Autopsies

Riverside County officials have rejected Liberace's death certificate and ordered his body returned from Los Angeles for an autopsy to determine whether he died of AIDS. The action overshadowed Friday's memorial service attended by several hundred mourners at Our Lady of Solitude Roman Catholic Church near Liberace's home in Palm Springs. Among them were actor Kirk Douglas and Mrs. Bob Hope. During the service, Father William Erstad read a telegram from President and Mrs.

The parents of Kendrec McDade have reviewed the autopsy report of their 19-year-old son, who was fatally shot in March by Pasadena police, and said they were concerned that he may have been shot from behind. The report, released by the L.A. County coroner's office Friday, shows that the unarmed McDade was shot four times at point-blank range by one officer and was alive and handcuffed after being struck by a total of seven bullets. At a news conference Saturday, Caree Harper, an attorney for McDade's family, said the bullets that hit McDade's arms and one that hit his hip appear to contradict the police's assertion that none of the shots came from behind him. A diagram in the report appears to indicate one bullet entered McDade through the back, but the narrative states that bullet's trajectory was "front to back and downward.

Olympic sprint champion Florence Griffith Joyner died after suffering an epileptic seizure, according to autopsy results released Thursday, and her family and friends say they hope the findings will put to rest rumors that drug use contributed to her death. Griffith Joyner died last month in her sleep at age 38. Her husband, Al Joyner, bitterly criticized those who suggested that she took performance-enhancing drugs.

New findings by the Los Angeles County coroner's office and a prominent UCLA pediatrician "undermine and contradict" the evidence and expert testimony used to convict a woman of shaking her 7-week-old grandson to death 15 years ago, her attorneys have argued in a recent clemency petition to the governor. A review of the evidence against Shirley Ree Smith was ordered to assist Gov. Jerry Brown as he weighs whether to commute Smith's sentence of 15 years to life. Smith has already spent 10 years in prison for the death of baby Etzel Glass at a Van Nuys apartment on Nov. 30, 1996.

Two El Segundo toddlers found dead in their beds last spring were poisoned by oleander leaves from a neighbor's yard that they picked and ate, coroner's officials said Tuesday. The case of Alexei and Peter Wiltsey, ages 2 and 3, represents the first confirmed accidental deaths by oleander poisoning in county history, said coroner's spokesman Scott Carrier.

Jeff Porcaro, drummer for the rock band Toto, died of hardening of the arteries caused by cocaine use--not from an allergic reaction to a pesticide as originally reported, the Los Angeles County coroner's office said Thursday, The 38-year-old rock star fell ill after spraying insecticide in the yard of his Hidden Hills home Aug. 5, and died that evening at Humana Hospital-West Hills.

The Los Angeles County coroner's office said Sunday that a preliminary autopsy of model Linda Sobek's body does not support the account of her death given by photographer Charles E. Rathbun, who says he accidentally ran over the former football cheerleader during a photo session in the desert. "Thus far, findings are not consistent with injuries caused by an automobile," coroner's spokesman C.

Results of the autopsies on Laci Peterson and her son will remain sealed, Stanislaus County Superior Court Judge Al Girolami ruled in Modesto Friday. Girolami also rejected requests by reporters to listen to wiretaps of phone calls they made to Scott Peterson, and declined to issue a gag order on lawyers in the case. Prosecutors have said they support some form of a gag order, but defense attorney Mark Geragos said in court papers that he opposes any effort to curtail discussions about the case.

Jurors in the murder trial of O.J. Simpson will be allowed to look at dozens of autopsy photographs that one of Simpson's lawyers had warned would cause "revulsion and horror" but that prosecutors said would shed important light on how the June 12 murders were committed. In his ruling, released Wednesday, Superior Court Judge Lance A.

Emil Matasareanu, the bank robber shot by police in a wild gun battle in North Hollywood and given no medical care, was hit 29 times and bled to death from two bullet wounds to his thigh, the Los Angeles County coroner's office revealed Thursday. His partner, Larry Eugene Phillips Jr.

What does Trayvon Martin's autopsy say? It's been exactly one month since Martin was shot and killed by a neighborhood watch captain armed with a 9-millimeter weapon. The day is being observed with protests, rallies and a town hall meeting. Also notable are leaks of information from police department sources in Sanford, Fla., that could help support George Zimmerman's claim that he fired in self-defense. That brings us back to the autopsy. Does it conclude whether Zimmerman was standing when he fired?

Michael Jackson could not have given himself the lethal dose of the surgical anesthetic that killed him, a medical examiner who performed the singer's autopsy testified Tuesday, dealing a blow to the defense argument that the singer died by his own hand. As the third week of testimony in Dr. Conrad Murray's involuntary manslaughter case got underway, Dr. Christopher Rogers, an examiner with the L.A. County coroner's office, testified that it was the words of the defendant that led him to rule out a scenario in which Jackson gave himself the anesthetic propofol.

Toxicology results released to the family of singer Amy Winehouse this week raised almost as many questions as they answered, experts said Wednesday, keeping the cause of the "Rehab" singer's death a mystery. The Winehouse family issued a statement on Tuesday saying no illegal substances were found in the 27-year-old's system after her death at her London home on July 23. The absence of banned drugs may come as a relief to her father, Mitch, given Winehouse's history of drug and alcohol addiction and rampant speculation about the role narcotics may have played in her death.

Armen Gilliam , who was part of the UNLV basketball team that made a run to the Final Four in 1987 and played for several NBA teams died at 47. The Allegheny County Medical Examiner's Office said Wednesday that Gilliam died Tuesday night at the LA Fitness gym in Bridgeville, Pa., while playing basketball. The office said an autopsy was pending. The Phoenix Suns drafted Gilliam as the No. 2 overall pick in the 1987 NBA draft. In addition to the Suns, Gilliam played for the Charlotte Hornets, Philadelphia 76ers, New Jersey Nets, Milwaukee Bucks and Utah Jazz.

Sometimes the remains of American war dead arrive at the military morgue intact, sealed inside a "human remains pouch" — a body bag. Sometimes they arrive as "dissociated remains" — a leg, an arm or other body parts ripped loose by the force of a roadside bomb or suicide bomber or air crash. And sometimes there are commingled remains of several victims of a blast or crash, including service members, civilian bystanders and, in some cases, a suicide bomber. Air Force Lt. Col. Laura Regan literally lays hands on remains of the dead.

Friends and family were no closer to knowing what caused a prominent Orange County surgeon to be found dead in her swimming pool after an autopsy Monday proved inconclusive. The body of Dr. Marianne E. Cinat, 45, medical director of the UC Irvine Regional Burn Center, was discovered late Saturday morning by a close friend at Cinat's home in unincorporated Rossmoor, said Jim Amormino, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department. Cinat, who was fully clothed, had been in the pool for more than 10 hours before the call came in at 11:15 a.m., he said.

They've handled some of the country's most notable deaths: the suicide of Marilyn Monroe, the assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy and, more recently, the slayings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Each day, examiners with the Los Angeles County coroner's office receive about 50 new cases, making the office one of the busiest in the nation. Some bodies are examined at a mortuary by a coroner's official. Other cases need only a phone call to the deceased's doctor.

St. Louis Cardinal pitcher Darryl Kile died from a blockage of the arteries supplying the heart, and there was no evidence that drugs contributed to his death, Cook County's coroner said Tuesday. "This is a natural cause of death," Edmund Donoghue, the county's chief medical examiner, said in a statement. Toxicology tests did show evidence of marijuana use, although it was probably weeks before and was not a factor in Kile's death, Donoghue said.

Television crime shows have helped popularize autopsies, but in reality these postmortem exams are becoming rarer every year. Today, hospitals perform autopsies on only about 5 percent of patients who die, down from roughly 50 percent in the 1960s. That's unfortunate, say experts, because details about the cause of death can be illuminating for both families and hospitals, even if they don't turn up an undiagnosed ailment or other new information about the cause of death. Kristine Johnson's father, Nathan Johnson, developed early-onset Alzheimer's disease and died last August, five years after having received that diagnosis at age 52. He worked as a lineman for a power company near the family home in Waterford, Conn., and had on occasion been injured by powerful jolts of electricity, says Kristine, who is 36. She hoped that an autopsy would provide some answers, possibly related to injuries he sustained on the job, about why he developed Alzheimer's at such an early age. (Most people who develop Alzheimer's do so after age 65; only about 5 percent of cases are early-onset.)