Coroner's Journal (32 page)

The community seems pretty lackadaisical about the whole thing. Maybe it's battle fatigue. Maybe it's because of the victims' profile. I don't know. What I do know is that if we as a community do not learn from the past, we set ourselves up to repeat it.

FIFTEEN

I guess the corollary of the Tin Man's question in the
Wizard of Oz
for me is: “If Baton Rouge is such a bad place, why do you stay?”

There are lots of reasons, family roots being a big one. Dorothy was right, there's no place like home, and this
is
home. I don't think Baton Rouge is so bad that it can't be fixed. Actually, I think that fix is happening now. We have a new mayor—Kip Holden. He's a good guy and a good leader. I recently saw him go to the crime scene of an especially tragic shooting in which three police officers were shot—one fatally. He was there at a time of crisis. He's involved. I respect that. I think we all do. We also have a new police chief by the name of Jeff LeDuff. He has presence and is the kind of leader who is able to gather support not only from his officers but also from the community. Incidentally, I think he is the first African-American police chief we have ever had. I hear the police department's morale has improved. So changes are in the wind. My bottom line: I have faith in the people of this parish.

As I glance back over these pages, the crime scenes jump out at me in vivid detail. I don't see cases or case numbers. I see an elderly grandfather who is a World War II hero going out into his backyard and putting a bullet through his head because he doesn't want to be a burden to his family. I see a small Vietnamese woman huddled into the corner of the convenience store, holding up her hands, trying to block the hail of bullets from the gun of the armed robber who kills her for no good reason. I see the body parts of someone's grown son, scattered for a half-mile along the railroad tracks after he was hit by an express train en route to the Super Bowl in New Orleans. I see the faces of six children who died in a fire, their little faces staring back at me as I remove the burned rubble from their little bodies.

Sometimes I wonder if maybe I have seen too much. There are hundreds of bodies of sons and daughters, husbands and wives, aunts and uncles, mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, filed away forever in my brain.

Some of these people placed themselves in harm's way. Some others I don't have an explanation for . . . and never will. In practically every area of town I drive through, I can pick out spots where I have examined bodies. For a while, it was like some ghastly tour in the realm of death that I chose not to share with anyone. The places and the memories are still there, but they have no power over me any longer. Usually they just sadden me. My nightly bicycle ride takes me past the office of a colleague who killed himself there several years ago. He was a good man. As I pass by, I always say a prayer for him. Maybe the prayer is for me.

I have seen the casualties of those who lost loved ones, scars that never heal and leave them asking the unanswerable—why? I still have people stop me at the mall and on the street to thank me for what I did and to give some follow-up about themselves and their families. Baton Rouge truly is an oversized small town. Not everyone is satisfied with the job I did, but I did it to the best of my ability. I tried to be a true public servant; that may sound hokey, but it's true.

I've seen people at their worst and people at their best. A moment of rage due to betrayal (real or imagined), a drink too many, an extra hit of Ecstasy, a cocaine run, a fit of jealousy, passion, a moment of depression and hopelessness—any of these negative emotional experiences can result in homicide, suicide, or accidental death. I sort of understand. I don't condone the behaviors, but I understand the cause and effect.

What I do not understand is the sociopath who kills for the fun of it . . . because he likes it. I don't understand the pedophile. I don't understand the child-murderer. I don't understand the serial killers and rapists. I just know they are evil. I have sensed that evil still lingering about the death scene. I'm neither psychic nor psychotic, but there is no other explanation for what I have witnessed on such occasions.

I've also seen the toll this takes on responders. Pick one—EMS, fire, police, coroner. Look close and you'll see the scars. Some may be just superficially sealed over—like a scab trying to cover an infected wound. It's an expensive cover-up. Callousness, failed marriages, depression, chemical dependency, alienation of family, cynicism as a permanent character trait, identification with the perpetrator and the subsequent attitude that the end justifies the means, suicide . . . yes, even homicide. I've felt the rigid, steel-clad silence at a murder scene as I strained to pull the dead lover of a policeman's ex-wife out of the trunk of his car. There were no police lights flashing in the darkness because the killer was one of their own. Intense . . . It's all there, just look a little closer sometime and you may see it. It's also avoidable, to a large degree. And I'll say it again: If you don't process all the pain, it will process you. Anyone who doesn't believe that has missed one of the lessons I have tried to offer in this journal. I don't want any responder to end up a corpse in a bathtub.

I've seen Buddy and Betty Knox, Jim and Edith Moore, and others who were among the founders of the LOSS group, get out of bed at all hours of the night to head to a crime scene, responding without question to four words from me: “I've got a suicide.” I've seen them share their pain and their hope as they help others navigate through a disaster.

What do you say to a grieving wife and mother who finds her husband dead in his bedroom, having killed himself with a shotgun blast to his head? Or it's 2:30 P.M. and the kids are in school, and a horror awaits them at home. Who is there to prepare the way for them? People like those of the LOSS team. They stay the night in a bloody trailer with a grieving wife who has no family or close friends in the area to stay with her. And never once did I ever hear any hesitancy in their voices. As an aside, I'll just mention that Jim Moore is seventy years old, but I've never seen him flinch from his self-appointed duty.

I've seen a town come together over the body of an abandoned child. Folks still put toys on her little grave. There was a play cell phone there on her headstone just yesterday when I went by to visit. Christine Noel Love has been adopted and not forgotten.

I'm reminded of memorials that family members have erected to their lost loved one. Most of the memorials are temporary and in time melt back into the landscape. Still, you don't have to go far to find a cross on the side of the road. While sometimes fleeting, some of those memorials really stick out in my mind. The teddy bear and toys that marked the tragic death on College Drive a half-mile from my home are particularly haunting. It's where a baby of less than one year of age was catapulted from her stroller when a drunk driver hit her. The driver sped away with the stroller still lodged under the car's bumper. It was December 19, 2002—Christmastime—baby's first Christmas. Her Christmas gifts were placed at the site of her death as a memorial.

The media has hurt—and at times helped. Greg Meriweather, who does the street scene for Channel 9, is a straight shooter who is really interested in making a difference, not in merely sensationalizing. He's done some neat things, like trying to get people to keep their kids away from homicide crime scenes. When we had four infants die as a result of rollover in a parent's bed, Phil Ranier, a TV health reporter, came forward. He interviewed one mother, and the story made such an impact that we went many months without another rollover fatality. It's not all about death.

I've worked alongside a lot of cops, both uniformed and detectives. The really good ones approach each crime with the same intensity and dedication. It doesn't matter to them if the victim is a “throwaway.” Each person gets the same attention. Those are the great ones. They seem to rise above the political and departmental pressures of the moment to do their job. They don't talk about it much, and they don't go around patting themselves on the back. This is serious business and they are serious men and women.

I have struggled for years with that little saying “Let go and let God.” It actually used to irritate—then frustrate—me. Truth is, it pissed me off. I never was very good at letting go. I like order, and since this is the time for true confessions, I must admit that I'm something of a control freak.

I've tried to figure it out and answer the “Why?” question. With all my philosophy, religious study, and intellectualization, I have only been able to come up with one answer: “Because.” There must be an explanation, but it transcends all the reasoning power that I have been able to muster. In the end I have had to let it go and give it over to God. No, I don't think of God as my “fall guy,” but as the ultimate source of reason and wisdom.

“Let go and let God.”

I hope I can keep it there.

It was during the worst times, in the midst of the troughs of the serial killer's reign, when I met Patricia Cornwell. She came to Baton Rogue offering help and was generally rebuked by the serial killer task force and local government. I remember the mayor telling me that she was just here to write a book. He was as wrong about that as he was about his chances for reelection. She came to help and she brought expertise and experts with her. They, too, were welcomed like seeds upon the rocks.

I can't say I was much better initially. There was a media feeding frenzy going on. My policy to date had been to deny major media interviews and keep this at a local level. I didn't want to empower the killer any more than was already done. I just wanted to get the facts out. And we had some really sincere reporters, like Greg Meriwether and Avery Davidson, whom I have found to be most responsible in their reporting. In short, I didn't need those national guys to dispel rumors and get the right messages across.

Caron Whitesides, my executive assistant for many years, came into my office one day and announced that Patricia Cornwell was there to see me. And while I knew who Patricia Cornwell was, I didn't really know who Patricia Cornwell was. Most of my “set-aside reading time” is spent on forensic and mental health books and journals. But Caron seemed to know and respect her and so did my wife. Caron has always covered my back, and her opinions weigh in heavily when I make such decisions. So, though I was somewhat irritated about the way they were hammering on me to see Patsy, I acquiesced, mostly just to get them off my back, and said I would meet with the lady. “But just for a minute,” I admonished. It was one of the best decisions I ever made. It took me no time at all to realize this woman was the real thing and, more than that, she cared about my people. I came to know and trust her, and down the line I shared my journal with her. She encouraged me to move forward with it.

She, in turn, put me in touch with Kris Dahl. My God, I had an agent! Kris is great, and she led me through the morass of publishing. I must say folks at Putnam have been most patient with my amateurish and naïve approach to this endeavor. Kris and Putnam introduced me to a fellow Louisianan, albeit one who had become a galvanized New Yorker. His name is Mark Robichaux. He helped me put things into an organized format and was officially my “collaborator.” He's a lot more than that—he's also a friend. We got to know each other when he came down to Baton Rouge and got the tour of various sites at which some of these homicides had occurred—definitely not the kind of tour most people get.

During my tenure as coroner, I have had some great teachers. Mary Manheim shared openly with me out in the field and in her anthropology lab at LSU. Lamar Meek was not only an excellent forensic entomology professor, he was also an inspiration. Neither one of these underpaid consultants ever said no when I needed them. And then there is Dr. Michael Cramer, one of the most conscientious forensic pathologists I have ever seen. He excelled at one-to-one teaching in the morgue. I've been through many an autopsy with him. If it was there, Mike would find it.

I am eternally grateful to Buddy and his wife, Betty, who lost their son to suicide, and to James, who also lost his son to suicide, and his lovely wife, Edith. These folks were part of the founders of the LOSS program. Each would get out of bed at all hours of the night and head for whatever part of the parish I was in. They would do so without hesitation when they heard those four chilling words from me over the phone: “I've got a suicide.”

Wanda Hebert served as the moral compass of my office and taught me the true meaning of the term “iron hand in a velvet glove” by the caring but firm way in which she dealt with our psychiatric patients.

I have also learned a lot from the numerous detectives I have worked with. I learned what to do from the good ones and what not to do from the not-so-good ones. I owe a special thanks to the crime-scene investigators, who always took the time to teach me.

And when it was all said and done, DeAnn helped me get past my reluctance to expose my thoughts and feelings about being a coroner. And so, here we are. We have a book and I have lots of people to thank and to be thankful for.