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Graveyards of Chicago:
The People, History, Art, and Lore of Cook County Cemeteries
By Matt Hucke And Ursula Bielski. Discover a Chicago That Exists Just Beneath the Surface - About Six Feet Under! Take a tour of Chicago's permanent residents! Please visit the Lake Claremont Press website to purchase your copy of Graveyards of Chicago today!
Green-Wood Cemetery Arcadia Publishing announces the release of Alexandra Mosca's historic account of one of New York's most famous cemeteries. Aracdia Publishing's Images of America series has an extensive catalog of many cemetery publications! Please visit Arcadia Publishing to purchase your copy of Green-Wood Cemetery and to browse other available titles!
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Epitaphs: The Magazine for Cemetery Lovers By Cemetery Lovers
For information regarding subscriptions, single issues, submission guidelines, deadlines, classifieds or advertising for future issues, please visit The Cemetery Club.
Guardians of the Soul: Angels and Innocents, Mourners and Saints, Indiana's remarkable cemetery sculpture
with photography by John Bower and foreword by Claude Cookman is now
available. Please visit
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West Springfield Massachusetts: Stories Carved in Stone by Rusty Clark features information on early New England gravestone carvers with more than two hundred photos and illustrations. Please visit the Dog Pond Press website.
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Crematorium case puts spotlight on medical examiners |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Monday, 07 March 2005 |
Crematorium case puts spotlight on medical examiners
By Tim McCahill, Associated Press Writer
March 7, 2005
Associated Press
CONCORD, N.H. -- The investigation of an unlicensed Seabrook crematorium has thrust the spotlight on the workings of the state medical examiner's office, which already was tightening its policies after one of its own was indicted last year.
Though doctors specializing in the work conduct autopsies in some cases, independent contractors with the title of assistant deputy medical examiner are the state's eyes and ears for many deaths.
State law specifies 25 categories of death -- including homicide, suicide and drug overdoses -- that are reportable to a medical examiner. If a death is discovered that appears to meet one of those criteria, a police dispatcher alerts an assistant deputy examiner, who must decide whether the case merits a response.
The examiners are paid based on the scope of each investigation. If a case requires only a few phone calls, they get $25; if an examiner needs to investigate a death scene, they receive $125 plus mileage.
The 20 to 25 assistant deputy examiners handle around 1,200 deaths a year, of which 350 to 400 result in an autopsy, said Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Thomas Andrew.
If an autopsy is not required, the assistant deputy will issue a death certificate in consultation with either Andrew or Dr. Jennie Duval, the deputy chief medical examiner.
The indicted examiner is Gene Nigro, who was charged last summer with keeping prescription drugs from about a dozen dead people. He also is charged with performing his job after being suspended.
Despite the shadow cast cast by Nigro's indictment, Andrew is a strong supporter of the assistant deputy examiners.
"I can't emphasize enough how dedicated these people are, and what a good, solid job they do for the state," he said. "I would hope the message gets out that this isn't a bunch of out-of-control cowboys doing the work over here."
Police first heard about Bayview while investigating Nigro. When the crematorium turned away state police, authorities got a search warrant and closed it after finding a decomposing corpse there on Feb. 23.
Court documents in that investigation gave Andrew's office another black eye. In them, state police said assistant deputy medical examiner Wayne DiGeronimo told them that Kathrine Wieder, the former chief forensic investigator in Andrew's office, had authorized cremations without viewing the bodies -- a violation of state law.
Police said they turned up "several crematoriums where Wieder and-or Nigro had verbally authorized cremations" without viewing bodies.
Recent attempts to reach Wieder and Nigro have been unsuccessful. Neither has a listed telephone number in the state.
Wieder had been suspended with pay last fall, but authorities wouldn't say why. She resigned last month.
Nigro's indictment prompted Andrew to start tightening up rules, but recent developments have added urgency to the process.
"It brings the problems into a public light, which I think in and of itself lends some measure of urgency to it because public trust is at stake," Andrew said.
Codifying the "nuts and bolts" of death investigations in a manual for new assistant deputy examiners and requiring better documentation of what is removed from a death scene are among the changes in the works.
"What is going to be promulgated on paper really does not vary all that much from what we have held out as our policies in the past," Andrew said.
New assistant deputy examiners also will be subject to background checks by the attorney general's office, a change that resulted from the Nigro case, he said.
Rockingham County Attorney Jim Reams said changes are needed. Though he called the Nigro case an aberration, he supports stricter regulations on who can be an assistant deputy examiner and how investigations are conducted.
"They need to continue the professionalization," he said.
State law says each assistant deputy examiner "shall be a person learned in the science of medicine," and Andrew said most are nurses, emergency medical technicians and physicians' assistants. Others have law enforcement backgrounds.
Andrew said the statute doesn't require a health-care background, which he said he thinks shouldn't change.
"If we have people with an aptitude for the work, whether it's the investigative end or the medical end, they can through the course of training and experience shore up any deficiencies they have on either side of that equation," he said. "What matters more to me is both an aptitude and an enthusiasm for the work."
Assistant deputies are paid by the county in which they are called to work. They must take a 55-hour training course that includes lectures on relevant laws and causes of death.
They also learn how to take specimens from dead people, and must accompany an experienced investigator before they are certified to go out on their own, Andrew said.
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