Forensic Expert Widely Consulted : Crime Solving Elementary for Pathologist in Wichita

In Hong Kong, a policeman dies of six gunshot wounds to the chest--behind a door locked from the inside. Is it suicide?

A young Pennsylvania woman survives a fire in her home but dies two weeks later of a bad liver. Is there a connection?

In North Dakota, two men die within a week of each other in the same hotel sauna. A coincidence?

Stumped by those cases, pathologists called Dr. William Eckert, who runs a sort of forensic Interpol here from his house, his office and, occasionally, from pay telephones on the road. His International Reference Organization in Forensic Medicine, or INFORM, is the only forensic pathology research center in the world, a library of whodunit mysteries, each of which is true.

In a controversial murder trial now under way in Chicago, Eckert’s resources have been used to support the contention that three officials of Film Recovery Systems Inc. are responsible for the death of an employee who allegedly inhaled cyanide gas at the plant.

A toxicologist hired by the defense contended that the worker could have swallowed the cyanide, intending suicide. Dr. Robert Stein, the Cook County medical examiner, concluded that the cyanide had been inhaled and sought Eckert’s help. Culling his files for similar deaths, Eckert found autopsies and reports on Nazi concentration camp gas chambers and inmates put to death in the United States in prison gas chambers.

“He had everything right there for me,” Stein said. “Those autopsy reports, of course, were identical to mine and supported my conclusion.”

Eckert often plays a supporting role. When Dr. Thomas Noguchi, then Los Angeles County medical examiner, sought advice after Robert F. Kennedy was shot in 1968, he called Eckert and deputized him for the autopsy.

Investigators called from the Canary Islands when two Boeing 747s collided and killed 582 persons in 1977, from Guyana after the People’s Temple mass suicides in 1978 and from Chicago when the bodies of 29 young men and boys were found beneath John Wayne Gacy’s house in 1980.

Using a Wichita State University classroom lined with crime books and file cabinets, Eckert has improved the quality of forensic pathology practiced worldwide, his colleagues say. His personal experience as a coroner, his broad international contacts in the field and his storehouse of information have been used widely to help solve crimes or establish that crimes were committed.

About 150 physicians practice forensic pathology full time in the United States. However, the typical coroner is a physician with no formal degree in forensic pathology and little experience handling unusual cases.

It was primarily for them that the center was formed. But these days, even the most experienced coroners in the world’s largest cities reach out to this city in south-central Kansas to tap Eckert’s files and his memory.

A London pathologist brought Eckert the mysterious case of the Hong Kong policeman. The officer’s death in a locked room seemed a suicide--except that he had been shot six times. Doubts that such a suicide was possible triggered suspicion in Hong Kong, and there were rumors that the authorities were covering up the true cause of death.

Eckert consulted experts in the field, including Dr. Charles Petty, a firearm-wounds expert and director of the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences in Dallas. Petty confirmed that it was indeed possible to stay alive long enough to pump six slugs into your own chest.

The problem in Pottsville, Pa., was not a crime but a mysterious death. A 25-year-old mother of two died suddenly after waking up one morning. An autopsy indicated that a fatty liver was the cause.

The hospital pathologist who called Eckert wondered if there might be a connection between the sudden onset of liver problems and smoke the woman inhaled during a fire at her house two months before.

Eckert went to his files and found an answer. The smoke probably was not at fault, he concluded. But, he noted, some chemicals used to fight fires have been known to cause liver problems. The mystery was solved.

A puzzled pathologist in North Dakota called Eckert with the case of two men who died in a hotel sauna bath within a week of each other. Neither had a heart problem nor was there any evidence of foul play.

Eckert called Finland, where sauna baths are popular and such deaths are not uncommon. A pathologist there said carbon monoxide poisoning was almost always the cause.

That was the lead North Dakota authorities needed. They found carbon monoxide in the bodies of both victims. And they soon found the source: a defective hot-box heater.

Letters arrive here daily from Germany, England, Australia, Sri Lanka and a dozen other countries. Most are in search of a missing scientific link for a homicide investigation or a wrongful death lawsuit.

Haroldine, Eckert’s wife of 32 years, fields the questions. No matter how frivolous the request, Eckert moves into action, often pounding out the responses on his office typewriter. Sometimes he sends an answer immediately; at other times he suggests the names of experts who may be able to help.

“This is not exactly a Mayo Clinic-type thing,” Eckert said, sitting in his INFORM office, surrounded by the toughest crossword puzzles of the medico-legal world--with all the answers scribbled in.

“It’s a communications base for the world forensic scientific community. And the major progress in this field has not been the result of research, but of new cases,” he said.

Helpern’s Disciple

Eckert, a graying, barrel-chested man of 58, learned his trade at the elbow of New York City’s famous crime-solving pathologist, the late Milton Helpern, a rugged, real-life version of television’s “Quincy.”

Two decades ago, Eckert became a coroner in Wichita, far away from the bloodiest, nastiest and most baffling crimes. But here, he is also far removed from the politics and infighting that have beset other medical examiners, including his friends Noguchi, who lost his job as chief medical examiner in Los Angeles in 1983, and Elliot Gross in New York City, who was recently embroiled in controversy when colleagues in his office accused him of mishandling cases.

“I’m neutral. I’m Switzerland,” Eckert said. “I’m no competition for anyone.”

In his memoirs, famed pathologist Helpern marveled at Eckert’s energy. “From a place like Wichita, which is about as far as you can get from anywhere else, he has built up an extraordinary organization,” Helpern wrote.

When Eckert established INFORM in 1966, its activities were limited to producing a mimeographed newsletter covering the problems facing forensic scientists. Eckert wrote and edited it in his home.

In 1975, he created the Milton Helpern International Center for Forensic Sciences, an umbrella for all of his projects, and moved the center into an office on the Wichita State University campus.

Extensive Records

Today, the center keeps a videotape library on speeches by forensic scientists, reports on forensic meetings and sponsors a biannual conference on criminal and civil problems. It also maintains a registry of unusual cases and an archive of international crime.

Those archives came in handy a few years ago when Eckert was called to testify in Tampa, Fla., after a woman fell backward into a roadside ditch full of water and died before the ambulance could get her to the hospital.

The woman’s family sued the county for failing to respond quickly enough to save her life. But Eckert, drawing on a turn-of-the-century British case known as “the Brides of Bath,” was able to show that the woman had died instantly of heart failure.

In the British case, a man was convicted of murdering each of his three wives by quickly lifting their legs as they lay helpless in a bathtub of water. Famed British pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury determined that they had died almost immediately of cardiac standstill brought on by the sudden rush of cold water down their nasal passageways.

“Every forensic scientist is confronted with baffling problems or findings that can best be described as unusual or uncommon,” Eckert said. “But most fade from memory unless we document them in the literature. Most of our real scientific expertise comes from comparison.”

The center does not limit itself to official inquiries.

A novelist in Red Wing, Minn., asked for help on a murder mystery she was writing. Her questions were easy stuff for any seasoned coroner: How does a drowned person look? Would the body be floating? What is the appearance of someone who has just been strangled? And would a doctor coming on the scene make any attempt to revive a strangulation victim?

Eckert’s responses: A drowned person would look pale and his skin would be clammy. Whether a body would float depends on the amount of clothing. Strangulation victims have a dark red hue to the face, the tongue may be swollen and the eyes often bulge out. And a doctor who determined that a person was still alive would probably clear the airway and start closed chest massage or mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Eckert grew up in Union City, N.J., earned his medical degree at New York University and worked for Helpern at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. He also worked in Louisiana, Virginia and Florida before settling in Wichita.

Other Duties

The Kansas pathologist is also editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, the quarterly publication of the National Assn. of Medical Examiners. And he continues to do most of the crime autopsies in Sedgwick County, which includes Wichita.

Finding hidden clues in seemingly straightforward cases still delights him.

A man who tried to rob a Safeway store here recently, for example, was killed in a shoot-out with police. During the autopsy, Eckert found a slug too old to have been fired during the gun battle. A computer search determined that it had been fired from the gun of another policeman during a shoot-out eight years before--at a Safeway store in Los Angeles.

Putting that clue together with an airline ticket to London and a fake passport found in the man’s possessions, the authorities determined that the robber was a bagman for a crime syndicate who picked up extra cash by knocking off supermarkets. He was wanted in three states.

To the average coroner, it was anything but obvious. But to this purveyor of real-life tales of crime, it was, well, elementary.