UNNATURAL DEATH Confessions of a Medical Examiner

Hardback. JFK's autopsy failed to disclose crucial evidence. Post-mortems of Jennifer Levin, Elvis Presley and Tennessee Williams were either questionable, incomplete - or just plain wrong. Decisive medical findings in the von Bulow affair were consistently overlooked. As distinguished forensic pathologist Dr Michael M. Baden shows, all of these were maladroit investigations of unnatural death, and they are just the tip of the iceberg - a situation that amounts to a national disgrace. The author has repeatedly demonstrated his tirelessness in the fight for scientific truth unsullied by the pressures of expediency - as chairman of the forensic panel that reviewed the assassinations of John Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as chief medical examiner of the City of New York and co-director of the blue-ribbon New York State Police Forensic Sciences Unit. In determining the causes of tens of thousands of unnatural deaths, from those of presidents and rock stars to those of the victims of serial killings, exotic sex rituals, mass disasters, child abuse and drug abuse, he has maintained a level of excellence and integrity that, is far above the norm. The author argues that medico-legal autopsies in the United States are routinely bungled and introduces as evidence famous controversial cases he was personally called in to reinvestigate. With Index. 209pp. 8vo. h/back. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. Vg+ in sunned Vg+ dw.