Exhumation

Using a diamond-tip blade, workers sliced through granite slabs of the Tomb of the Unknowns, beginning exhumation of remains for possible identification of a pilot from the Vietnam War. The remains were sealed in the Arlington National Cemetery monument 14 years ago with the intention that they never be removed. But Defense Secretary William S. Cohen last week ordered the exhumation to clear up suspicions of a downed pilot's family who believe he is buried there.

WASHINGTON - The hunt for proof that Syrian government forces used banned chemical weapons may come down to a rotting corpse exhumed late last month from a makeshift cemetery near Damascus. The grave diggers - a Syrian doctor and several medical students - were seeking tissue from the remains of a man who had died of respiratory failure after a rocket allegedly spewed poison gas on Dariya, a suburb of the Syrian capital, on April 25. Reaching the cadaver several feet down, the team sliced open the cloth shroud, cut into the torso and removed a small piece of lung.

The body of French actor-singer Yves Montand was exhumed in Paris for a post-mortem paternity test sought by a woman claiming to be his daughter. The court order for the exhumation was issued in November, causing anger and revulsion in Montand's family and media appeals for the dead star to be left in peace. A panel of three doctors will have until June 30 to determine whether Montand, who died in 1991 at age 70, was the father of Aurore Drossart, now 22.

SANTIAGO, Chile - Chilean authorities on Monday exhumed the body of Pablo Neruda to check claims by a former chauffeur that the Nobel Prize-winning poet may have been killed by government agents shortly after the 1973 overthrow of his friend, President Salvador Allende. Under a special tent and wearing protective clothing, a team of forensic pathologists that included a U.S. toxicologist gathered in the coastal resort town of Isla Negra to oversee the exhumation. Neruda died on Sept.

SANTIAGO, Chile - Chilean authorities on Monday exhumed the body of Pablo Neruda to check claims by a former chauffeur that the Nobel Prize-winning poet may have been killed by government agents shortly after the 1973 overthrow of his friend, President Salvador Allende. Under a special tent and wearing protective clothing, a team of forensic pathologists that included a U.S. toxicologist gathered in the coastal resort town of Isla Negra to oversee the exhumation. Neruda died on Sept.

Forensic experts, reconstructing a 1995 massacre in the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica, have finished exhuming about 250 bodies from a mass grave, U.N. officials said Tuesday. "Although the grave was disturbed, remains of approximately 250 persons were found, some with their hands tied behind their backs," said Kelly Moore, the spokeswoman for the United Nations in Bosnia-Herzegovina. She said the bodies will be taken to a morgue, where they will be photographed and cataloged.

A leading German newspaper has reported that revered German literary hero Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was secretly exhumed about 30 years ago. The macabre revelation came as Germany prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Goethe's birth on Aug. 28. Scientists in the former East Germany removed Goethe's remains from his tomb in 1970 to preserve the skeleton. They enclosed it in foam before returning it to the tomb.

Romanian Communists said they will seek approval to exhume the remains of Stalinist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu because they suspect that he might have been tortured before he was executed in 1989. "We plan to ask authorities to allow us to exhume Ceausescu and his wife to bury them in a Christian way," said Cristian Niculae of the Romanian Workers Party.

The body of civil rights leader Medgar Evers was exhumed and transported here to be re-examined as part of a renewed inquiry into his slaying, officials confirmed Wednesday. Evers' body was exhumed Monday from Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, a U.S. Army spokeswoman said. She said the Jackson, Miss., district attorney's office, which has reopened an investigation into Evers' death, requested the exhumation. Evers was shot to death June 12, 1963, in front of his Jackson home.

The National Park Service on Monday rejected a forensic scientist's request to exhume the body of 19th century explorer Meriwether Lewis. Scientist James Starrs had sought to prove that Lewis was murdered and did not commit suicide in 1809. Jerry Belson, director of the National Park Service's southeast region, said in a letter to Starrs that the exhumation would be inconsistent with policies barring the disturbance of burial sites in national parklands unless threatened with destruction.

Nobel Prize winning poet Pablo Neruda's body will be exhumed and autopsied, a judge ruled this week. An investigation of Neruda's death was opened in 2011, 38 years after he died of what was said to be malnutrition or cancer. Judge Mario Carroza ordered the investigation after Chile's Communist Party filed an official request. Carroza is overseeing the cases of hundreds of Chileans who were "disappeared" during Gen. Augusto Pinochet's notoriously ruthless regime. Pinochet took over from Salvador Allende in a military coup in 1973.

Authorities on Friday plan to exhume the body of a Chicago lottery winner who officials say died of cyanide poisoning, police confirmed to the Los Angeles Times. Last week, a Cook County judge gave the medical examiner's office approval to remove Urooj Khan's body to conduct an autopsy. Chief Medical Examiner Stephen J. Cina said in a court filing that his office needs to confirm the cyanide poisoning finding and “rule out any other natural causes that might have contributed to or caused Mr. Khan's death.

Cook County prosecutors are expected to ask a judge Friday morning to exhume the body of a Chicago lottery winner who died of cyanide poisoning, according to the medical examiner's office. A spokeswoman for the Cook County Medical Examiner previously told the Los Angeles Times that the removal of 46-year-old Urooj Khan's remains may not take place for several weeks because the decision must receive a judge's approval and authorities must coordinate with the cemetery. Khan -- who won a $1-million jackpot from the Illinois lottery last summer -- died before he could receive his winnings.

Cook County prosecutors will to seek to exhume the body of a 46-year-old Chicago lottery winner who authorities say died from cyanide poisoning, the medical examiner's office says. Mary Paleologos, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner, told the Los Angeles Times that a judge must approve the removal of Urooj Khan's remains. Then authorities must coordinate with the cemetery, she said, so the exhumation will probably not occur for several weeks. Paleologos said the motion would be filed in court Friday, but a spokesman for the Cook County State's Attorney's Office would not confirm that.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - The Palestinian Authority announced Saturday that it would exhume the body of Yasser Arafat within days in a bid to determine the cause of his death eight years ago. Many Palestinians believe he was poisoned by Israel. Arafat, 75, died in a French military hospital near Paris on Nov. 11, 2004, after his health deteriorated suddenly during an Israeli military siege of his Ramallah headquarters. French hospital reports attributed his death to a massive brain hemorrhage, but gave no details on what caused a related blood condition called disseminated intravascular coagulation, fueling Palestinian suspicion of an Israeli role.

Nearly four decades after a bloody coup overthrew Chilean President Salvador Allende, the remains of the socialist leader were exhumed Monday to try to determine whether he was killed or committed suicide. The flag-draped coffin of Allende, who died during an attack on the presidential palace on Sept. 11, 1973, by military forces, was removed from Santiago's General Cemetery by government officials and taken to a forensic medicine facility. The procedure was authorized by an appellate court judge April 15 in response to controversy over whether Allende killed himself, was felled by a bullet fired from outside the palace, was given a coup de grace by an associate after a failed suicide attempt or was executed by soldiers.

The Los Angeles County coroner has decided not to oppose a court order to unearth the remains of a wealthy Orange County woman to determine if she was killed by her second husband, as her sons allege. The coroner's compliance comes after a two-year effort by the sons to have the remains of their mother, Nancy Ann Barwick, 52, exhumed from a Long Beach cemetery. The coroner, Dr. Richard Kornblum, had opposed the autopsy request because Mrs.

The son of Dr. Sam Sheppard, who was convicted and then acquitted of killing his wife 45 years ago, is outraged that prosecutors will exhume his mother's remains and said the plan is only a means to delay a trial to clear his father's name. "We don't understand why they're doing this. It's outrageous," Sam Reese Sheppard, 52, said Friday after learning that Cuyahoga County Prosecutor William Mason ordered the exhumation.

Nearly 40 years after the violent military coup in which he perished, the remains of former Chilean President Salvador Allende will be exhumed in Santiago on Monday under the supervision of an investigating magistrate and a team of forensic experts. The exhumation is part of an attempt to determine once and for all whether the democratically elected Socialist president was killed by the Chilean air force jets and troops that bombed and assaulted his presidential palace or if, as most witnesses concur, Allende took his own life.