Coroner's Journal: Forensics and the Art of Stalking Death

by Louis Cataldie

  Somewhat to the chagrin of the crime-scene officer, I broke the seal and unzipped the bag. I told the detectives that I was satisfied that this was a suicide and that no harm would come from opening the bag. Besides, it’s my bag and my seal and therefore my responsibility.

  It was just the right thing to do.

  I must say I did so with some trepidation, knowing I’d be explaining this move later to the head of homicide. But, as I reasoned with myself, as objectively as possible, there are times when you just have to make that judgment call. And you have to be a doctor, and you have to consider the concept of “First, do no harm.” It would do more harm not to let this father see his son one last time. There was nothing to be gained forensically by not breaking that seal. I would put another one on before we left and we could go through our procedure again.

  Maybe I was projecting because of the similarities between this kid and my kid. They could be friends, for all I knew. But this was not the time to be second-guessing myself. As Johnny’s dad knelt next to his son and rubbed his son’s hair and said his goodbyes, I knew in my heart that I had chosen correctly.

  Robert Frost was right: “And that has made all the difference.”

  COINCIDENCES

  On the bed in a room on the third floor of the hotel attached to the Argosy Casino, one block over from the government building and my office, a sixty-year-old white male lay dead. He’d been on a bad chase—and, of course, lost. The “chase” is a term often used to describe a compulsive gambler who thinks his bad luck is due to change, and tries to recoup all of his losses by betting more heavily. The man’s nine-page suicide note was reflective of his run of bad luck: lost job, lost marriage, lost hope—and now a bullet through his brain.

  Casino patrons walked down the hall never knowing the tragedy that was in that room. It’s always amazed me that death can be one wall away or just down the hall and you’d never know about it. Here’s a guy who has blown his brains out in a fit of desperation and these people are meandering by to go over to the casino to gamble. They participate in the same behavior that just led to this man’s death—although it’s not the behavior, it’s the compulsion. Still, it seems weird.

  The room really just plain stank! A pool of decomposing blood, and there was lots of it, indicated that he did not die right away. The bowel incontinence was enough to “gag a maggot.” When you pull back the covers and move the body, a whole new wave of odiferous particles assaults you. It’s a known fact, and I’ve been known to announce a warning: “Get ready, it’s going to really stink.”

  Several of the officers became sick and had to leave the room. And of course there was the hip-shot speculation offered by the detective who noted a hole in the pillow: “Look—he used that to muffle the shot!”

  How stupid can you get? He COMMITTED SUICIDE, dummy! He left a note; he wanted to be found. That is the hole made by the goddamned projectile as it exited his brain and blew out the back of his skull. I don’t think he was concerned about getting caught. Brilliant.

  It’s like children wanting to be recognized by the teacher for their observation skills and knowledge base. You hear some really stupid speculation at crime scenes—tends to scare me.

  Of course hotel security was all over the place, and then there we were: four cops, three people from my office, and a stretcher out in the hall. So I had the manager assign us the empty room across the hall, and we set up a command and a staging area there, so as not to frighten the hotel and casino guests. It also served to contain some of the bullshit that gets said rather loudly at such a scene.

  Meanwhile, one of the responders and I were doing what we do a lot at a crime scene—waiting—this time for the CSI to get pictures. We began to talk about suicide, and he confided in me that years ago his father had committed suicide in a hotel, a casino hotel. Talk about a flashback. Grim. He still seemed to be searching for answers that do not exist. At least, that was my impression. This revelation is also a reminder to be careful of what you say at a crime scene.

  Suicide scenes are historically fertile ground for judgmental comments: “He took the coward’s way out,” or “Why did this SOB have to kill himself in my district . . .” You never know who is listening, and you might be amazed at how many people have been touched or affected by suicide.

  This is my second suicide in as many days. What the hell is going on?

  Last night this fifty-eight-year-old white male shot himself with an 1873 Winchester carbine, caliber .32-20, a rifle that helped win the Wild West. Not a good choice—he had to shoot himself three times to get the job done. How many coroners deal with gunshot wounds from a rifle that is an antique?

  He was a hoarder and had lots of obsessive-compulsive-type indicators in the house. Everything was in order. Even the cans in the pantry were arranged by size, and all labels faced forward. Newspapers were bound and catalogued. Clothes were hung by type and size in the closets.

  He shot himself in the bathtub. I surmise he did not want to leave a mess. He had ejected two empties and placed them in the soap dish. He did not eject the last one, as he was either dead or incapacitated by that time due to exsanguination, or bleeding to death. A huge mirror faced the bathtub. It would not surprise me to learn that he’d stood before that mirror and made several dry runs with an empty rifle as macabre rehearsals. Of course there is no way of knowing that. Some suicide victims actually fire a test shot into the wall as a prelude to shooting themselves. I guess they want to make sure the gun works. Of course such a “practice shot” always complicates the investigation. That was not the case here. There was no note. Then again, only about 25 percent of suicides leave a note.

  The house reeked of depression and mental anguish. Suicide houses often do. The lighting was dim and several bulbs appeared to be burned out, in contradiction to his need for orderliness, but I’ve seen this before. Shades were drawn and little light could break through. The place was orderly but not clean. One of the officers sarcastically commented that the maid had obviously not come in some time. Dust was prevalent on every surface, and the carpet needed cleaning. The mail was stacked in neat little piles but much of it had not been opened. Boxes of “stuff” occupied most of the seating space in the house. Indeed, there were only two places not occupied by stacks of paper or boxes. One chair at the kitchen table was free of clutter. It faced the table where the mail was stacked. The other open chair faced the TV set. He had lots of VHS movies, all in place and on the shelves—and in alphabetical order, of course. The TV was off and there was a thick coat of dust on the screen. All of these signs promoted an atmosphere of isolation. Maybe he was agoraphobic. He was obviously in a living hell and saw no way out—except one.

  The act of suicide gives us permission to invade your privacy, ask intimate questions about you, go through your belongings, form opinions about you. Nothing is off limits or “sacred” once you kill yourself. This is a murder and we are looking for the motive. But I really didn’t get a sense of knowing this man. As I talked to neighbors, acquaintances, and distant family members (there were no close ones), I realized that no one really seemed to know him. He was truly alone. I had his motive.

  ONE OF THEIR OWN

  It was a nice day in Baton Rouge. Flowers were blooming, wispy clouds floated by against a blue sky, and a mild breeze caressed us. This type of day is one of the delights of living in this area. I stood there before the neat little townhouses that lined the street. Several police officers came over into the shade offered by three huge crape myrtle trees. The mood was especially somber, and the conversation was almost muffled. It centered around one of their own. A retired police officer had taken his life in one of the upper apartments. It felt like we were at a wake and standing outside of a funeral home.

  The case belonged to the city police but the sheriff’s office had also responded. There was no jurisdictional squabbling. When a fellow officer goes down, cops take care of cops. This man was one of their own. He was a well-known and respecte
d police officer who had fallen upon hard times.

  After I had waited there a while, one of the city detectives asked me to come up. His demeanor betrayed his feelings. It would be difficult to get any distance from this death.

  He briefed me in an almost flat tone. It was an attempt to be matter-of-fact, but it just didn’t come off like that to me. Maybe I was projecting my own feelings onto him. I’d sort that out later.

  The deceased, whom we will call David Smith, had gone into the bathroom, gotten into the bathtub, and shot himself with what appeared to be a service revolver. He had left the apartment very organized. Everything was in place and everything was clean. I’d seen this before in suicide deaths. All of his important papers were organized on the kitchen table. He had written instructions for every discipline that he knew would ultimately show up. He even had one for me, entitled “The Coroner.” It was essentially instruction for me on whom to notify of his death.

  Police officers who had worked with him held him in high esteem. Many identified with him. There was an impressive array of commendations on his walls.

  His cause and manner of death were apparent.

  One of the things I took away from that scene was the disconcerting remark that one of the policemen made. “I often wonder if I’ll end up like this someday.”

  I still have a crystal-clear image of that moment. David Smith in the tub with a bullet hole in the right temporal area of his skull. I remember the white porcelain of the tub contrasting with the dried blood that had oozed from his head. I remember the color of the shower curtain and the rug. And most vivid is the image of that police officer. I can still see him looking down at David, and I still hear those words. It is like the whole scene is etched into my brain, in a kind of mental freeze frame.

  His words alarmed me, because that level of empathy could be interpreted as his intention to follow suit. This could serve as a rehearsal to see how one’s peers view such a death.

  Every time I see that particular officer at a crime scene now, I ask him how he’s doing. I doubt he’d tell me the truth. Therapy for depression or mental-health issues still seems to be taboo or at least tainted in that culture. But what do I know? I’m not a cop, I’m a coroner.

  EIGHT

  Thou Shalt Not Kill

  DOG DRUNK

  I continue to be astounded by some people’s motives in murdering another person. This drama occurred in the northern part of the parish. I really don’t have to go up there often; they tend not to murder each other as much. Tonight, obviously, was an exception.

  When I recall the events of that muggy Louisiana evening in July 1994, several vivid images stand out. The first is that of the massive number of vehicles—pickup trucks, EMS vehicles, fire trucks, police cars—that I came upon as I approached the trailer park. They were erratically parked and stretched from the actual crime scene, which was the last trailer on the left. I judged the distance to be at least a quarter of a mile.

  As soon as I got out of my car, my glasses fogged over. Humidity was at least 110 percent and the heat index approached that of Dante’s Inferno.

  The official vehicles had the usual array of strobe lights going. If you ever make direct eye contact with a bright strobe, your night vision is shot to hell for at least ten to fifteen minutes. I tried to avoid the strobe-induced night blindness as I waded through the vehicles and the clusters of people who were grouped randomly. They all replied when I acknowledged them with a nod or “Howdy,” which is the culturally correct greeting in this neck of the woods.

  The next visual image I remember is the organized chaos. I was initially met by an apprehensive sheriff’s deputy who told me the killer had run into the woods and barricaded himself. His speech was pressured and slightly high-pitched: “He’s armed and he’s dug in! We’re going in after him.” As if on cue, several SWAT types hustled by and entered the woods.

  It was one of those slow-motion moments. If you’ve ever been in an automobile wreck and seen it coming, you know how things tend to slow down, and how you have this unnerving feeling of calm. It’s kind of a crazy feeling. That’s what this was. Hey, I shouldn’t be calm, this is a volatile situation. That guy could come charging out of the woods at any moment . . . and should a gunfight ensue, bullets might be flying all over the place.

  Some of those deputies had what my granddaddy used to call that “wild-eyed look.” The adrenaline does it, it’s contagious. I probably looked “wild-eyed” myself. The last thing I needed was to be caught in a crossfire between the police and the perpetrator. I thought to myself that I should be wearing a vest—of the bulletproof variety—but that was not the case. I turned my attention to Raymond.

  Twenty-three-year-old Raymond Allen Borskey was dead, there was absolutely no doubt about that. He was laid out next to his truck. His truck was parked at the foot of his trailer. Borskey’s brain, along with half of his skull, had literally been blown away by a close-range shotgun blast. An open beer bottle lay next to his hand.

  There was no real mystery here as to the cause and manner of death. The case appeared to be open and shut. Not much to examine here, either. We would do a full autopsy in the morning. But I still needed to know what happened.

  A detective filled in the blanks for me. Borskey had been killed by his neighbor in the trailer park, a thirty-four-year-old man by the name of Mark E. Mire. Mire shot him in the back of the head with a shotgun because Borskey had insulted his dog.

  “Wait,” I had to interject, “you’re telling me this guy’s brain got blasted halfway across his yard because of a dog? A dog? What was the real deal?”

  The detective shook his head. “I know. It’s nuts, but that’s apparently what happened.”

  Of course, I assumed there had to be a deeper reason behind this death, but apparently the altercation really was over a dog. I expected money, or a woman, or maybe dope—but a dog? “All I can say is that must be one helluva dog. Where is it? I’d like to see a dog worth dying for to defend its honor. This is just nuts.”

  The detective informed me that he had not seen the dog, and didn’t even know where it was.

  So, to recap, the version I got of the story went like this: Borskey was drinking at a local lounge when Mire showed up with his dog. Borskey commented that the dog was ugly. A bar-tender then asked Mire to take the animal out of the barroom.

  Mire went home to the trailer park, got his shotgun, hid in a van, and waited. When Borskey and his girlfriend arrived, Mire stepped out of the van with the weapon. Borskey never saw it coming. That’s it. That’s the whole story.

  Having been raised in north Louisiana, which is redneck country, I had heard that some folks could be a little touchy when it came to their dog, but this was ridiculous.

  Mire—dog lover and now “cold-blooded murderer”—surrendered without a battle and was taken into custody. One dead and one going to jail for a long, long time—all because of an insult to a dog.

  I imagine alcohol played a major role in this homicide. It does in a lot of them. In the end, all of the death and suffering caused on this night was for naught. I wondered if Mire would try to spin his actions as “justifiable homicide” when he woke up in the morning.

  The motive in this case is almost incomprehensible to me. The trivial things that people kill over are astounding. I do not understand it. I did have a moment of clarity the next evening when my eleven-year-old son was sitting with us as we watched the TV news coverage of Borskey, Mire, and the dog. Michael looked at me and said: “That’s just plain dumb!”

  “Out of the mouths of babes . . .” I muttered.

  His attorney argued, albeit unsuccessfully, that Mire should be acquitted because he was “insane” at the time of the murder. Mire would have plenty of time to contemplate the whole insane affair. He was found guilty of second-degree murder. That’s a mandatory life sentence.

  So what happened to the dog? The chaos must have confused the poor animal. Following Mire’s arrest, his dog ran out
on Plank Road as Mire was being led across the highway and was run over and killed.

  “WE’LL BE SEEING YOU . . .”

  That crime scenes are typically rich in banter should come as no surprise. One of the more common ones in the coroner’s armamentarium is: “If you die stupid, we’re going to laugh at you!” Another in the Top Ten is: “We’ve already got the paperwork done on you . . . how you feeling?” Then there’s: “If I see you tonight, you won’t be seeing me.”

  Sometimes these shockingly witty quips prove prophetic and may even become legend, in the urban sense. One such quip got its start at the Greater Baton Rouge Gun Show.

  Just in case you are not familiar with a Louisiana gun show, I’ll take a few lines to describe the phenomenon. The show features about 200 tables staffed by gun dealers. There are all types of firearms for sale to qualified individuals. The tables are arranged in rows, and the attendees wander down the rows in search of deals and treasures. In order to purchase a firearm, you must pass the “instant background check,” the state’s threshold to make sure you are not a felon.

  I have been around guns all of my life. In my younger years I even explored the possibility of becoming a gunsmith. But my father had other ideas, and that one never came to fruition. I did become a sort of amateur gunsmith, though, and subsequently have become rather knowledgeable about firearms. That’s a positive thing, since that knowledge is essential to my profession. Indeed, in addition to my service weapon, I have a collection of various types of guns that hold special interest for me.

  In order to appreciate or even understand this story, you will need a little background information. It centers around a particular make of semiautomatic pistol, a gun made by Hi-Point Firearms of Dayton, Ohio.

  My first dealing with this particular make of weapon came during our process of cataloguing guns used in suicides. Suicide weapons are held at the coroner’s office. As they are not considered murder weapons per se, these guns are the property of the estate of the deceased. But it’s rare that family members want them back, and therefore we end up housing a lot of them forever. One of the pistols we cataloged was a 9mm semiautomatic pistol that I will simply call a “Lo End” firearm. It’s sort of a “gangsta” Saturday-night special, in my book. But even I will admit that it gets the job done. In attempting to check the chamber of this particular weapon, I noted that the safety was bent, blocking the slide from moving backward. Upon bending it back with a screwdriver and a little pressure, I was able to check the gun. We laughed as we compared the quality of that weapon to our Glocks. We catalogued it, put it in the vault, and gave little thought to it after that.