A neighbor is the first to spot the flames in Martha Nicholas’ frame cottage (2). By the time firemen arrive, the middle-aged woman on the living room floor is beyond saving.
A “gin” (3) bottle and the charred remains (4) of an open pack of cigarettes on the table in front of the couch where the fire smouldered and caught (5) are mute testimony (6) to a familiar tragedy: Martha must have drowsed off (7) and set the couch afire. The police detectives shrug and close their notebooks.
But on a metal table in the county morgue (8) the dead woman’s body is about to tell a different story to another kind of detective, a medical examiner.
After a careful study of the body, the medical examiner autopsies (9) Martha, starting with a Y-shaped incision (10) from shoulder to shoulder and down the middle of her chest and belly. He then plunges a needle into a vein (11) near Martha’s heart and withdraws 40 cc of blood for analysis. Martha’s fully exposed throat and respiratory organs reveal no soot (12).
The medical examiner frowns. With this type of fire, a victim’s throat should be coated with the residue of smoke inhaled before death. He peels back the flesh of Martha’s neck and peers at the fragile (13), U-shaped hyoid bone (14) at the base of her tongue. He finds a hairline fracture (15), surrounded by a small hemorrhage (16). He then rolls back her eyelids, finding the tiny hemorrhages he expects. The pinpoints of blood bear witness to strangulation (17).
He next examines her heart, stomach, liver and other organs. An assistant opens Martha’s skull with a small electric saw. The medical examiner inspects the brain, looking for bleeding, tumors or other abnormalities (18). Finding no evidence of disease, or any other injuries, he has an assistant replace her organs and sew the body up neatly.
Test results show the dead woman’s blood-alcohol level was .02 percent. She may have had a drink, but she was far from drunk. The carbon-monoxide (19) level in her blood was two percent – much too low for death by smoke inhalation. And some material under her nails was human skin, from someone with Type A blood. Matha’s blood was Type O.
The medical examiner checks his investigator’s report. From Martha’s family and friends, the investigator learned that she was a department-store supervisor, who had fired a clerk just days before, a young man with a reputation as a hothead, who was known to smoke the brand of cigarettes found on Martha’s table. And, they told the investigator, Martha Nicholas never had smoked.
The medical examiner fills in Martha’s death certificate: “Cause of death: asphyxiation (20) due to manual strangulation. Manner of death: homicide (21).”
Arrested and confronted with the medical examiner’s evidence, the young store clerk confessed that he strangled Martha and set fire to her couch, hoping the truth would be hidden forever by the flames. And it might have been, had it not been for the medical examiner – a unique kind of detective who solves mysteries with a scalpel (22) and a test tube, a keen eye and an inquiring mind.
The medical examiner is a doctor who spends four years after medical school studying pathology (23) -- the natural effects of disease on the body – and another year specializing in forensic (24) pathology, sometimes known as legal medicine. This is the science of violence and injury, of unnatural death.
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