LOS ANGELES (AP) — Ronald N. Kornblum, a former Los Angeles County coroner who performed autopsies on such celebrities as John Belushi, Natalie Wood and Truman Capote, has died. He was 74. Kornblum served eight years as county coroner before resigning in 1990 amid charges of poor management. He died Tuesday at his home in La Canada Flintridge after a long illness, his family said.

Kornblum was hired in 1980 and for a time received praise for improving the efficiency and professionalism of the medical examiner's office. He attributed his department's later failings to a rise in county homicides that strained the office's resources.An independent management audit found unsanitary conditions including dead insect larvae in the morgue and a body that had decomposed because it had been misplaced. Poor oversight also allowed for misconduct by some employees, who were caught in a double-billing scam.

Kornblum said he had performed the job "as responsibly as possible, in a climate of continual turmoil and upheaval."

During his tenure, Kornblum handled the autopsies of Belushi, Wood, William Holden and other actors, as well as those of Capote and Karen Carpenter.

He often lamented the morbid image people had of coroners and said he wished to change the way people saw his profession.

"Everyone thinks of a coroner walking with a limp; he's got a humped back, he's covered with blood," he said in 1988.

Born in Chicago on Dec. 5, 1933, Kornblum earned his medical degree at the University of California, San Francisco.

He worked in Ho Chi Minh City as a Navy medical officer from 1960 to 1961. Kornblum, who also held coroner's office positions in Maryland and Ventura County, became famous for his knowledge of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and fatalities involving Taser guns.

He was frequently consulted as an expert on chokehold deaths, even testifying on the "preppie killer" case involving the 1986 strangulation of a young woman in New York's Central Park.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gpKsT1Dq5SJFNCjqUbD8pvL4iH9wD93FDCO80