Fischer’s Death a Suicide, Police Reiterate : Investigation Into Shooting of Coroner’s Contractor Defended by Chief

The police chief for the City of Orange Wednesday defended the investigation into the death of forensic pathologist Walter Fischer, saying “there is no doubt in my mind” that Fischer committed suicide.

Chief Wayne Streed also released to the news media all reports connected with the Fischer case.

Fischer, 56, was found dead in his car on July 8, shot twice in the heart with a .32-caliber revolver. The county coroner’s office has ruled the death a suicide.

Fischer, who was a member of a partnership which performs autopsies for the coroner’s office on a county contract, had been publicly criticized in the weeks before his death for misplacing evidence in a murder case.

But suspicions about the coroner’s suicide ruling have been raised from two different quarters: Fischer’s widow, Iris, and Central Municipal Judge Bobby D. Youngblood, who has announced he will run for sheriff/coroner against incumbent Brad Gates next year.

‘Simply Don’t Exist’

Streed said Wednesday that the discrepancies raised by Youngblood and Walter Goode, a private investigator representing Mrs. Fischer, “simply don’t exist.”

Goode, after reading the reports released by Streed, said later Wednesday that he sees only minor inconsistencies.

“I don’t have any criticism of the Orange police,” Goode said. “Mrs. Fischer would like a second opinion from an outside pathologist. If that pathologist agrees that it is a suicide, then OK, we’ll accept that.”

Youngblood also read the report Wednesday, but he said it does not change his mind that Fischer’s death was “probably a homicide instead of a suicide.”

Youngblood and Goode had both argued that it was highly unlikely that Fischer could have pulled the trigger twice to kill himself. They also argued, in separate statements, that the trajectory of the bullets indicate Fischer was shot by a left handed person, while Fischer was right-handed.

Agree on Left Hand

At the Wednesday news conference, Streed and Orange Police Detective Michael Pera agreed that Fischer used his left hand to shoot himself. But they disagreed on whether this would be unusual for a right-handed man. Pera said fingerprints and the gunshot residue found on the thin white gloves Fischer was wearing indicated that he used both hands. Pera demonstrated how it could be done, with Fischer using the thumb of his left hand to pull the trigger, but holding the gun against his chest with his right hand.

Streed and Pera also attacked other criticisms raised by Goode and Youngblood:

- That the security guard who discovered Fischer’s body said he did not see Fischer wearing gloves at all. Actually, Pera said, the security guard viewed Fischer’s body through the glass of the car for such a brief period that it isn’t something he would have noticed.

The security guard, James Miley, told The Times Wednesday that “I’m not saying he didn’t have gloves on. After I saw that gun, I never paid attention to another thing.”

- That the family does not think the .32-caliber gun used in the shooting belonged to Fischer. The police reports state that shell casings found in Fischer’s garage were positively identified as coming from the pistol found in Fischer’s car.

“Dr. Fischer had so many guns it’s not at all unusual that the family would not have known he had this particular gun,” Pera said.

- That Fischer could have pulled the trigger twice.

“The gun was a double-action revolver; you could pull that trigger twice without having to cock it a second time,” Pera said. “It’s perfectly reasonable to believe that he shot twice in rapid succession.”

But the reports indicate that the shooting was unusual. Besides the white gloves, the pistol was wrapped in a a towel and another towel was tucked into Fischer’s shirt, like a dinner napkin.

Youngblood claims that no one bent on suicide would put on a pair of gloves first. But Pera responded: “To answer the questions about the gloves and the towels, you would have to get inside Dr. Fischer’s mind. All we know is that this was definitely a suicide. We can’t explain why it happened.”