Coroner's Journal (26 page)

When I walked up to the crime scene, the wind was blowing hard enough to lift the plastic blanket off of Mrs. Ballenger's body. Her shop was on the north side of Florida Boulevard, about two blocks from the Baton Rouge General Hospital. I know the area well because I worked at the General for about twenty years. The shop sits on the cusp of a rough neighborhood that has hopes of being improved by mid-city revivalist efforts.

Across the street, on the south side of Florida Boulevard, the inevitable crowd was building and people began climbing on the hoods of their parked cars to observe the show. They were joined by the local news crews, and the cameras were rolling. The dome strobes from the official vehicles only added to the scene's slightly carnival effect.

There was a long, partially coagulated trickle of blood running out from under the blue tarp. It had followed the slight downhill grade of the blacktop parking lot and pooled up about three or four feet from the edge of the improvised body cover. The source of the blood was Mrs. Ballenger's head and neck area. Her body was stretched out parallel to the car, her lunch container at her side. I examined her visually only, careful not to touch her lest I contaminate any evidence; plus, the homicide detectives needed to see how her body was before I moved her.

As I stood up from my initial, brief visual examination of Mrs. Ballenger, I noticed a child in a nearby truck—I soon found out it was her son. Night had just fallen and the boy's face was illuminated by the staccato strobe of the police vehicle lights. He looked so small and vulnerable. He never looked my way. It struck me how confused and scared he must be.

Mrs. Ballenger's husband, fifty-five-year old Jim Ballenger, was appropriately distraught.
It's a shame we have to assess that, but we suspect everyone, especially spouses, in any homicide.
His wife was a native of Inchon, South Korea, and they had married when he was in the military. They moved to Baton Rouge in 1996 with their three sons. “I know my wife is in heaven,” he told the local press later. And he did not believe in the death penalty. “Jesus said to forgive, and I am born again. The man who did it needs to do time in jail.”

One of the things that hit me the hardest at this particular crime scene was the murder victim's son. He looked to be about the same age as my youngest son. He seemed so small sitting there in the huge, light-brown Ford pickup, which was one of those dual cab types with a long wheelbase. He was sitting there, staring straight ahead through the windshield, eyes focused on nothing in particular. I guess he was just trying to avert his gaze from the horror in the parking lot to his right. The truck was barred from entering the lot by a ribbon of yellow crime-scene tape that sputtered as it resisted the incoming cool front.

I surmised that he knew this parking lot well. His mother worked here at the Beauty Depot, and this lot served her customers. If he's anything like my youngest, Michael, he'd found occasion to roam about the lot, perhaps when he came to meet his mom after work on their way to eat out. Maybe he had even ridden his bike or skateboard up the ramp there, or over those bumps. And now his mom was there under the tarp and she wasn't coming home.
Maybe I project too much.
The wind kept trying to blow the blue blanket up, but a man in a dark shirt quickly put his foot on the edge of the blanket to keep it down—shielding what was beneath. The child's only hope was to look straight ahead.

There is no way to make any sense out of such malicious violence. I feel utterly powerless. I was shaken back to the reason I was here by one of the uniforms. He tapped me on the shoulder as I had not responded to his initial request. “Hey, Doc, the PIO wants you to talk to the husband of the deceased.” The uniform spoke quietly and motioned to where the public information officer anxiously awaited my presence.

The streets can be very unforgiving. My assessment of this situation started as soon as I began to walk over to Mr. Ballenger and the public information officer, Corporal Don Kelly. They were only about fifteen yards away but the distance seemed like miles. A deluge of questions flooded my brain:
What is there to say? How much is he ready to hear? How much does he want to hear? How much can I tell him?

I know words cannot even approach an understanding of the magnitude and depth of their loss. Death is a very personal thing, and so is grief. Maybe as a doctor I want to take away the pain. Seems grandiose, doesn't it? Maybe being part of the judicial branch, I feel some guilt that this happened. Maybe it makes me feel vulnerable myself, and for my family, and I know words cannot ease a loss. So why say them? Because that's all I have to offer at the time!

I've seen the full gamut of responses from family members. Some are just numb, or in shock. They simply cannot process the horror. I've also been physically attacked during a notification—a case of what we call displaced rage. When I was an ER doc back at the General in 1977, an elderly black female died of congestive heart failure. I had the whole family (
wrong
) assembled in a small office (
wrong
)
.
I went in and closed the door behind me (
wrong
)
.
Then I tried to break the news. There must have been twenty people packed into that room—we're talking
very
close quarters—all sitting and standing, like they were in bleachers and I was the main attraction. So I have my back to the closed door that opens inward (
wrong
) and I say something like “She did not make it . . .” (no response) “. . . we tried our best but her heart just gave out . . .” (no response) . . .

Then a matriarch sitting directly in front of me asked, “You mean she's
dead
?” I said, “Yes, she is dead.” The matriarch shrieked and threw an umbrella at me—point first. I dodged the projectile and it bounced off the door next to my head. I noticed as I made my escape that it left a dent in the door. It was a lesson I never forgot and one that was always in the forefront of my mind at times like this.

The PIO introduced me to Mr. Ballenger. I shook his hand. His eyes told me all I needed to know. He was in profound distress but he was doing what he needed to do. We respect that out here.

I remember putting my hand on his shoulder. It's about empathy, I guess.

When his eyes met mine I saw that questioning pain I have seen too often. Any fears I may have had about a violent response on his part were dismissed.

“I am so sorry for your loss.”
The words are so inadequate.
“How can I help?”

He wanted to know how she had died.

That old pearl of wisdom guided me again—
Truth without compassion is brutality.
It's more than a pearl, it is an extrapolation right out of the Hippocratic Oath (“First, do no harm . . .”).

I have learned that it is usually better to say things straight out and be supportive. It was apparent that he wanted and needed to hear the facts. So I told him.

“Your wife sustained a single gunshot wound to her head, and she died from that injury. There is no other sign of trauma or assault.”
There is no easy way to say these things.

He nodded in the affirmative. When a person really loves another, there is always one question that they ask right away. “Did she suffer?”

“No sir, she died instantaneously. I doubt she even knew what happened.”

There was no need to go into how I deduced that information.

“Thank God for that!” he responded, and I knew he meant it.

He turned to his son, who was still staring straight ahead. People came to help—the family minister and some other folks—and after a brief exchange, the child, who remained virtually motionless, was taken away.
I felt some relief that he was gone from this nightmare, yet I knew this night would never end for him.
Mr. Ballenger told me that family friends and the minister would look after his children.

There are times when people just need permission or guidance from someone in authority to be able to do the right thing for themselves and their family members. Nobody is ever prepared for something like this. They don't really know what to do or what is going to happen. I informed him that we would be doing an autopsy and that the funeral home of his choice should contact us concerning the release of his wife's body.

Even as I was saying this, I was not sure how much he was absorbing. The only thing that I really knew was that the look on that child's face would intrude on my own daily thoughts for many years.

The homicide detectives were late in arriving and did not make the scene until an hour or so after the call-in. That's a long time to wait around and leave someone's body under a tarp. It's an uncomfortable situation, with the potential to magnify the trauma for the family. It also gives the crowd more time to gather, and that can mean trouble of another sort. Old enemies come down from the northern part of the neighborhood and run into one another. And they may have scores to settle. We don't need stray bullets and another crime scene. The detectives were probably involved in the search for the serial killer—especially since this was the one-year anniversary of the first known victim's death. But people expect a rapid response, and they were not getting it.

I hate having to leave the victim's body out in a parking lot, but I absolutely understand that the detectives need to see the undisturbed scene. So we waited and it seemed like an eternity. While we waited, Adam and I discussed options and possibilities. Adam was a young, enthusiastic crime-scene technical officer and had just returned from an investigator school on crime-scene reconstruction. He's a damn good investigator and we had grown to respect each other and worked together well on death-scene investigations. We knew that the FBI still had its bloodhounds in town for the serial-killer search and wondered if the dogs could be of service here.

The detectives finally arrived and I was able to get back to the awful task at hand. The bullet appeared to have entered the victim's left lateral upper neck area and exited through the mouth. Her lower jaw was pulverized, and teeth were scattered about the pavement. The bullet then slammed into the driver's-side mirror of the SUV and lodged there.

She was so small—maybe 110 pounds—and there were several pints of blood on the ground. I surmised that she was hit at the upper cervical spine, probably suffered instant paralysis, and bled to death. Her purse was missing and there were no empty shell casings about—shot with a powerful revolver, was my guess. (I was wrong.) Her keys were still in her right hand and there was no sign of any effort to break her fall by putting her hands up.

These are challenging times for me. The need to be professional, while the reality of the damage that has been done to this family and child as well as his siblings make it difficult. But the job has to be done right if we're going to get the guy who did this heinous thing.

I examined the spray of Hong's blood and tissue that had been blown onto the vehicle. The fine mist of particles indicated a high-velocity projectile—I was still banking on a .357 as the murder weapon.

As I examined Mrs. Ballenger, I inquired if she had been moved at all. No one had an answer to my question.

It's an important question. In the event emergency first responders moved Mrs. Ballenger's body, we needed to know the position she was in prior to that movement. If the blood splatter doesn't fit the way her body is positioned, somebody moved her. If the perpetrator moved her, then we have a greater chance of finding trace evidence from the killer—trace evidence he left behind that will link him to the scene and help convict him.

So I decided to go to the source. “Adam, do me a favor and radio EMS to see if they moved her.” He was already on it. They had not moved her to any extent other than to verify she was dead. That was good news. I depend on EMS to stand for Emergency Medical Service, not Evidence Meddling Service. I must admit, though that the EMS guys in East Baton Rouge Parish are pretty good about not disturbing evidence—most of the time, anyway.

A visual replay of how the injury must have occurred played through the right side of my brain while the analytical functions of my left brain processed the information.
The bullet smashes into her neck, shattering vertebrae; then fragments of bone and the bullet itself sever her spinal cord and various blood vessels in the area. Then it exits through her face. She never had a chance. She was minding her own business, perhaps thinking about the best route to get home to her family—then a split second of shock and it's over. Over forever. No time to prepare, no time to say good-bye, no time to defend herself from the cowardly bastard who did this.

As I have mentioned, this woman's murder occurred during the hunt for the Baton Rouge serial killer. As part of the efforts of that task force, the FBI had brought in three scent-tracking bloodhounds to the city to search for serial-killer evidence. I did not understand all the intricacies of bringing them in and they seemed to be of little use as far as getting the serial-killer mystery solved.
But no expense was spared.
However, this seemed like a lucky coincidence, and the BRPD requested that one of the dogs be dispatched to the Beauty Depot to pick up the trail of Mrs. Ballenger's killer.

The dog was offered a bullet fragment that had gone through Mrs. Ballenger's neck and face, then given a chance to smell her body through the body bag. The dog then smelled everyone in the area and charged off in the direction in which the killer had reportedly fled, a group of officers and dog handlers trotting off after the animal. I had my doubts that the bullet fragment would offer a scent. The idea that a bullet that passed through a human and lodged in a car could have the scent of the person who put the cartridge into the gun seems like a helluva reach. But I'm no dog expert.