How Autopsies Work

What is? It is pretty freaking exciting, what Josh, we 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? 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, 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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

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, 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 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, 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 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 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,

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 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, 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 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,

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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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, 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.

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, 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, 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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

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 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, 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. 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 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

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 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 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

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 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 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, 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, 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, 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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.

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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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.

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 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 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 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, 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 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,

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 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 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 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 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

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, 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, 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. 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 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, 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.

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 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 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. 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. 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.

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?

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 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 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 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, 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 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

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 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 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,

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. 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 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 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

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 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, 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 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.

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

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

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, 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 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? 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 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. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.

It's ready, are you