Mother Knows Dad starring Nicole and Jemmy and Maria qk Hi. Everyone. Welcome to Mother Knows Death. One of the advantages to this job and having this position on this podcast is that we get advanced copies of people's books. And we recently received a copy of a book by an author named doctor Ann Sue Chen who came out with well, she didn't come out with it yet. It's coming out on when's it coming out?
April twenty second.
April twenty second, So it's in the works, but we had a copy of it. We're able to read it, and it is titled La Coroner, Thomas Negucci and Death in Hollywood. And you guys will love this because we think the juiciest subjects on this show are the celebrity deaths, and there's a lot of them in this book.
Yeah. So I actually read this book in about two days, and I thought it was a pretty easy read and definitely kept my attention the entire time. Just briefly, it goes over the career of doctor Thomas Negucci, who is the chief coroner in La County. Between nineteen sixty seven and nineteen eighty two. He had a brief suspension in nineteen sixty nine, which we'll talk about a little bit in this episode and goes into more detail in the book. But crazy enough, he is still alive at ninety years
old and he inspired the TV show Quincy's That's really cool. Yeah, So we're going to start off talking about the deaths of Marilyn Monroe and getting another one such as Bobby Kennedy, Sharon Tate, and Natalie Wood.
Let's talk about this for a second, because I just think by by proxy, like you, if you work in Los Angeles and you're either a cop, a firefighter, an EMS person, or you're a coroner, you're going to see the most celebrities of any other offices in the entire country, just because most of the celebrities are either working in Los Angeles or living in Los Angeles. And what happens is, especially when it comes to coroners and where your autopsy
is done. If you die, it's done by jurisdiction. So Marilyn Monroe, she had died in Los Angeles and the jurisdiction is the Los Angeles Coroner's Office, So there are going to be the ones that do the autopsy. And that's almost across the country. Is where you die is where you have the autopsy. It doesn't necessarily matter where you're from, it's where you die. So even actors that are visiting Hollywood that die would still get the autopsy done at the LA Coroner's office, which is why we
hear that they're involved in so many celebrity deaths. So let's start off first by talking about Marilyn Monroe. So we did a celebrity death dissection in the gross room probably five years ago. She was one of the first ones I've ever did in the groceryroom. So Nogucci, he's a what was he like a a junior pathologist at
the time. He was just newly working there at the Medical Examiner's office there in Los Angeles, and he went to work as usual that Monday, it was August fifth, nineteen sixty two, and on his desk he found a
message from the Chief Medical Examiner. So the chief medical Examiner is kind of the boss that overlooks all of the other medical examiners underneath of them, and it said, quote doctor Kurfey wants doctor Nagochi to do the autopsy on Marilyn Monroe, which I kind of think is kind of interesting that the chief medical examiner would not be the one that was like, I'm putting my name on this because this is going to be a big frickin' deal.
Well, do you think that's maybe why he didn't, because he knew this was going to be such a problem and he didn't want to be associated with it.
Yeah, I'm sure, I think so. There's two different things that I could think of. It's either that or maybe Nogucci at that time had such a good reputation for being meticulous and being able to determine cause of death that maybe he felt he felt that he would be the best to do it. Although I'm sure I'm sure it's the former. Like you understand, I just think it's a little unusual. Most high profile cases, the chief will be like, Okay, I'll be the one that steps in
on this. So Marilyn was so anybody that listens to the show probably knows the deal, and we don't have to get super into all of the details, but there were some suspicious findings immediately with just how the whole thing went down. She was found dead, She was naked, which is unusual, She was in a weird unnatural position with her right hand gripping the telephone receiver as if somebody was intentionally trying to set her up to look that way. And there were bottles containing sleeping pills on
the bedside, so that was unusual. And then there was also do you remember there was like some unusual things with the way the housekeeper acted to Apparently the housekeeper had called her psychiatrist before calling police, and like a whole entire hour before calling police. And then when the police showed up, the housekeeper, who was also considered to be Marilyn Monroe's friend, had had a load of wash running,
which is unusual. Like if you're a housekeeper living with a person taking care of them, in friends with a person, why on earth would you think about doing a load of wash while this person's laying dead and the police are there investigating their death. It's just bizarre.
I could she have thrown it in before she found her No.
I think that they determined that whatever time of the cycle it was, that it was done after they determined that she had died. So there was just like a little bit of weirdness around there. So I mean, and it's Marilyn Monroe and and and there's a million things. So he gets the body to the medical examiner's office and he does the autopsy, and he said that nothing really looked abnormal about her organs. Whenever you find someone dead.
Who's she was, how old was she?
She was young?
She was young.
She was young. Yeah, look that up exactly, because she was either in her late twenties or early thirties, but she was very young. You find somebody dead that has now Marilyn Monroe has a history of previous suicide attempts, a history of taking these medications. So whenever you see that, you see the pills at the bedside, you're thinking, okay, it's possible that she did take her own life. So he does the autopsy, and of course he's thinking as
well when he does it. But then when he gets to her stomach, he finds nothing in her stomach, which means that she didn't swallow a whole bunch of pills and then die. That didn't happen because he didn't find any undigested pills in her upper gi track like that. And that's something that you would see when somebody was having an act of desperation and just taking a lot of pills at one time, so he thought that that
was a little weird and did question it. But he sent all of this stuff to get tested for toxicology, which would include samples of her liver, blood and things like that, and the toxicology came back and there was this head toxicologist and he had said that the levels of pentobarbital and chlorohydrate were fatal and they decided based on that that she died of a drug overdose and
her manner of death was suicide. Now, the thing that doctor Nagochi had brought up in the future was that he was, like we said, he was a junior pathologist. He didn't have any experience or say in much because he didn't want to question this chief toxicologist that had
all this experience over him. But he was kind of thinking it was a little weird that they didn't run the toxicology on the actual stomach contents as well as other organs that he had asked them to do, and they kind of blew them off to do like a more thorough autopsy just to cross off any concern that there might be. So that was one of the things that started being concerning to people as far as them
just automatically saying that she died of suicide. And sometimes when you determine, because when anybody overdoses on any kind of drugs, whether it's legal drugs or prescription drugs, you always have to take into consideration some of the circumstances that will determine if the manner of death was an accident, or if the manner of death was suicide, or if the manner of death was homicide, which we'll get into a minute with that because that sounds a little weird,
but with suicide you will check. So she did have a history of previous suicide attempts, which is very strong, but there was no suicide note and there were no undigestive pills in her stomach, So that has to make you think like, Okay, this didn't seem like an acute thing that she that she killed herself, so let's look at other things that could be done. So the next thing you're going to look at is okay, okay, well was this an accident? Did she maybe take too many
of these medications together by accident? And now those questions are really out the window because they didn't check the stomach contents, so they don't even know if the pills were digested or if those things were in her system
for a little bit longer. And the reason that I bring up homicide in this case is because, in my personal opinion, so we do know that there's been all of these theories going on for the past however many years that Marilyn was killed by the Kennedys, that there was something associated with the Kennedys.
Well, you really can't ignore the connection to them, and they're, you know, infamous curse that everybody no.
I yeah, and I'm not. But but based upon what I see, I honestly would say that her manner of death should be homicide, but not because of the Kennedy's involvement, but because of It's kind of like a Michael Jackson case in which Marilyn Monroe had inappropriate relationships with her
doctors getting VIP treatment medications she shouldn't be on. She had a strong family history of psychological disease, personal family history of psychological disease, and then it was like she had a personal physician and a psychiatrist that were not in great communication with each other about what medications they were giving her, and she was over over over medicated, and that is my opinion as to how she died. She just had way too many drugs in her system.
And I personally don't believe that she intended to kill herself based upon the way the whole scene was set up. I think once now, listen, this is why I think a shady like if that if the housekeeper called the psychiatrist first and they were on the phone and talking for over an hour before they called police, I actually think it's possible that the psychiatrist had like a meltdown because she was dead, and then all of a sudden was like, oh my God, like this is going to
be on me. And then somehow the housekeeper was told to like make it seem like she looked like she killed herself. Honestly, I believe that. Now anybody could argue with me and say whatever, but that's what I think think that's really what I think happened based upon everything
that I've read so far about it. So I guess, getting back to the book that you read, what happened with that, Like after he had done this autopsy on Marilyn, how was he held in the media and how what did people think of him after that?
Well, in the book. It seems like, you know, he was getting pretty good recognition for the work he did in the autopsy, except for the botch toxicology like you were talking about, because even though he was adamant that he had ordered those tests on all of her organs and you know, the higher ups just didn't complete them, it ultimately reflected poorly on him, which also brings back the point earlier where you were saying, like, why wouldn't
the chief coroner do it? He had to have predicted in some capacity this was going to be controversial.
Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, I really to just wrap
up Marilyn Monroe. I really believe that if if she had died in two tenty twenty five, the manner of death certainly wouldn't have been ruled suicide, and honestly, her treating physicians would possibly be facing charges and the manner death might be rolled homicide, similar to what happened with Michael Jackson, Because I mean, and listen, like, we could go over so many different celebrity deaths that don't involve Nogochi that are the same exact situation where the treating
physicians are responsible for these people's deaths.
I mean, if you want to think at about the sixties too, sorry to cut you off. I just like, I think this part of pop culture when we talk about the sixties that we were always focusing on is
like the casual pill popping element. And I think that maybe you're suggesting this too, that like the doctors are just not being held responsible for this because it was just so common to go and get pills, and you know, it's this like joke and all these shows we watched, like Madmen and Palm Royale and everything, that these women are just so casually popping pills, and that seemed like the culture she was participating in too, So it doesn't seem like anybody being held responsible.
Yeah, and I can't imagine, Like I just think she had a level of fame that was that was unlike any other and attention, and it's just if you're walking into a situation like that already mentally unstable, it's just terrible.
And then you know you've heard this from even from Dorothy with Wizard of Oz and everything, how she had to take pills to lose weight, and there was just a lot of pressure on You need to be alert, you need to be peppy, but then you need to go home and you need to go to sleep, and you need to take these pills. You know, you're taking essentially speed to stay thin, and then they want you to go to sleep and come to work the next day.
And it's just like pills to stay awake, pills to go to sleep, pills for your anxiety, this, that, and the other. And they didn't have They were saying that there's a possibility that she had bipolar disease or something like that, and they didn't really have any great drugs back then that they have now to be able to treat those types of things. And when you give patients, especially who should be on antipsychotics, you give them other
kinds of medications that could just exacerbate their symptoms. So they were just she would come up with one thing and they'd mask it with another. And when you look at the levels of medication that were not only in her body that but were prescribed to her at the same time, how could a regular person ever know that they were supposed to take that much or not. Like
it's just it's a sad situation. But I think what we could learn about the autopsy is like and we were just talking about this with the Gene Hackman autopsy, for example, and when I was saying a couple episodes back, how I thought that they did such a thorough job because you don't want anyone like me or even just anybody going in there and picking apart your report and being like, did you check this? What about this? What
about this? Because it leaves holes open and then it makes people question your results.
Well, I thought this was interesting too, when you were talking about on last week's episode about Jim Morrison and how they didn't do toxicology or anything on him, because we clearly had it in nineteen sixty two when her death occurred, So why wasn't this done almost ten years later? Exactly?
So okay, So another which and there's a lot of like intermingling with all of these celebrities, which is also super unusual. So one of the next high profile celebrity deaths he did was on Bobby Kennedy, right, And and that one I think because he got heat from the
Marilyn Monroe autopsy not being the best thing. Ever, when he did the body Bobby Kennedy one, I think he learned his lesson a little bit from the Marilyn Monroe autopsy, and he did a thorough six hour autopsy on him, which many fragns it people have said has was like a perfect autopsy.
Right, Wait, so how like how long would a normal autopsy because I don't know that in my mind it would take all day. So why is six hours so long?
It? Six hours, in my opinion, is a very long time for an autopsy. They could be very very fast. They could be as as fast as an hour if you could figure out how the person died. But when if you want to take the organs out and you really want to go through and document every single inch of their body from their head to their toe and look at every organ and document it and photograph it
and measure it, it could take a long time. And six and a half hours is like if we did autopsies at children's hospital, they would take that long because you're you're looking at a terrible situation for parents. Plus you're looking to see if they have any underlying congenital issues that may affect if the parents want to have another baby, and things like that. You have to be way more meticulous with a child autopsy. But six and
a half hours for an adult is a lot. So when I hear that, I'm like, Okay, this guy was not messing around when he did this autopsy. He was just like, they're not going to find anything wrong with this, And it seems like it seems like they didn't. Right like they Most people thought that he did a really good job with this. Yeah, And I also in the book it kind of gets into how he started the autopsy at the feet, and a lot of people thought this was unusual. So I wanted your perspective on this.
I well, when you're talking about doing the autopsy, it's especially with defeat, you would there would be rare cases where you would actually ever cut a person open down there. So you're talking about the external exam starting, and I don't have a problem with that if that was just what he wanted to do, to go up versus go down, because there's different things you're looking for on the external exam. Number one is is this person who they who they're
supposed to be. Does it look like their age, does it match their driver's license, does you know all of that kind of stuff. Then you're looking for general changes associated with death, so you would think about, uh, like rigor mortis and libra mortis and and different things like that, any medical kind of intervention that they might have looked like they had our medical condition that you know, are they jaundice or things like that that might clue you
into why they died. And then you're going to look for signs of any kind of trauma that might be associated with either a medical intervention or if somebody hurt it, hurt them or hurt themselves. So, especially when you're talking about an autopsy of someone of Bobby Kennedy's stature and then our status, and also you just don't want to You definitely don't want to screw anything up with that because not only that it was a homicide, it took place on it was live on TV, right, they have
video of it. There's going to be someone that's going to get convicted of this. If they get caught, they want to make sure that they're doing a thorough job. So from his autopsy, he determined, which is really interesting, that the fatal shot was to the back of Bobby Kennedy's head behind his right ear, and they he said that it was no more than seventy five millimeters away,
which is pretty close to have the gun to the head. Now, the problem is is that none of the witnesses reported seeing the guy Saransern, who was actually convicted of this crime that close to his head. And there's multiple theories, and most people would agree at this point that they believed that there were two different gunmen just because there were way too many bullets found at this scene that wouldn't even fit in one gun. So I'm curious when
those were get released of any more of that. But there is a person in prison serving time for this who definitely did shoot him, but they believe they believe conspiracy theorists. I guess I would say believe that he was not the person that actually fired the fatal shot that killed him. And it's just really interesting because Nagoshi also didn't really say He pointed out himself in his memoir that he never officially ruled that he thought that Saram was the fatal shot.
Yeah, he definitely had doubts about that based on the evidence he was reviewing.
Yeah, And one other interesting thing I want to bring out about Bobby Kennedy's autopsy is that he was visiting California. He was not from California, and the autopsy automatically because
of jurisdiction, goes to that medical examiner's office. But Bobby Kennedy's family wanted him to get flown back to Washington, d C. To have his autopsy done, which I think is interesting because with JFK a similar thing happened where he was supposed to get his autopsy done in Dallas because that was the jurisdiction of where he died, and they insisted on flying him back to Washington, D C. And that's when he had that botched autopsy done, which
is again leaving all of these conspiracy theories wide open. So it's interesting to me that his family would want to do that again, almost to not have the person that was supposed to be doing it. But ultimately, when a medical examiner has jurisdiction over a body, they could really just be like no, like we're the law, we're in charge, and we're doing it. So they were very stern about it, and that's how negoti ended up doing Bobby Kennedy's autopsy.
Well, why would you even risk moving the body when it's such a high profile person.
Well, I mean the moving of the body is I mean, the moving of the body is not necessarily the problem. It's just like, why why would you have it done somewhere else by someone that's not listen. I could say this with every single situation of again, this VIP treatment.
When you don't follow the normal procedure, whether you're in the hospital and you're taking care of patients that are getting surgery or if you're doing autopsies, if you're not doing what you would do for every other regular person, that's when shit gets screwed up, and it's just like the best thing ever is to just let it go how it would go for any regular person when it comes to medicine and death investigation. That's my personal opinion.
And I could say that because I've done hundreds of these celebrity death dissections and high profile death dissections, and you could see that all of the times that there's all these questions and all of these botched autopsies have to do with people not following protocol.
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So now he's negoti is like a well known figure at this point that's been on TV a lot talking about these higher profile celebrity deaths that he's done autopsies on. So now people are starting to know who this guy is and what happened in his personal life or his
work life. So because he was constantly in the press, he was also trying to take this opportunity to let everybody know how underfunded their department was and how they just didn't have enough resources, which really pissed his bosses off. So this became this whole problem where after that, you know, he was facing some racism with being Japanese in a post World War two era, and then mixed with him complaining about the department publicly and not dealing with it privately.
They were kind of just like, we're over you. So they went to him and they were like, listen, you're gonna resign because we have evidence which came out.
Later to be false. They were trying to say that they had evidence that he was on amphetamines, and he was acting erratic during RFK and he was botching parts of the autopsy. So ultimately he didn't think he had a chance at winning, and he did sign the resignation papers. But then after a conversation with his wife and some supporters of him, he's like, why am I going to resign?
I haven't done anything wrong. And so there was these hearings that were constantly in the press, and this really launched him into his own celebrity because these hearings were a huge deal in the news.
So what's interesting about these hearings is that he hired his defense lawyer. His name was Godfrey Isaac, and that lawyer later became an attorney for Sarron Sarn the one who was convicted of killing Robert Kennedy. He became his attorney after he was convicted. Isn't that kind of interesting and weird? Yet, I'm telling you, there's a lot of interconnections with all of these cases.
How was it not like a conflict of interest?
I really I don't understand. So he got accused of all this stuff, and what happened after those hearings?
So after the hearings, I mean, they totally proved that there was racism, and they had been making things up, and the board had been trying to work to turn his coworkers against him, and he ultimately got reinstated in nineteen sixty nine and got his job back because he proved he did nothing wrong and it was like all bullshit.
Basically after he was he was essentially they tried to fire him or make him quit, and then he was reinstated. Yet another high profile death happens, which is Sharon Tate.
Yeah. So an interesting point that the book brought up is that they were saying that he got called to the scene of Sharon Tate's murders, which of course the press knows when the chief coroner shows up, It's like a really big deal. So I of course had a question for you, is that a really big deal because I assume that they're busy and they don't have time to go to every single scene in their district. Yeah, they definitely don't, and they only go to ones that
are a higher profile. So for example, in Philadelphia, I recall during the time that I was involved there there was you know, that's why they have death investigators like Joseph Scott Morgan and stuff go on the scene, take pictures,
do the interviews and everything like that. But in Philadelphia there was a case where there was an Amtrak derailment, you remember that, So that would be a case where the chief Medical Examiner shows up to the scene because it's super high profile, it's on the news every people died, they wanted you know what I mean, like stuff like that.
They wouldn't just go to to any scene. Obviously, the Sharon Tate thing was outrageous, so that's why the chief medical Examiner showed up because that was going to be a huge deal. Yeah, And I think for me, so I'm always trying to pinpoint when this like huge true crime fascination started, right, we could always argue it could be back to Sherlock Holmes and everything, But I'm thinking of the modern celebrity death that we know today, and
I always personally point that to the OJ trials. But I think the book makes a really good argument that the Manson murders really changed the culture of celebrity death with entertainment and news because it was this huge deal. She was this huge star married to Roman Polancy, this enormous director that had these big movies out at the time. And then you have this guy who after this crime gets deemed the coroner to the stars come out and he's just constantly in the press because of how high
profile the cases are. Then you find out it's like this ritualistic cult behind the whole thing. I mean, this must have been huge at the time.
This needs to talk to mo mom about this.
She doesn't. I was just about to say that because when I was like doing a lot of research on Ted Bundy a couple of years ago, for example, I was like, what was it like? She because you're I can remember because.
You're thinking about it from a person living in twenty twenty five's perspective. They didn't have the internet, they only had the news on once a day. I'm not even sure they had the local news at that time. Like, it just was a different They probably barely knew that a lot of this was going on. They might have heard of it, but there wasn't like the twenty four hour news cycle alerts coming across your phone. It just was a different time. What year did Charantate happen?
Nineteen sixty nine?
Okay, so in nineteen sixty nine, she was like not even twenty years old. Yet you have to think about that too, Like she was not she was a teenager.
Yeah we're talking about mom. I'm not Charantyate. Yeah.
Oh no, yeah, we're talking about mama. But I mean just true crime was just different back in the day. So all right, So after the Charentate thing happens, now doctor Gooshi becomes a celebrity himself, and this is where I believe things really started to take a turn at not only with him, but at the LA Coroner's office because he was more he was getting a big head because of his own celebrity.
Yeah, I mean you could really see after this time that he kind of is on this high horse after winning the hearings, and then Sharon Taa gets murdered not that long after his job's reinstated, so he's constantly in the press, and then by this point he just starts
completely overstepping. He starts telling reporters information about the case before meeting with other law enforcement departments to discuss what's going on, and before toxicology's back, and before any of the exams are not exams, but the autopsies are completed and the reports are completed.
Well, you know what's interesting now that you just say this, this makes me think of, you know, when when Gene Hackman just died and it's like everybody wants to be the first to jump on top of it, and he was kind of the original one that started that, like, we have to get the information out before the body
is while the body's still warm, you know. And I think that that's what happened in that with him, is that he just wanted to be like, I'm the guy disseminating the information and I know everything, and.
Yeah, but then like moving forward in his career, this ended up being a major problem because he was saying inaccurate information in cases like Natalie would He's just totally talking out of turn and just saying things that he doesn't even know are factually true yet because the reports aren't completed.
So Natalie Wood's a really good one because ultimately I think that that case was the one that really started taking him down basically. But I mean, for all of you who are not super familiar, Natalie Wood had died in the early eighties, I believe right.
It was the early eighties, and she was.
On a boat with Christopher Walken and Robert Wagner, who was her husband, and they were just having this night like as usual, and all of a sudden, she ended up in the water and dead. So so Negosti again did Natalie Wood's autopsy and had said that she died
from drowning. So there was all of these different theories as to well, why was she in the water because her sister insisted that she didn't know how to swim, and there's there were these bruises that were apparently on her body that one of the junior now you're talking about another junior pathologist at the time, had seen when he was assisting Nagoshi with the autopsy, who kind of
like blew it off. And there's all of these different accounts of what happened that night, and there might have been a fight, and she might have been abused, and this and this, But what happened was that Nagoshi had said that she died from an accident because she drank
a little too much. And he went on the news and talked about how these people were drinking too much and there might have been a fight between these two actors and like, you can't like talk shit like that on TV because when you're friends with Frank Sinatra, right,
He got pissed about that. He was really pissed because I think he had like I don't know because I wasn't alive during the time, but he had this like soft spot from Natalie Wood from the time she was younger, and a lot of people even talk about how their their relationship was inappropriate because.
Of go out with his son.
I don't I don't know, but I don't really know all the details of that. But he he got so upset that that he was talking shit like that kind of on TV. And he wrote this letter and just said to the Board of Supervisors and was just like coroners should be seen and not heard, basically just like you you do your job, and like we don't want to hear your opinions about it. He was stepping out of bounds. He wasn't like a celebrity gossip reporter, and a lot of this information just was the way he
was talking was just kind of not necessary. And and you have to think, like two people will Christopher Walking and Robert Wagner were still alive and had a reputation as actors.
So yeah, And when Christopher Walken was asked about Nogucci's comments related to Natalie Wood, he said, I don't remember the coroner being there to the press, which is like, if you, dude, you weren't even there and you're just talking out a turn stop, just assuming what happened.
Yeah, And I mean listen, like a lot of people have been trying to reopen this case because people aren't just like satisfied with the fact that she accidentally died and we may never know. I made a joke yesterday somebody or or recently a couple of weeks ago, somebody asked a question after one of our episodes that said, what did they ask? What would you ask somebody if
they die? Yeah or something? And I yeah, And then I was just like, well, I don't know if Christopher walkin dies or Robert Wagner, you might want to ask them what happened to Natalie Wood that night? Right, So we might we might not ever know. But back in twenty twelve, the La County Chief Coroner, so this is the person that had taken over for not even had
directly taken over Nogucci's, but is in that spot. In twenty twelve, had amended Natalie Wood's death certificate and changed the cause of death or the cause of death from accidental drowning to drowning and undetermined factors. And the reason that that's important is because now that death certificate is reflecting that basically they don't know if she was intentionally pushed in the water or if she accidentally drowned and was in the water. And that's important to the family.
I mean, I know, it really doesn't change anything, but the family likes to have that satisfaction to you know, don't close it off when there's all this other suspicious stuff that was happening, including you know, them thinking that the autopsy wasn't done correctly as well.
Okay, yeah, and so around this time, right before Natalie Wood died, there was this other case of Ron settles, who is this upcoming foot a star who had been killed while he was in police custody. And during this time, Noguji accidentally revealed to somebody in the press that he had lost a major piece of evidence, which was the
victim shirt. And then the La Times was like, you know what, We're gonna start doing an investigation about this because this guy's always in the press and we're just hearing some complaints about what's going on in the office. So I guess when after Sharon Tate, he just started being so focused on being in the press that he was letting the daily operation slip, constantly getting complaints. He actually ended up getting divorced because his wife was like, you're just like not the guy a bit.
Yeah, you're like a rock star and this is going to your head.
A little bit. Yeah. So when the La Times does their investigation, they find that there's just like bodies piled up, there's mislabeling of evidence, they have unqualified staff, there was
cross contamination with blood samples. Another thing I thought was really interesting was he really pushed for this new forensic facility and then it did it eventually end up getting built and they had equipment that was so new that nobody that worked there knew how to use it, which contributed to Yeah, and it contributed to a lot of
these problems. So then when all this stuff's going on, it's nineteen eighty one, and then we fast forward to March of nineteen eighty two, and by this point, the La Times article comes out, and again the board is like, we need to suspend you again, but this time we really have proof that you did all these things, and they did an investigation and ultimately he did end up getting fired. Yeah.
And I think it's interesting though that I think that Frank Sinatra kind of like spearheaded that whole entire thing because he was just like, I mean, that guy had pull and ties to people and everything like that, and I think between his complaint and them actually being able to find all of these things that this guy was screwing up, they they were just like not having it.
So I think all in all, even though he got fired, a lot of his colleagues did really respect his work and thought that he was a really good pathologist. But at the end of the day, you can't let things slip, and you certainly can't lose evidence and let you know, samples get cross contaminated, because that matters when it comes to somebody going on trial or like in your case, him saying with Natalie Wood that she accidentally slipped when they really don't have enough evidence to determine that.
Could you imagine I mean we're just talking about the celebrity deaths right now, but could you imagine like the real all of the real life people that died in
this time period in Los Angeles? Like I would if that was my family, I'd be so skeptical because of all the craziness that was going on there at the time, and thinking that the guy in charge is just like more concerned with being famous than actually taking care of death and being you know, if you think about it, like most of the time, you don't really know who the medical examiner is anywhere because they're usually in a basement doing autopsies. Right, They're not all celebrity people there.
The only two I can name off the top of my head with us doing this amount of research is this guy and doctor g medical examiner. Which is she even considered a coroner?
Yeah, well, she's a medical examiner, and it just the word coroner is different throughout the country, coroner is is typically a position that's elected, as opposed to a medical examiner is appointed. But I believe in Los Angeles, I'm not sure that that coroner is elected. It might be well, I guess that board that what's his name Frank Sinatra went to was the people that appoint the medical examiner. So but yes, she's she's a forensic pathologist. That so,
yes she is. And she worked the famous the Kaylee Anthony case in Florida. There. She she's awesome. I love that lady. But like doctor Boden and stuff, but the only well, doctor g had a TV show, so yeah, between that and yeah, but but in general, like throughout the country, you don't really know who these people were. And I think it was determined that like, yes, he definitely had developed an image of corner the Stars, and they officially got rid of him at that point. I
think that you guys will really like this book. I mean, if you are interested in what me and Maria had been talking about, because there are other cases that they that she goes more in depth with. Obviously, I don't know. I think it sums up my theory of the VIP doctors. Usually in the celebrity death dissections. We talk about in
the grosser room. The VIP doctors are the ones that are taking care of the celebrities, but this time it's a VIP corner, and we see that that doesn't go so well either when celebrities get different treatment than regular people do. So I think it's just like a good lesson for overall that you don't really want to have VIP treatment when you die or you're sick.
Yeah. Absolutely, But this book comes out in April twenty second, so I think you guys will definitely be interested.
Thank you for listening to Mother Knows Death. As a reminder, my training is as a pathologist's assistant. I have a master's level education and specialize in anatomy and pathology education. I am not a doctor, and I have not diagnosed or treated anyone dead or alive without the assistance of a licensed medical doctor. This show, my website, and social media accounts are designed to educate and inform people based on my experience working in pathology, so they can make
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