You're listening to the Mind Over Murder podcast. My name is Bill Thomas.
I'm a writer, consulting, producer, and now podcaster. I am now
trying to use my experience as the brother of a murder victim to help other
victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book on the unsolved Colonial Parkway
murders, and I'm the co administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together
with Kristin Dilley. My name is Kristin Dilley. I'm a writer, a
researcher, a teacher, and a victim's advocate, as well as the social
media manager and co administrator for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner
in crime, Bill Thomas. Welcome to mind Over Murder. I'm Kristin Dilley
and I'm Bill Thomas, and we're joined today by doctor Michael Boden, one
of the most pre eminent forensic pathologists in the true crime space. Doctor Biden,
we are thrilled and honored to have you here. Thank you for joining
us. Great to be here. Start by telling us about your extensive professional
background. I know that's a tall order to see if you can do it
in just a couple of sentences for us. Start out, I would be
was a graduate of the City College of New York and NYU Medical School.
Did an internship residency program at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, first an
internal medicine, then in pathology, and just by accident, because the New
York City Medical Examiners Office was located in the basement of Bellevue Hospital, I
became interested in autopsies that we're done every day in the basement at Bellevue and
learned a great deal of information about people. It's an amazing thing what autopsies
can tell you, and eventually change from internal medicine to pathology. Began working
first on a moonlighting basis for the Medical Examiner's office in New York City,
going to scenes of death and doing autopsies on weekends and holidays, and became
a full time medical examiner and worked there for twenty five years, doing in
various capacities, including that of Chief Medical Examiner in New York. Then after
twenty five years, I switched to the New York State Police and was the
chief forensic pathologist for the New York State Police, which had the death cases
throughout these sixty two counties of New York and recently he was retired and I'm
doing a private forensic pathology and fascinated every time I do an autopsy. It's
like a miracle to see how trillions of cells line up to give us hearts
and loans and nerves, how to cells know where they go. It's I
think more each scene looking into the body is more fascinating than looking at the
outer space and seeing a few suns that are going to explode or something like
that. But it's the human body is each one of us is a miracle
as as far as the autopsy table goes, so that we've got our terminology
right. And I realized going into this that I don't have the terminology right.
Can you explain the difference between a forensic pathologist, a coroner, and
a medical examiner, because I can't tell the difference between the three, So
please help us out. That's interesting because it's a confusing history. Way back
in England, a coroner system was developed because even in the twelfth century when
developed, when somebody died, there had to be some accounting to have the
death occurred, especially in England, because if somebody committed suicide. The law
was allowed to commit suicide because then I lose a troop for an army,
and all of that individual's property would be go over to the king. So
the main thing was picking up suicide so they could confiscate that individual's remains.
And in sixteen nineteen and from then on in the United States, in the
early part at that time, we inherited that coroners system was called in England
after coroner started out as crowner. It was a head officer of the crown.
In fact, if one goes to Hamlet, when Hamlet comes upon the
graveyard scene and asks, how come the burying using a church burial for somebody
who growned, and they say because the crowner. They still use a term.
In fifteen Hamlet has written as crowner and has determined that she didn't go
to the water, but the water came to her. Therefore it's not suicide.
And that's still how it works in our business, and is that crowners
And the development from crowners in the nineteenth century late nineteenth century was somebody figured
out in Maryland and first of New York that the person who should be able
to determine the cause of death should be a physician because they should know what
the medical terms are. Medical examiners sprouted up in some jurisdictions where the person
in charge of determining cause and manner of death is a physician. Some places
say there has to be a foren a physician who specializes in deaths, which
is the pathologist. Presently that half the United States counties are corner counties and
half from medical examiner counties. The difference is corners, going back to our
British routes, can be anyone of age now eighteen or eighteen or twenty one
years of Volde who is a citizen and is elected. Corners are elected and
in most places need no experience except being a citizen. And that's half the
United States has run that way, and half are medical examiners. Medical examiners
are appointed by the county to a Most medical examiners have to be physicians or
medical professionals, and in some places like New York City, the person has
to be a forensic pathologist because the forensic pathologist is the one who is trained
in unnatural death. Coroners, I said, are elected and the medical examiners
appointed based on merit to be a medical examiner is a political appointment. A
medical examiner is the person in charge. The old Quincy series on television,
Quincy was the forensic pathologist and there was a lawyer who was the medic who
was the coroner in charge. Quincy was a medical examiner and his boss was
a coroner who was a lawyer. Even now, California is unique where most
medical examiners are appointed by the coroner who is a sheriff. And that's a
pretty much only mostly in California, and that's the difference. There have been
some In New York State, there's sixty two counties of which about eighteen or
medical examiners are in charge and the rest are elected coroners. One of the
reasons I was asked to be in charge of the as the medical examiner for
the state police was that in many of the counties they work in, there
are coroners who are elected who aren't trained in how to learn from the dead
body that the forensic pathologies has to. So they established a forensic Science division
where I could then the active in all the counties had helped the coroners.
So because the state police were losing cases because of bad autopsies at that time.
Now, as far as pathologists go, pathology is one of the specialties
in medicine, and most pathologists are hospital pathologists who work in hospitals and were
in the laboratories and examine do autopsies as necessary and examine the biopsies that are
taken to see if it's cancer or not cancer for example. And the pathologists
doesn't really deal with patient with living people. They deal with other doctors who
are living excuse me, but not patients. So the hospital pathologist deals with
other physicians. I always like when I worked part time in the medical examiner's
office to patient the contact with the family members and of the people that were
being examined autopsies, or when I went to the scene to scenes of death
for the autopsy. Start at the scene of death. That's where we learned
how long the person has been dead or we will find out if they have
any pre existing illnesses, what medicines they're on, and how long have they've
been dead, and whether or not an autopsy should be done. And that's
by talking to the family members and getting more information. That's how medical examin
as the corners differ. Wow without trying to be too pointed about it,
Doctor Boden. It sounds like in a lot of places around the United States,
people that aren't don't sound terribly qualified, are acting as coroners. They're
not doctors, they're not trained medical examiners, and yet they're supposed to determine
how a particular person died. Yes, and that is that is a deficiency.
We're still working in half the counties in the United States with a system
that was established in the eighteen hundreds or seventeen hundreds, when the United States
was first developed. It sounds very anachronistic. From time to time there was
an attempt made to change coroner systems to medical examine systems. I was involved
with that once in the New York State when I was in the New York
City Medical Examin's office. There was a movement to change all the sixty two
counties in the New York State to medical examiner counties and eliminate all of the
coroner counties where many of them are truck drivers in the two of the most
in common are funeral directors. They're the ones that make up most of the
biggest coroners system gathering, and they're usually bright people or no medical knowledge,
but they know how to deal with people. They know how to deal with
the families. And we when there was a bill put up in the New
York State legislature to change the medical Examiners state medical XAMINA system, thousands of
coroner supporters from the counties got buses to go to Albany to protests because one
of the things about electing being elected a coroner is you have a base of
people who are friends to you because and if the coroner acts properly. You
know, some doctors are not very good with people, and that could be
upsetting to people if they Funeral directors know very trained and they're very good in
relating to people's and making them feel better at a time of grief. And
that was demonstrated to me when with the field attempt to change things in New
York State. So I think that's they're going to be with us. There
are courses for coroners, and most coroners, many coroners, not all,
will work out a relationship with a nearby for topologist to do autopsies for which
they pay them a certain amount of fee for each per case a fee.
There is a whole hidden history to this that I had no idea about.
How interesting that the when one goes into the accuracy what death certificate we you
know a lot of mistakes made about death certificates. Occasionally they come out.
Usually they come out when somebody prominent dies, and that's because there's an interest
in them. Most people who die, that cause of death is often just
a guess. And then this goes into Bible statistics, so it becomes an
issue as to how common certain diseases are, how we miss certain kid And
that's what happens really with the police deaths and police custody is that there's a
great deal of underreporting of deaths and police encounters. One of the reasons I
wrote this book. Yeah, so let's go ahead and jump into that.
So you've written a new book called American Autopsy. It's really fascinating. There's
a whole array of issues that came up in the book that I had never
really taken into consideration before. But I really enjoyed reading it. Tell us
about the premise of the book, and then why you felt it was so
imperative to write this book. Now, I've been concerned since I started out
as a medical examiner about the unevenness as in death the determinations country, partly
because of the lack of training many people, especially coroners, in making decisions.
But it became more apparent to me that when I was a medical thought,
as a medical examiners, that we were especially supposed to be especially careful
in determining cause of death and people who die in police encounters. And this
became very apparent when I became chief medical examiner. About a month or two
after I became chief medical examiner, there was a citizen named Martha Miller,
a black citizen that the mayor today Mayor Adams, referred to in a celebration
of his life fifty years death or so that he was the first I can't
breathe person I was a chief medical examiner. Arthur Miller was a businessman in
Brooklyn, very friendly with police, good in the community. Comes home one
day and sees a crowd around his brother and police. Apparently the police wanted
to give him a summons for improperly getting rid of garbage, and they were
around him. He came up and he put his arms up to tell the
community to get back and see what it is. How he could stop the
emotion. But one of the police officers saw that he had a gun on
It was a legal gun that he was with a permit to a cake because
he as a businessman who had carried a lot of money around from time to
time, so it was legal. But the police didn't know that, and
they immediately jumped on him, got him down on the ground. What's heard
to say, I can't breathe. That's why may Or Adams refers back to
him in that force in that and guests in the police car goes to the
precinct. By the time gets to the precinct, he's dead. The autopsy
is done by the Brooklyn Medical Examiner because it had that's weird death. I
was a chief pulled up and asked what the findings were, and he said,
it looks like he died of psychosis with exhaustion. I said, what
do you mean. I said, that's what we always say when people die
and they're excited and they die while being subdued by police, that somehow the
adrenal glands are putting out too much adrenaline. It's the fault of the person
who dies, not the throat to the police, and I said, and
he damaged his neck. Yeah, there's a fracture in the Adam's apple,
little hemorrhage's petiguar in the eyes. Said it wasn't that typical of neck compression
and he said yes, but we don't put that down. I said,
we're going to put it down now, and this is my just starting out,
and he put down cause of death was compression of neck at that time,
much like Floyd's Floyd's neck and that was a homeside because death. And
another I got a call from the mayor, extremely upset Mayor Katch that he
was getting a hassle from police and saying, now, we're not supposed to
do that. I said, it's truth is the truth. And that was
what led to my being demoted from chief the deputy chief medical examiner after about
a year that I was there in the office. Is because back in nineteen
seventy nine, this was this is saying that the police caused the death,
and this is around the country the same way. There's a lot of pushback
for medical examiners to say that the police caused the death. And that got
me thinking a lot beginning there about how the autopsy situation can lead to misdiagnoses,
and as soon as the medical examiner says that it's not a homicide,
that it's psychosis with exhaustion or excited delirium, which then came after that,
no more investigation. And when I started the book out, when I got
a call from the family of George Floyd that they wanted me to do a
second autopsy because the first autopsy, the medical examiner and the disc attorney had
come out right after the first about three or four days after he died,
came out and said that the police restraint had nothing to do with the George
Floyd's death. And I had seen the same photographs that a rail story with
the taken by a fifteen year old girl with the officer's knee pressing on the
neck, his saying I can't breathe, I can't breathe, and dying,
and it reminded me so much of Arthur Miller that this has been going on
from nineteen seventy nine to twenty twenty, that I decided that I should write
something about it and how to prevent it. That it's a structural It isn't
a bad apple, it's a structural thing. What kind of conversation, if
any goes on behind the scenes, doctor Boden, When you've got mayors and
police chiefs and the heads of police unions and other people, the pressure on
the medical professionals to push their analysis in a direction that exonerates the police has
to be tremendous. What's said behind the scenes, what's behind the scenes.
Two things once is that when we grow up as medical examiners, we are
in everyday contact with the police. Because the medical examiner in training and the
medical examiner throughout life deals every day with police would come down to identify decedents
and to give information, we develop I think a bias towards our friends.
And that when death occurs, most even the good forensic pathologists, and there
aren't that many around, they're only about that's a four hundred or five hundred
full time pathologists in the whole country. Medical examiners see the police usually as
good guys, and that they didn't go they didn't wake up in the morning
wanting to kill somebody. And that when the people die in the police encounters
by asphyxia during the restraint process, by pressing on the back, trying to
handcuff somebody from behind, causes the domin lorgans to push up into the chest
and prevents the diaphragms from going up and down so that we can't breathe.
And that's why Arthur Miller and so many others have said, I can't breathe.
I can't breathe because the diaphragm throone go down in order to inhale.
A diaphragm has to go down. And you and I, as we're sitting
here, our diaphragms are going up and down about eighteen times in a minute.
We have nothing to do with it. The small thin muscle that gets
no respect. It's not like the biceps. The triceps is what keeps us
alive from birth to death. That keeps our lungs going in and out and
inhaling and exhaling. Here when that stopped by most often by police officers who
are pressing on the back to get the risks together to put on a handcuff,
and somebody who's resisting the person can't breathe and dies and leaves no marks
on the body. See, there's no marks in the body. Like with
George Floyd, when the medical examined and prosecutors said that there's nothing at the
autopsy to show that he died because of the police restraint. Doctors knew that
was nonsense, because suffocation death because back pressure leaves no marks on the body.
Was What did happen was that the photograph, the one photograph that they
a fifteen year old girl got the poet surprised for rightfully, that showed the
knee on Floyd's neck, and while he was saying I can't breathe, I
can't breathe showed what everybody else knew that this police that killed him, it
wasn't due to the restraint. And the problem comes up is that various cause
of death pulled put on the death certificate that washes over that cause of death,
things like excited delirium, things like undetermined things of blaming low levels of
drugs or heart disease that would not be a cause of death. High the
fact that excess of force was used, and that's what's leading to increasing division
as exposed by the George Floyd incidents. You're listening to Mind over Murder.
We'll be right back after this word from our sponsors. We're back here at
Mind over Murder. Yeah, nobody is going to put positional asphyxia on a
death certificate as opposed to some other thing where they can sail it was what
did you call it, psychotic delirium, psychosis with psychosis, with exhaustion.
Ye, now it's excited delirium excited. All of that says that it's not
the fault of the police officer. That goes down to natural deaths, end
of case. And I think George Floyd exposed how the diagnosis by the medical
examiner can immediately halt any type of investigation because of the medical examiner says the
death is not homicide, it's accident or suicide or natural. That ends the
police investigation. And that results in the families that have been very upset over
the years. And also the great under counting of deaths the Washington Post has
because there's no governmental reporting of deaths caused by police. And the problem is
in part demonstrated by the Washington Post by looking every day at all a newspaper
reports that all have found all the past a few years that they are about
a thousand deaths a year in this country that are caused by police shooting.
Mostly Stata Washington studied death certificates the university and found that half of all deaths
involving police are not mentioned on the death certificate in any way. It's usually
such as by excited delirium and things like that, And so at least two
thousand deaths a year from police activity, and the only way to really get
a handle on it and to try and develop strategies to prevent it is by
having a national register of all these deaths. This was tried, I think
back around twenty fourteen, when there was some concern about police and deaths.
A lowest pass the federal law to report world deaths voluntarily with the volunt by
police departments by and it turned out just in December the government, the IGO,
the government agency that looks into these things, didn't study and showed that
very few counties jurisdictions reported any deaths because it was voluntary. That has to
be made mandatory. And then to be able to get a handle on where
the deaths occur and how they can be prevented. Part of it and one
of the things that occurred to me in my years it's not a rotten apple
thing, it's a systemic, systemic thing. I had done an autopsy investigated
death ten years before George Floyd in the same police precinct in Minneapolis, a
black male who had some mental impairment, but was shooting basketballs by himself and
YMCA that he belonged to. When somebody complained that he didn't like him being
there, police came and anything wrong, subdued him, caused his death.
Was on a video camera. I came down to testify that. Then the
same medical examiner agreed. We both agreed that he of police chest compression.
As a result of the settlement after that case, they had to do a
serious education of all the Minneapolis police and every month, every morning have things
written to them about how compression of a frenstion of breathing can cause death.
That was the same precinct as George Floyd was killed at where not only did
chabez do put his knee on the neck, but the other three officers protected
with there and wouldn't let any of the bystanders to help or obey what they
said, you're killing him, you're killing him quote on the video. It's
hard to just educate. There has to be certain changes, like police getting
rid of qualified immunity, which protects police from actions, some special interpretations of
the law It does sound like there needs to be a pretty significant amount of
changes made, not only to here's how we treat police officers like you mentioned
qualified immunity, but also just educating them on you can't put somebody in a
choke call. You can't put your knee into somebody's back and cut off their
breathing. What would you say the most important changes are that need to be
made to help police understand you cannot do this to a person. You will
kill them. I think that they know what it's said, but they don't
believe. They think that they have the false impression that the black people have
gathered superhuman strength and they're going to hurt the police officers, and that's why
they use massive force. Remember all the debts that courring police custody. Usually
it had two or three police officers around putting on the handcuffs, and they're
being punished for not immediately obeying putting hands behind the back to be handcuffed.
They're not a threat to anybody. A couple important things. One is a
high percentage of such encounters and deaths involve people who are acute mental crisis.
A cute mental crisis because they haven't taken their medicine for schizophrenia and their acting
bizarre, or they're highland drug methi emphetamine or something. They're not a danger
to something. They're running around nude in the streets sometimes no weapon on them
and they or they're driving a card that gets a minor violation, which is
and when the police encounter them, instead of treating them gently, they get
angry at them because they didn't obey them. They're not obeying. Starts with
put your hands behind your back, and if you don't do that, that
you're now committed a criminal act. See so even though you're called for so
one of the things that should happen, and some jurisdictions appeal getting mental health
workers to go out with police on calls for emotional disturbed people. Police often
know when they're getting called for an EEDP an emotionally disturbed person because their infraction
is running around nude or something, they are holding up a bank or something.
They're just and they're not a danger to anybody, but police are not
given time to talk to people. They come. If they take action against
somebody, they have to put handcuffs on them and then they bring them to
the precinct or something. If a person doesn't like handcuffs, as often the
mentally impaired people the cute episodes, they don't even understand what the police are
telling them, and they belong in a hospital or not on a police precinct,
and they get even more agitated when they see when there as about the
handcuffing. So there are ways to make certain rules. I think. Also
what could happen is when many when the medical sappues, do say that they
died because of the compression, some kind of impairment. Usually in my experience,
when it goes to that they are they're investigated by internally. Internal investigations
usually find that they acted appointing proper procedure. It's unfortunate that happened, but
that's the end of it. Or if it goes through a grand jury,
the grand jury doesn't bring down any indictment. And that's because, as they
say, a disc attorney can indict ham Sandwich, but and it also cannot
atdict a serial killer. The interesting thing Brionn Lady in Kentucky who was shot
perfectly innocent, and when it's put in the grand jury, they didn't come
down with an indictment, and finally one of the grand jurors broke their oath
as we do anything, because the disk attorney just didn't ask us to do
anything about the indicting. The grand jury in this country is secret because that's
the way it used to be. In seventeen seventy six when we established the
court the British systems. In nineteen thirties, Britain got rid of the secret
grand jury. Anything that goes to the criminal justice investigation has to be made
public. Brionna Taylor. Still to this day nobody's I think somebody one of
the officers Risks was slapped because he one of the bullets went into the next
apartment, but not because it was killed, and that there's no need.
The grand jury itself is a place where deaths and police custody disappear. So
that's if the police know that they can be held responsible, if the prosecutor
knows that, if there's a national database where cases are reviewed, somebody looking
over the shoulder, that'll go a long way to diminishing outrageous behavior. Do
you think things can be changed for the better? Certainly, we've seen a
lot of cases in the last couple of years where people have died at the
hands of police in a way that looks successive. As we discussed George Floyd,
Michael Brown, other people saying I can't breathe and they're being restrained by
three, four or five officers. Can we make the systemic changes that we
need to. I think there's been slow progress. Things aren't as bad in
this criminal justice system from a racial point of view as they were around the
time of the Civil War. We've gradually made some back and forth progress,
and I think there can be absolutely an improvement in police obeying proper directions and
proper proper orders. If they knew there was somebody looking into each case,
that would be a national database would be able to look into each case as
appropriate and take action whatever has decided if they find out to someplace or some
person that's repeatedly doing things, or if there has to be some kind of
punishment for improper actions. The problem with the police unions is that a lot
of good things they do, but there's a lot of things that they do
that to protect the membership, and unfortunately some members take advantage of that.
As the English teacher in the room, I do have to ask what is
your writing process like, because you have such a wide range of expertise and
you've had such a storied career, how in the world do you figure out
what you're going to put in one book? There is so much to American
Autopsy. How the world do you go about your writing process? Part of
the I've tried a few books before, but in this to get show how
medical examiner develops and the normal, the usual kind of cases. But with
George Floyd, it brought me down to concentrate on deaths during police encounters and
the failures not only a police and prosecutors, which have been discussed in New
York Times editorials, but also the failures of my business. Among medical examiners,
there's a reluctance to say that death is caused by by police activity because
they know that their buddies and their friends who they meet every day and they
say every day, are a normal work can get punished. And I think
that that this kind of made me focus on deaths where medical examiners are shown
to be part of the problem, and that the medical examiners perhaps have to
be separated from police. We have to be able to be equally available,
for example, to the police, to the prosecutor, as to the disc
attorney. Medical examiners won't, the defense attorneys won't talk to defense attorneys for
example, whereas we're always talking to the disc attorney. We have to be
independent. Science is independent of guilt or innocence friendships. If death shows that
a friend filled somebody, we got to say that. If it shows that
a bad guy was innocent in a certain thing, it doesn't show innocent but
didn't do harmed as charged. We have to say that. And we have
to be guided by science and not by friendship. And the point is we
grow up with being friends with police and disc attorneys that we go in New
York City. When I was in New York City, we would go three
or four afternoons a week. There were two thousand homicides a year in those
days, to the different borrows to give grand jury testimony, to explain to
the disc attorneys what the autopsy means. The autopsy is not self explanatory.
There all kinds of things, just like a legal document does not necessarily clear
to me as a non lawyer. And I think that one of the things
that the defense attorneys especially was that's involving the police are afraid to consult with
the medical examiners because they know from experience that the medical examiners might tell the
disc attorney what our theories of the case are. Kind of things, so
that there's a sharp division between prosecutors and discret and defense attorneys in investigating case.
Instead of being cooperative with everybody's looking for what just the science says.
We just learned via email yesterday from crime Con that you're going to be attending
crime Con. We're very excited about that. But in addition to crime Con,
what is next for you in terms of projects? I'm largely I think
teaching, some teaching and lecturing, but largely writing. And part of my
writing actually is professional writing, that is to review and all doing private work.
Do private work reviewing deaths and increasing number of deaths of coming to my
attention during police activity, and to be able to figure out on a case
by case basis what the pro the facts aren't in a matter, to be
able to testify to a jury, which I tried to do. It doesn't
matter which side calls me. I'm going to say the same thing, and
that's what it should be. It's hard to do that sometimes, but there's
no individual project, unlike I think most of my classmates from medical school now
retiring in Florida to avoid the taxes but playing golf. I never understood golf,
and I like what I'm doing, So that's why, and the miracle
of how the body functions. We're so glad that you're still at it and
still advocating for victims of violent crime and for calling it the way you see
it and the science tells you to see it. Thank you, And it's
a fascinating profession and it needs a lot more forensic pathologist. There aren't enough
for forensic pathologists because people don't want to go into a testifying court and have
some guy criticize you. One side it's gonna love you, and one side
it's going to criticize you. Doctors are used to being criticized and saying you
need to say that that's not true, that the bullet didn't go that way
and the way the police say it went the way my client says, and
that creates hostilities, but then we get thick skin. The book is American
Autopsy One medical examiners decades long fight for racial justice and a broken legal system
that is available now at all of your local book retailers, and we do
encourage you to shop independent bookstores whenever possible. Thank you. You guys are
easy to talk to. This was wonderfall didn't go okay because that maybe I
deviated too much from the question. No, not at all. This was
great, and I just wanted to say, when I was reading it the
other day, your chapter about the Attica prison riots was interesting. Like my
job was on the floor. I had no idea about any of what you've
written about the Attica prison riot. It was so cool to read. Yeah,
and that was what at that time? What that time? I started
out initially in college wanting to I liked I was on the school editor of
the school newspaper, and I wanted to be a journalist, going to journalists.
My mother wouldn't let me. She wanted me to be a doctor.
And at that time there were fifteen daily newspapers in New York sit the five
boroughs, so they were playing jobs for journalists. What are the things that
blew my mind was when I went up to Attica and so all the prisoners.
The New York Times, on page one lead story said that and eight
guards were next were cut by the hostages by the inmates, and I could
see Clinton that was wrong. They were all shot by friendly fire. Wow,
how the New York Times get this wrong? And that has always been
in my mind. It was I read that, I was like, oh
my god, that is crazy, Like it's this has been really interesting.
It's like, here's American history from the point of view that it should be
read from. Yeah, which I really enjoyed. So I'm going to bring
this with me to Crime con and I hope you'll autograph it for me.
Sir. Oh, I would be too. I would be honored to do
that. Great now that I know what you guys look like, we'll track
you down. You're wearing those things around your ears or no, but we
will have lanyards with our names on them, and no, we will make
a point of seeking you out. It's so wonderful to talk with you.
Do you you you're in Connecticut. I'm in Connecticut, and then Christen's in
Virginia. Yeah, and yeah, because are you working Connecticut? Yeah,
we're in beautiful Norfolk, Connecticut in the northwest corner, about two hours and
fifteen minutes north of New York City. That could be beautiful. I have
a lot to with Henry Lee and oh yeah, yeah for a while.
Yeah, he's still going strong. He really, he's amazing. We've enjoyed
him immensely. We actually were able to have dinner with him at Savannah CRIMEX
this past here, like of all the tables in the room, he just
sat down with us and it was like, would you like to talk about
forensics? And we were like yeah, yeah. Was his wife with him,
Angela. She just wrote a book. She wrote a book at someplace
that was interesting and any about the deaths in Croatia. In fact, I
got the book in my have a picture on the cover. On the cover
of it, I wish and I'm on that Henry Lee doing a dig or
something and a couple of people next to him, and it was a photo
of taken when we were in Croatia when they were digging up bodies of people
who were improperly buried there. Yeah, and I have to read it then,
I guess. So. Okay, So we'll look forward to seeing you
in a couple of months at crime time. Yeah, I really do.
And thank you and the at best and maybe we can have a bite together.
Absolutely sounds great. Okay, fine, nine to have to figure out
how to turn this off. Should be a big red button that's going to
do it. For this episode of mind Over Murder. Thank you so much
for listening. We'll see you next time. Mind Over Murder is a production
of Absolute Zero and Another Dog Productions. Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and
Kristin Dilley. Our logo art is by Pamela Arnois. Our theme music is
by Kevin McLeod. Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with Coral Space Media.
You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. You can
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you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter at Bill Thomas five six. Thank you
for listening to mind Over Murder. My