Local News in Brief : Exhumation Unchallenged
The Los Angeles County coroner has decided not to oppose a court order to unearth the remains of a wealthy Orange County woman to determine if she was killed by her second husband, as her sons allege.
The coroner’s compliance comes after a two-year effort by the sons to have the remains of their mother, Nancy Ann Barwick, 52, exhumed from a Long Beach cemetery.
The coroner, Dr. Richard Kornblum, had opposed the autopsy request because Mrs. Barwick died outside Los Angeles County but said he would not appeal a Dec. 28 decison to grant the request by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Ricardo Torres. No date has been set for the exhumation.
The sons have alleged that Mrs. Barwick may have been strangled on Feb. 20, 1985, when she died within an hour of swimming to shore following the sinking of a steamer piloted by her second husband, Kenneth Barwick, during a storm off the island of Aruba in the Caribbean. Aruban authorities decided that the death was due to natural causes.
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