Coroner's Journal (16 page)

Powerlessness is what you feel when you come to the scene of a suicide of a young mother and wonder what you could have done to prevent it. Helplessness is what you feel when you come to accept there is nothing you can do to prevent future suicides. This is the story of our journey to do something.

Suicide tends to bring out an array of emotions among first responders—prejudice, numbness, empathy. One suicide I handled in 1998 hit everyone who worked on it particularly hard.

She was in her late twenties. I'll call her Jenny. Her two toddlers called her “Momma.”

My investigation started as soon as I turned the Green Hornet into that middle-class neighborhood. The sun had just started to settle over West Baton Rouge, but the soft light allowed me to see that this was a nice brick home, one that was well maintained.

I stepped through the sliding glass doors that led into the master bedroom. I noted a plastic toy truck on the carpet. A yellow dump truck to be exact, with huge black wheels—funny how those things get imprinted in your brain.

My attention was immediately drawn to the small bathroom to my right. Jenny was sprawled out on the floor. She was dressed in a previously white sweatshirt, blue jeans, and tennis shoes. Blood was everywhere in a vast spray pattern. The entire bathroom and all of its contents were covered with a fine red mist and bits of brain matter. I watched some of it drip onto the floor as I gazed through the bathroom door. I mumbled something to the effect of, “Oh my God! What happened here?”

The crime-scene officer responded numbly, “Killed herself ... in front of her kid, Doc. That's what.”

A great sadness came over me.

Every suicide is originally considered a homicide and is investigated as such. It's not a suicide until the coroner says it is. The prime suspect in this situation would be Jenny's husband—for no other reason than the fact that he is her husband. Of course that very suspicion and subsequent line of questioning would add to his trauma and grief. I've talked and listened to many people who have been left behind by a loved one who suicided. I had not yet talked to the husband, who was being interviewed.

In order to protect myself, and my family, against infections that may be transmitted through blood, I put on shoe protectors in addition to my blue gloves. I realized there was no way to avoid stepping in Jenny's blood. It was everywhere. The meaning of words like “gruesome” and “ghastly” takes on a new reality in situations like this.

Jenny was face down. She had short brown hair, what my wife would call a “pixie cut.” As I turned her over and examined her, I realized that Jenny no longer had a face. Her face and the entire top of her head had been blown off. All that was left of her head was the base of an empty, hollowed-out skull with what looked like rags of flesh clinging loosely to it.
Ghastly indeed! Look what you've gone and done to yourself—poor baby. What was so bad that you had to do this?

The evidentiary value of the fine mist of blood had not been lost on me. I realized it meant that a high-velocity bullet had caused the injury. I found a .357 Magnum revolver under her—yeah, that qualifies. That's about a half an ounce of lead traveling at almost 900 miles per hour, accompanied by exploding gases. That will demolish skull, brain, and face like a stick of dynamite—literally.
There will be no open casket for this family.

That fine spray pattern of blood also indicated that Jenny had been alone in the bathroom when she sustained the gunshot to her head. Such a mist would have covered anyone else in that small space, and I was informed that the husband had no such blood mist on him. Though he could have changed clothes, for all we know.

Our examination reflected that the mist was uniform throughout the entire bathroom. There was no “shadowing” to be observed. If her husband had been in there, he would have blocked the mist and that would have left a clean pattern, or “shadow,” on the wall. The pattern also indicated that she may have been looking into the mirror when she pulled the trigger.
What kind of pain and despair she must have felt at that fatal moment . . .

There is not a whole lot to do at a suicide. Once the death is determined to be a suicide, the body is taken away and the family is left to deal with the cleanup and the fact that a loved one has just taken his or her own life. The police and I close the case. It's over for us, but just beginning for the family. There will be lots of guilt, anger, blaming, and shame in the family for many years to come. And the children will later be more at risk than others to kill themselves. It is a vicious, unforgiving cycle of destruction.

Information trickled in. When she was a child, Jenny had discovered her suicided father. It affirmed what I already knew. The cycle of suicide runs in families. It can also be contagious, reaching to friends, acquaintances, and even people who don't really know the victim.

It was also reported that one of her small children had run to the bathroom when he heard the gun go off. I thought of how confused and scared he must have been—and must still be. I doubt he could understand much of this. The sight of his mother in that condition could only terrify him. Thinking about that child just about “gutted me,” as my grandfather used to say.

Sadness and anger are definitely bedfellows. Anger started to assert its presence in me as I walked through Jenny's house. There was the little pallet she had made for the kids in front of the TV. Their little cereal bowls were still on the coffee table. Their meal was interrupted by death sweeping their mother away forever. There were some of the kids' drawings taped to the refrigerator door. There were pictures of the whole family—pictures taken during better times. And realizing how much she cared for them made me sad and still more angry.

Angry that death had won.

Angry that her split-second decision was unforgiving.

Angry about what these children must face, and about the stigma of suicide.

And angry at myself as I thought, “If I know all this, why the hell am I not doing something about it?” Yes, I am responsible for the dead, but I am also responsible to the living.

It was a sleepless night for me, and for DeAnn, whom I kept up for hours discussing the matter. She is my debriefer and stress-reliever at times like this. I'm lucky to have her. How many coroners have a live-in psychiatric nurse?

Jenny's death was not in vain. The next morning I called a mutual friend of ours, Frank Campbell, who heads the Crisis Intervention Center. He was a step ahead of me. Frank had been formulating a method to go to the scene of a suicide to do on-site intervention with the family. He told me that he was just waiting for a spark to get a task force going. The coroner's office was that spark. The members of the team became volunteers of the coroner's office and we launched the program on the same night that we had our first meeting. We named it LOSS, for Local Outreach to Suicide Survivors, a team made up of a suicide survivor and a crisis therapist. We were less than one hour into that seminal meeting when we got our first call. We pulled things together and were at the site of the suicide within fifteen minutes of notification.

So, what's different now? A lot. Now when I respond to a suicide, I deploy the LOSS team. Both the survivor and the therapist assist the families and help answer some of the tough questions. They help families decide about organ and tissue donation—a meaningful living legacy for those who choose to donate. They help families tell the children. They help get the blood and gore cleaned up. They stay for hours with the family in this time of crisis. They offer follow-up group and individual therapy at the Crisis Center. They do it at no charge. And it works.

I am humbled to be a part of such a program. And I am gratified that Jenny did not die in vain.

There is always potential for conflict between governmental agencies. This is especially true when more than one agency has authority at a crime scene. At some murder scenes there is what we refer to as multiple-agency jurisdiction. The crime scene itself, with the exception of the corpse, is the domain of the police agency handling the investigation. The body belongs to me, the coroner. The body is, in essence, my crime scene.

A homicide crime scene is usually worked from the outermost perimeter in toward the corpse. Most homicide crime scenes are geographically self-limited. This is obvious by the fact that the yellow crime-scene tape demarcates the boundaries of the crime scene.

Over the years, the police departments and the coroner's office have developed good working relationships. We are the good guys and we want to catch the bad guys. That really is the bottom line. But, friction can develop.

The kid was nineteen years old. At the time, my middle son was about the same age and was in LSU. This kid, Johnny, was also a student at LSU. Johnny had been going through what he considered some tough times. So tough that he chose to kill himself.

I first saw Johnny sitting in his car. He was dressed in preppy clothes. The car was parked in the garage of a family friend. It was an enclosed garage and Johnny had pulled in, closed the garage door, turned on the radio, and let the car idle. He died of carbon-monoxide poisoning.

There was fine soot on everything in the garage. The garage door was now wide open, but the place still smelled of exhaust fumes. His body was in full rigor mortis as we moved him from the car and into the white body bag. Since the preponderance of evidence supported suicide as the manner of death, I mobilized the LOSS team.

That was interagency problem number one. In the early days of the LOSS team, homicide detectives were less than supportive of the concept. The last thing they wanted was for someone to be tromping around their crime scene, contaminating evidence. And they damn sure didn't want the team interacting with bereaved family members. After all, who is always the prime suspect when you suspect it could be murder,
staged
as a suicide? A family member, of course.

We managed to work all of that out over the years, but this was early in the process and there is no more suspicious creature on this earth than a homicide detective.

An officer informed me that Johnny's parents had been notified and that his father was on the way. I acknowledged that message and sealed the body bag. The crime-scene photographer took a picture of the tamper-proof seal and noted the number of the tag. This is done to insure that once the body bag has been sealed, no one can disturb it or any evidence that might be on the body. It's a chain-of-custody procedure.

With that, we were ready to transport the body to the morgue for autopsy. It was just at this time that Johnny's father arrived. He was obviously very distraught, though he maintained his composure.

Johnny's father wanted to see his son one more time before he was carted off to the morgue for autopsy. One of the detectives indicated that he did not think that would be possible. The officer was technically right. To comply with this father's wishes would mean breaking the seal. In addition to that, if the father touched Johnny's body there was the whole trace-evidence issue to be dealt with. Any time additional variables or persons are introduced into a crime scene, they can inadvertently add fibers or hair to the scene or onto the body. That is extremely important in homicide investigations.

Once a body bag is sealed at the scene it is not opened again until that seal is broken at the time of autopsy. It's one of those understood, accepted, and unspoken rules. It's part of how we catch the bad guys.

I could see no bad guys here. I ran through my mental homicide checklist. There was no trauma on Johnny's body. There was no evidence that someone had killed him. He had no known enemies. He had not been robbed, as there was money in his pocket. Examination of the garage door revealed a section of burnt paint where the exhaust had hit it for several hours. Of course, Johnny was dead long before the car engine ultimately stopped. The ignition key was in the “on” position. He had a pinkish discoloration of his skin, which is a major indicator of carbon-monoxide poisoning. In short, I was satisfied that this was a suicide.

Closure and grief resolution are important for parents—there is absolutely no doubt about that. But careful forensic procedure is essential to case solving and successful prosecutions—no doubt about
that,
either. I had to make a decision regarding our immediate course of action.

Like I said, I could see no bad guys here. All I could see was a kid who made a foolish and fatal decision, and a father who would question this night for the rest of his life. He had all this pain and nowhere to put it. The kid's
dead.
The void is there—you can't scold or cajole him out of this one—this is it.
Where do you go with it?
Here's a good kid who gets snagged up on something that would pass with time, but he sees no way out and kills himself over it. And the dad and mom have all this wisdom, but it's inert, useless—the potential to resolve issues doesn't mean crap when your son's dead. Suicides are hollow scenes.

Somewhat to the chagrin of the crime-scene officer, I broke the seal and unzipped the bag. I told the detectives that I was satisfied that this was a suicide and that no harm would come from opening the bag. Besides, it's my bag and my seal and therefore my responsibility.

It was just the right thing to do.

I must say I did so with some trepidation, knowing I'd be explaining this move later to the head of homicide. But, as I reasoned with myself, as objectively as possible, there are times when you just have to make that judgment call. And you have to be a doctor, and you have to consider the concept of “First, do no harm.” It would do more harm not to let this father see his son one last time. There was nothing to be gained forensically by not breaking that seal. I would put another one on before we left and we could go through our procedure again.