Coroner's Journal (5 page)

In French, Baton Rouge means “red stick,” and some say the place was named for the giant cypress tree where the settlement was located. Darker theories hold that it was named for the blood of an Indian massacre at the spot. Most folks just figure it was a skinning post. Take your pick. I joined an emergency physician's group there in late 1976.

The emergency room life was a frenzied, high-stakes test of wits and adrenaline, and I took to it right away. I was based at Baton Rouge General, one of the two hospitals in town. Though it is now in a bit of decline, I remember the floors were always clean and shined—so much so that I slipped one time when I was running to answer a code 14—cardiac arrest. Those were the “good old days,” when there was no ER specialty and we covered emergencies in the whole hospital.

The place felt like home. The brave nurses I had the privilege to work with were always trying to make things better, despite rowdy drunks and violent PCP addicts. The action was quick and it was most rewarding to save someone. What kept me and others juiced was the element of suspense: What would be coming through the door next—an MVA (motor vehicle accident), a GSW (gunshot wound), or a stabbing? In retrospect, I think we were all adrenaline junkies. We not only liked to win, but we took defeat personally. Defeat, whether by natural or unnatural causes, was unacceptable. That attitude of perfectionism took its toll on all of us. There was no such animal as “critical incident debriefings” or Employee Assistance Programs in the late 1970s. We were on our own down there.

When we saved a life, there was jubilation. When we lost, we simply drifted away from the deceased and never really processed it from an emotional perspective. Some of us would drink over it later at the nearby Fleur de Lys Lounge. The ER also proved to be a good training ground for exposure to the criminal elements in the city. Those folks just tend to get beat up and shot—a lot. We also handled drownings, child abuse, accidents, motor vehicle crashes, and suicide attempts. During this dawning era of designer drugs, angel dust, or PCP, was plentiful, and drug overdoses and “bad trips” were also commonplace.

Unfortunately, my own propensity for “all-or-nothing” behavior resulted in a short time in therapy, to get my own head back on straight. It was a good thing. I have been free of addiction for twenty-six years now. In addition to being one of the founders of the Physician Health Plan for Louisiana, I am also the consulting medical director for the state's Office of Addictive Disorders. I hope my experience helped break the family curse.

Though my official title was Physician Executive in Charge of Medical Affairs for the Psychiatric Division, I stayed active in the actual practice of medicine.

One day I took a break from rounds for a cup of coffee in the doctors' lounge of the Baton Rouge General Hospital, when I was approached by a doctor with the unusual name of Hypolite Landry. He was the coroner for East Baton Rouge Parish, and he needed a deputy coroner. During our talk, he reminded me that in Louisiana, the coroner is responsible not only for death investigations but also for mental health commitments. I liked the mental health part, or so I thought at the time, and took the job as deputy coroner right there on the spot.

My expectations burst one morning in June 1993, at about one A.M., a few days after I had impulsively taken the job. The answering service called me to report a death. I picked up on the second or third ring—years of being on call made me a light sleeper. At first I thought it was the hospital calling me about one of my patients. No—this was the coroner's office service. I was informed that no one else was answering their pages, so it fell to me. I ran out the door completely unprepared for what I would see next.

The deceased was a gunshot victim out on Airline Highway, which runs north-south through Baton Rouge and continues another hundred miles down to New Orleans. My directions were simply that it was near the fairgrounds. I was almost out of the parish by the time I came upon the flashing blue lights. When I arrived at the scene I had to identify myself. The “gatekeeper” looked somewhat puzzled and responded as such:

“What got you out, Doc? Nobody else around? It's down there. Which funeral home you want me to call?”

Now it was my turn to be puzzled. I had no idea about which funeral home to call. So I was flagged through to where the body lay. Once I got within range of the body, a detective began waving his arms and yelling for me to stop. Again I was puzzled. When I got out of the car he told me which path to take to the body.

He was trying to make sure I didn't bumble into the scene and mess up the evidence. That feeling of being ill prepared was rapidly turning into embarrassment, and I started to feel really dumb.
You're not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy—nor are you in Colfax, Lou!
I was getting my first lesson in crime-scene etiquette. It would be the first of many.

I introduced myself to the detective and then we just sort of looked at each other. Obviously there was some expectation here.

He broke the silence. “Hell, just a hundred more yards and he'd be in the next parish and I'd be having breakfast at the Waffle House. I guess it's too late to drag him across the line.”

I stared at him. He pointed to the corpse.

“Looks like a gunshot to the head. We pretty much know what happened. Shot over the P-word,” he said, referring to the vernacular for the female-gender-specific body part. It was an accepted truth in this business: men tend to shoot other men over women. It's an ego issue, often exacerbated by alcohol, and it goes by a lot of names—possessiveness, insecurity, lust, love, pride, false pride, male stupidity, power trip.

“You want me to dispatch a funeral home?” the detective asked.

I was essentially lost. I decided to just come clean with the detective. “Look, I'm new out here. What do you need me to do?”

He didn't seem that surprised. I was like a calf looking at a new gate—
what now?

The detective turned out to be a good guy and told me the coroner usually examines the body, turns it over for them to take some pictures, gets the ID off the deceased, and calls the funeral home. Then the next day the office calls the police and tells them when the autopsy is going to be done. That's it. The expectations on the part of the police of the coroner were limited, to say the least.

Even to my naïve way of thinking, that didn't seem to be what coronering was all about. But I went through the motions and called the funeral home—white funeral home for white victims, black funeral home for black victims. The funeral home would take the body to the Charity Hospital for autopsy. I later found out that I was to call the pathologist at Charity to get a time. I was not to call him at night—rather strange, but hey, that's the gig, Jack!

The victim had a gunshot wound to the right side of his head. There was no exit. That's about the extent of what I had to offer.

The police would later chalk the motive of this murder up to a woman. Police, who knew the deceased, Jerry David Dixon, twenty-two, picked up the suspect, Robert Lee Duke, not long after. Duke said he shot Dixon in the head after Dixon confronted Duke and his girlfriend, Ann Marie Tuccio, in a pickup truck on Airline Highway. Dixon had a former relationship with Tuccio, police said.

Duke was charged with second-degree murder in the slaying, but a jury convicted him in 1994 on the lesser charge of manslaughter. He is currently awaiting his appeal.

An interesting side note that came out during the trial was that Tuccio, in her testimony, reported having nine separate personalities. These ranged from that of a five-year-old girl to that of a topless dancer. After Duke's conviction, she was charged with being an accessory after the fact. She pleaded not guilty.

That was my first murder in Baton Rouge, but I knew that I would be better prepared next time around. There were many next times, for Baton Rouge would live up to its gory name.

THREE

I felt I had a handle on the mental health duties of the job, but the realm of death investigation was intimidating. I was still smarting from the lesson in humility I'd gotten out on Airline Highway. To correct that deficiency, I attended every training seminar I could find and afford. I read forensics textbooks voraciously and went to just about every homicide crime scene in Baton Rouge.

One of the most helpful things I learned was crime-scene etiquette. A pearl of wisdom came from an older homicide detective, now retired. It had been passed down to him years before by his senior partner. “When you go through a crime scene for the first time, keep your hands in your pockets.” He laughed when he said it, but it was no joke. “That does two things: it shows you're not stealing anything or planting evidence, and it shows you're not contaminating the scene.”

I sought out experts in every forensics field, and I was a sponge for their knowledge and experience. The crime-scene officers taught me how to collect evidence and examine latent fingerprints from corpses. We used alternative light sources to look for trace fibers and hairs as well as body fluids. I also learned about forensic photography and how to take casts of shoeprints.

Dr. C. Lamar Meek, a forensic entomologist and renowned mosquito expert who happened to teach at LSU, coached me on the valuable information insects can tell us, and the best ways to collect them. I was amazed to learn that maggots from a corpse can be put into a blender and made into a slurry—pathologists call it “the maggot milkshake”—that can tell us if the deceased was a drug user, and what drug was used. Some flies, he went on, prefer the dark recesses of an unlit room, while others prefer the sunny outdoors. So a corpse recovered indoors with the larvae that live in outdoor locales indicates that someone moved the body.

An internationally regarded forensic anthropologist at LSU, Mary Manheim, also known as “The Bone Lady,” taught me how skeletonized remains can tell us who they are from dental X-rays. Scrutiny of bones may also reveal knife nicks and indicate cause of death. Pattern impressions from skull fractures can tell us a lot about the murder weapon.

The crime lab tutored me about DNA and sex crime investigation, and basic forensic techniques in hair and fingernail analysis, as well as ballistics. I have been with them in the field on several occasions; most recently during the hunt for a serial killer.

Arson investigators gave me a priceless education about hot spots and how to reconstruct a fire—how to read “alligator wood” and other signs of pattern burning. Important to know, as murderers sometimes use fires to conceal their crimes. More important, I learned how we could reveal those attempts. That skill set came in handy several times.

When I became coroner, there was no such thing as a seamless chain of custody for the bodies. They were simply picked up by whatever funeral home we could get to come to the scene. Much to my chagrin, the funeral home even had to supply the body bag at times. It was essentially a community service on their part, and they ran the risk of never getting paid for their services. When I was a deputy coroner, I went alone to crime scenes, but afterward I began taking someone with me.

Unbelievable as it might seem, the state's capital city did not have a coroner's morgue. Autopsies were done at a local hospital. There was no real security there. What's more, the pathologists were employees of the hospitals, which opened up conflict-of-interest situations. Eventually, we established a seamless chain of custody, and my staff began picking up the deceased in our own coroner vans. We built our own morgue in the form of a Medical Disaster Unit (a trailer). We have our own forensic pathologist and a new forensics facility is near completion.

As chief deputy coroner, I was eventually persuaded to assume the position of coroner when the old coroner retired. I won a special election and was unopposed in the following regular election, and here I am right now. I've been here ten years. But . . . why do it? I've pondered this a great deal. In the end I always come up with the same answer:
Because it's a job that's got to be done, and done right.

In my three years as deputy coroner, I learned a quick lesson in crime-solving: criminals talk. Before I got into the coroner business I never really gave this a whole lot of thought. This basic concept was brought home to me just as I was becoming a full-fledged coroner in 1996, and it has proven true over time.

Shelia was admitted to Earl K. Long Hospital (EKL) and died there. For whatever reason, her physician did not deem her death worthy of investigation by the coroner. He subsequently released her body to a funeral home and handled the death certificate himself. The manner of death was reported to be natural causes. If it were anything other than that, it would fall under the jurisdiction of the coroner. A funeral was held for Shelia, she was duly buried, and that seemed to be the end of it.

In police jargon, a “rat” is a person who will “give up” another person in order to cut a deal. The deal usually involves getting a reduced sentence for a crime the rat has committed. Now, it's an old police trick to put a suspect into a cell with a “rat.” The suspect tries to impress the rat with his exploits. The rat is impressed, encourages the suspect to spill his guts, and then the rat snitches to the cops. You'd think the suspects would catch on, but evidently many do not. How stupid do you have to be to trust secrets to another jailbird?

At any rate, somebody who was considered a “reliable” informant ratted out Jimmy Jones over Shelia's death. The rat had enough specifics to come to the attention of the homicide division. I don't know where the rat got his information. The rat claimed Jimmy had strangled the girl over cocaine. She was with Jimmy in a well-known sleazy “crack” motel in North Baton Rouge. A real rathole, where you would expect to rent by the hour. They had been doing crack for the better part of a day. The drug use was interspersed with the ingestion of beer. The rat even knew the room number and the brand of the beer.