Speaker 1: You're listening to the Mind Over Murder podcast.
Speaker 2: 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 Dilly.
Speaker 3: My name is Kristin Dilly. 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.
Speaker 4: Bill Thomas. Welcome to Mind Over Murder.
Speaker 5: I'm Kristin Dilly and I'm Bill Thomas, and we're joined
today by doctor Michael Bodden, 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.
Speaker 6: Great to be here.
Speaker 4: Start by telling us.
Speaker 5: About your extensive professional background. I know that's a tall order,
but see if you can do it in just a
couple of sentences for us.
Speaker 6: 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 in internal medicine, then in pathology, and just by accident,
because the New York City Medical Examiner's Office was located
in the basement of Bellevue Hospital, I became interested in
autopsies that were 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 changed 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
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
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 lungs and nerves, how to cells know
where they go. It's I think more each auto looking
into the body is more fascinating than looking out to
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 as a miracle as
far as the autopsy table goes, so.
Speaker 5: That we've got our terminology rate. 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 threat, So please help us out.
Speaker 6: 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 how the death occurred, especially in England,
because if somebody committed suicide, the law was you're not
allowed to commit suicide because then I lose a troup
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 individuals remains.
And in sixteen nineteen and from then on in the
United States, in the early part at that time, we
inherited that coroner 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
they're burying using a church burial for somebody who drowned,
and they say because the crowner. They still use a
term in fifteen ninety nine and 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, 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 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
forental physician who specializes in deaths, which is the pathologist.
Presently that half the United States counties are coroner counties
and heref are medical examiner counties. The difference is coroners,
going back to our British roots, can be anyone of
age now eighteen or eighteen or twenty one years ago
who's a citizen and is elected. Coroners are elected and
in most places need no experience except being a citizen.
And that half the United States has run that way
and half are medical examiners. Medical examiners are appointed by
the county to at 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 a 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 who was the coroner in charge. So 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 pretty much only mostly in California. That's the difference.
There have been some In New York State, there's sixty
two counties, of which about eighteen are medical examiners are
in charge and the rest are elected coroners. One of
the reasons I was asked to be in charge as
a 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 cologist has to.
So they established a forensic Science division where I could
then be 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 run the laboratories and examine the autopsies as necessary
and examine the biopsies that are taken to see if
it's cancer or not cancer for example. And the pathologist
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
liked when I worked at 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. The scenes are death,
the autopsy start at the scene of death. That's where
we learn how long the person has been dead. We
will find out if they have any pre existing illnesses,
of what medicines they are on, and how long they
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 examiners and corners differ.
Speaker 2: 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 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.
Speaker 6: 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 from the eighteen hundreds of
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 examining systems.
I was involved with that once in New York State
when I was in the New York City Medical Examiner'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 and the two of the most
in common are funeral directors. They're the ones that make
up most of the biggest coroner 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 when there was a bill put
up in the New York State legislature to change the
medical examiners state medical examiner system, thousands of coroner supporters
from the counties got buses to go to Albany to
protest because one of the things about electing being elected
a coroner is you have a base of people who
are friends to you, right because and if the coroner
acts properly, some doctors are not very good with people,
and that could be upsetting to people. The funeral directors
know very train and they're very good in relating to
peoples and making them feel better at a time of grief.
And that was demonstrated to me when with the failed
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 ensy
topologists to do autopsies for which they pay them a
certain amount of fee for each per case a fee.
Speaker 4: There is a whole.
Speaker 5: Hidden history to this that I had no idea about.
Speaker 6: How interesting that when one goes into the accuracy at
what death certificate it's 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, the
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 and how we
miss certain things. And that's what happens really with the
pleat 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.
Speaker 5: 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.
Speaker 6: Now, I've been concerned since I started out as a
medical examiner about the unevenness as in death for determinations country,
partly because of the lack of training and many people,
especially coroners, in making decisions. But it became more apparent
to me that when I was a medical as a
medical examiners, that we were especially supposed to be especially
careful in determining cause of death. And people 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 the 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 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 take because he, as a businessman,
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 her to say, I can't breathe that's
why Mayor Adams refers back to him in that force,
in that thing, and gets in the police car, goes
to the precinct. By the time he gets to the precinct,
he's dead. The autopsy is done by the Brooklyn Medical
Examiner because that's where its death here. I was a
chief called 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 said when people die and they're excited and
they die while being subdued by police, that somehow the
adrenal glands up putting out too much adrenaline. It's the
fault of the person who dies, not the throat of
the police. And I said, and he damaged his neck. Yeah,
there's a fracture in the Adams Apple little hemorrhages, patika
in the eyes. 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
that is mind just starting out, and he put down
cause of death was compression of neck at that time,
much like Floyd's in Floyd's neck and that was a
home side because death and another I got a call
from the mayor, extremely upset Mayor Kutch 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 was there into 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 misdiagnosis. 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 this about three or four days after he died,
came out and said that the police restraint had nothing
to do with George Floyd's death. And I had seen
the same photographs that a railsord 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 right 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
this 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.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 6: What's behind the scenes is two things. One 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 toward 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 forensic 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 organs
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 won't
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, it gets no respect. It's not
like the biceps or triceps is what keeps us alive
from birth to death. That keeps our lungs going in
and out and inhaling and exhaling air. When that stopped
most often by police officers are pressing on the back
to get the wrists together to put on a handcuff
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
examiner and prosecutor 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 back pressure
leaves no marks on the body. What did happen was
that the photograph, the one photograph that the fifteen year
old girl got the pullet serprize 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 course of death pulled under 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 excessive force was used,
and that's what's leading to increasing division as exposed by
the George Floyd incident.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Mind over Murder. We'll be right back
after this word from our sponsors. We're back here at
mindover Murder.
Speaker 5: Yeah, nobody is going to put positional asphyxia on a
death certificate as opposed to some other thing where they
can say, oh, it was what did you call it psychotic.
Speaker 6: Delirium, psychosis, with psychosis, with exhaustion, with the term now
it's excited delirium, excited to all of that says that
it's not the fault to the police officer. That goes
down to natural deaths, end of case. And I think
George Floyd expose how this the diagnosis by the medical
examiner can immediately halt any type of investigation because the
medical examiner says that 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 undercounting 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 or have found over the past
few years that there about one thousand deaths a year
in this country that are caused by police shootings. Mostly
State of 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 my 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 lowist
passed the federal law to report all deaths voluntarily volunt
by police departments by and it turned out just in December,
the IGO, the government agency that looks into these things,
did a 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 system systemic thing. I'd
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, had
done anything wrong, subdued him, caused his death. It was
on a video camera. I came down to testify that
the same medical examiner agreed. You both agreed that he
eye of police chess 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
prevention of breathing can cause death. That was the same
precinct as George Floyd was killed, where not only did
the Chabez do put his knee on the neck, but
the other three officers protected were there and wouldn't let
any of the bystanders help or obey what they said.
You're killing him. You're killing him caught on the video.
It's hard to just educate that. There has to be
certain changes, like police getting rid of qualified immunity, which
protects police from action special interpretations of the law.
Speaker 5: 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
at your 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.
Speaker 6: You will kill them. I think that they know what
it's said, but they don't believe. They think that they
have the fool'st 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
deaths that curring 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 perce of
such encounters and deaths involve people on acute mental crisis.
Cute mental crisis because they haven't taken their medicine for
schizophrenia and they're acting bizarre, or they're hiring a drug
methamphetamine or something they're not a danger to something. They're
running around nude in the street, sometimes no weapon on them,
and they or they're driving a car that gets a
minor violation, which is and when the police encountered 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 it. So one of
the things that should happen. And some jurisdictions a few
getting mental health workers to go out with police on
calls for emotion disturbed people. Police often know when they're
getting called for an EDP an emotionally disturbed person because
their infraction is running around nude or something. They're not
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 a police precinct, and they get even
more agitated when they see when they're ask about the handcuffing.
So there are ways to make certain rules. I think.
Also what could happen is when the medical zamplies do
say that they died because of the compression some kind
of impairment. Usually, in my experience, when it goes to
they are they're investigated by internally. Internal investigations usually find
that they acted at p any proper procedure. It's unfortunate
that it happened, but that's the end of it. Or
if they go 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 a ham sandwich, and it
also cannot indict a serial killer. The interesting thing to
remember bry Own lady in Kentucky, Briona tel 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 and said we
didn't do any because the disc attorney just didn't ask
us to do anything about the indicting. The grand jury
in this 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.
Briona Taylor still to this day nobody's I think somebody
with one of the officers Risks was slapped because he
one of the bullets went into the next apartment, right,
but not because it was killed, and that there's no need.
The grand jury itself is a place where deaths in
police custody disappear, right. So that's if the police that
know that they can be held responsible, if the prosecutor
knows that, if there's a natural database where cases are reviewed,
somebody looking over their shoulder, that'll go a long way
to diminishing outrageous behavior.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 6: I think there's been slow progress. Kings aren't as bad
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 to progress, and
I think there can be absolutely an improvement in police
obeying proper directions and proper orders. If they knew there
was somebody looking to each case. That would be a
national database would be able to look into each case
as appropriate and take action whatever is decided if they
find that the 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.
Speaker 5: 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 the world. Do
you go about your writing process part of it.
Speaker 6: I've tried a few books before, but in it to
get to show how a medical examiner develops and the normal,
usual kind of cases. But with George Floyd, it brought
me down to concentrate on deaths during police encounters and
the failures not only of 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 police activity because
they know that their buddies and their friends who they
meet every day and they see every day, are a
normal work can get punished. And I think that that
this kind of made me focused 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 disrict attorney.
Medical examiners won't the defense attorneys won't talk to defense
attorneys for example, whereas we're always talking to the district attorney.
We have to be independent. Science is independent of guilt
or innocence friendships. If if death shows that a friend
killed somebody, we got to say that. If it shows
that a bad guy was innotant in a certain thing,
it doesn't show innocent but didn't do harm 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 boroughs to
give grand jury testimony, to explain to the disc attorneys
what the autopsy means. The autopsy is not self explanatory.
There are all kinds of things, just like a legal document
is 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 thing
so that there's a sharp division between prosecutors and disc
attorney and defense attorneys in an investigating case. Instead of
being cooperative with everybody is looking for what justice science says.
Speaker 5: We just learned via email yesterday from crime Con that
you're going to be attending crime Con. Very excited about that.
But in addition to crime Con, what is next for
you in terms of projects.
Speaker 6: I'm largely I've been teaching, some teaching and lecturing, but
largely writing. And part of my writing actually is professional writing,
that is, to review an or doing private work, do
private work reviewing deaths and increasing number of deaths coming
to my attention during police activity. And to be able
to figure out on a case by case basis what
the prow the facts are 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 as and I like what I'm doing,
So that's why, and the miracle of how the body functions.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 6: Thank you, And it's a fascinating profession and it needs
a lot more forensic pathologies. There aren't enough for forensic
pathologists because we used People don't want to go into
a testifying court and have some guy criticize you. One
side's going to love you, one side's going to criticize you.
Doctors are used to being criticized and saying you mean
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 we get thick skin.
Speaker 5: The book is American Autopsy One Medical Examiner, is 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.
Speaker 6: Thank you. You guys are easy to talk to. This wonderful.
Did it go okay to that maybe I deviated too
much from the question.
Speaker 5: 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.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and that was what at that time. With that time,
I started out initially in college wanting to get I liked.
I was on the school editor of the school newspaper,
and I wanted to be a journalist. To 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 City the five boroughs, so they
were plenty of jobs for journalists. One are the things
that blew my mind was when we went to Attica
and saw the prisoners. The New York Times, on page
one leads story said that and eight guards were next
work cut by the hostages by the inmates, and I
could see when that was wrong. They were all shot
by friendly fire. Wow out in the New York Times
get this wrong? And that has always been in my mind.
Speaker 4: It was I've read that.
Speaker 5: 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, 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.
Speaker 6: 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 wearing those things around
your ears or.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 6: Do you you you're in Connecticut.
Speaker 2: I'm in Connecticut, and then Christen's in Virginia.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and yeah, because are you working Connecticut?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're in beautiful Norfolk, Connecticut, in the northwest corner,
about two hours and fifteen minutes north of New York City.
Speaker 6: That can be beautiful. I have a lot to do
with Henry Lee.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, we.
Speaker 6: For a while. Yeah, he's still going strong.
Speaker 2: He really amazing. We've enjoyed him immensely.
Speaker 5: We actually were able to have dinner with him at
Savannah CRIMEX this past year. Like of all the tables
in the room, he just sat down with us and
was like, would you like to talk about forensics and
we were like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6: 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 They have a picture on the cover.
On the cover of it, I wish and I'm on
that pigure Henry Lee doing a dig or something and
a couple of people next to him, and it was
a photo taken when we were in Croatia when they
were digging up bodies of people who were improperly buried there.
And I have to read it then, I guess, okay,
so we'll we'll look forward to seeing you in a
couple of months at crime Come. Yeah, I really do,
and thank you and the all best and maybe we
can have a bite together. It sounds great, okay. Nine,
I have to figure out how to turn the sword.
Speaker 2: This would be a.
Speaker 5: 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.
Speaker 1: Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and
Another Dog Productions.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley.
Speaker 1: Our logo art is by Pamela Arnois.
Speaker 2: Our theme music is by Kevin McLoud.
Speaker 1: Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with cral Space Media.
Speaker 2: You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
Speaker 1: You can also follow our page on the Colonial Parkway
Murders on Facebook.
Speaker 2: And finally, you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter at
Bill Thomas five six.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to mind Over Murder.
Speaker 5: H