well, we
should mention that a lot of those variables that happened
to the body, they can they can change according to
like how hot or cold it is, and what other
chemicals you might have had in your blood stream. So
it's not super se hide that's gonna that's gonna delay
(40:52):
the onset of these things. Um, you got anything else? Well,
I mean I guess we could follow up a little
bit more on that article. Um, apparently just the system
in the United States is sort of a big mess
right now as a whole. And they you know, you
told a couple of the stories. Um but Tim Brown
(41:13):
a construction manager in Marlborough County, South Carolina. It's a
fourteen thousand all your part time job to be the
county corner. And I'm sure he does a find job
and hopefully there's not a lot of mouth peasants going
on there, you know, where he's not investigating like these
big homicides. But um, but the well, the problem is is,
you know, if he is investigating a homicide, the state
(41:34):
will generally provide a medical examiner to carry out an autopsy.
They're not gonna be like, well, you're the coroner. Sorry,
here's a scalpel. They'll they'll say, you can send this
body to the state medical examiner and they'll give you
an idea of you know, what you're looking at. But
it's also up to the coroner to decide whether or
not an autopsy should be performed. Oh it is, yeah, Okay,
(41:55):
the cops can't call for it. I'm sure other people can,
but I think ultimately it's the corner ner who is
able to decide or rule on that right, And we
did mention that not all doctors have even passed the test.
I think MPR found that a hundred and five throughout
the country have not passed the exam, and some aren't
(42:16):
going to retake it. They're just like, well, I have
failed it and I'm still totally employed. It's my career. Bagel, bagel. Yeah.
L Another part of the problem also is there's like
four to five officially qualified medical examiners who are forensic pathologists,
and it's about half of what's needed by estimates for
(42:38):
the US, right, so they're underfunded, overworked, overworked. The National
Association of Medical Examiners recommends no more than two d
and fifty UM autopsies per per medical examiner per year
and UM, I mean that's easily exceeded by a lot
of people these days. In Oklahoma stopped performing autopsies on
(43:00):
anybody over forty and UM, anybody uh suspected of being
a suicide. The Magic Massachusetts seemed like a big mess.
I think they said they had lost five bodies. They
incinerated one before the autopsy even took place. Yeah, it
(43:21):
was that the state where they got the two people
mixed up, you know, that was that was a death
in a fire that was a different one. And then
there was one case where they pulled the body out
of a lake and uh, well he drowned and they
didn't notice the bullet once in his neck. Yeah, and
suburban Detroit. Yeah, it sounds like a gross point. And
oh yeah, I don't know. I'm just guessing. So, yeah,
(43:43):
I got nothing else. I don't either. I think it's
a noble profession to get into if you've got the
stomach for it. Yeah, and uh, you don't like your
patients talking smack back to you, right, you don't like
that to spend a lot of magazine subscriptions. Don't have
to worry about your bedside manner does uh? Uh? Your
dog is free to come in and out apparently, I guess.
(44:06):
So that's just so crazy to um. This one was
surprising to me, Like remember when we did the bail system. Yeah,
that was surprising. It's like this seems like this innocuous,
normal thing, and then all of a sudden you start
looking into You're like, whoa, there's a lot of problems
with this system. So you can great if you want
to know more about autopsies, um, including a lot of
(44:30):
photos of dead bodies with sheets draped over him. Um,
you can find that by typing autopsy A U T
O P S I E S in the search bar
how stuff works dot com, which means the time for listenings.
Hold on Josh before listener mail. We want to announce
our south By Southwest goings On year. We will be
(44:51):
podcasting this year live from three thirty to four thirty
on Sunday, March eleven. And uh, we don't know the
location yet. I'm hoping it's a Driscal hotel again. Yeah. Uh,
and if you're a badgeholder, please come out and see
his podcast live. There'll be a lot of fun. And
if you're not in town and you can't make it,
we will release the live podcast so you'll join in
(45:13):
on the fun. Yeah, Posthumes. Yeah, like if you never
leave the state of Kansas. Uh, Monday the following day,
March twelve, we're gonna be throwing a party. And we're
not quite firm on the details yet, but there will
be likely some live music and some live comedy and
US and some other very and when I say very
(45:33):
special treats, you're really gonna want to be there for
this one? Yes, you know it's gonna be a good party.
It is. It's not like you're thinking though, I mean, like, Chuck,
this means it's gonna be a good party. He's not
like trying. There's no wink wink, nudge nudge for you
call it. Not like an eyes wide chut kind of thing.
Nothing like that. It's going to be a nice, wholesome,
(45:55):
fun party exactly. Uh plus beer. Yes, so this will
be count interacted by um dropping the clothes pin in
the milk bottle. Games. That's right, okay, now, listener mail
a listener mail, Josh. This is from Austin and I'm
gonna call this health scare and you helped me through
my health scare. Guys really appreciate the show. Went through
(46:18):
a pretty rough health scare recently, and this is how
I came to listen to your show. UM, I had
some limp swelling along with other health issues, and my
doctor says, you know, we should test for the worst
of the worst. Um. It took a couple of weeks
for this. Uh, these tests to get turned around, and
it was pretty much the longest time of my life.
(46:38):
To me, all signs pointed pointy to cancer. Couldn't believe it,
sitting across from a doctor I didn't know telling me
we need may need to look into a possible death sentence.
And then my wife is at home, uh, losing both
of her grandparents. It's Christmas time, and her parents are
stuck in two different hospitals and had to cancel plans
to business, all the while feuding with blood relatives who
(47:01):
were taking advantage of the financials of their dying parents. Here,
I was a new father of a spectacular baby, an
incredible wife, overwhelmed with her own terrible issues, and I
think I could soon be having to tell her I
could be terminally ill having a new baby. She would
often go to bed early, and I would be left
to try and sleep with my own frightening imagination of
(47:21):
what was going on my body. I started listening to
your podcast to take my mind off of everything, and
it was really the most calming distraction I could ever
have wished for. Laughing, wondering, learning, and enjoying all of
it until I would fall asleep. UH. Long story short,
I got my scans back. My olymphatic system was normal,
but my immune system was hyperactive, causing symptoms of note swelling, pain,
(47:43):
and fatigue, weight loss. Great news compared to the mindset
that I had of the worst thing imaginable. So he's okay,
very lucky. But still I look forward to laying down
early with my wife and now the two of us
listened to you guys before we go to bed to
help clear her mind in her tough turn. Wow, I
can't believe we can do that. It is crazy. I'm
(48:07):
sure they fall asleep six to eight minutes later, right,
tops stops. So that's from Austin and Austin. We're very
glad to hear about your diagnosis, my friend. Yeah, way
to go, Austin. Um, that was great. It was a
good wa Chuck, I think it? Uh it Austin. Thanks Austin,
I already did, thank me, I did, did you? Thank Jerry?
(48:28):
Thank you? Jerry? All right? Thank you to everybody for
listening to this one. If you have an interesting story
of how stuff you should have put you to sleep,
or anything weird that it's done for you, we want
to hear it. We like that kind of thing. You
can tweet to us at s Y s K Podcast.
You can join us on Facebook at facebook dot com
slash Stuff you should Know, and you can Send us
(48:50):
a good old fashioned email to stuff podcast at how
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To
learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon
in the upper right corner of our homepage. The house
Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes.
(49:16):
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