Autopsy Finds AIDS Virus in Body of Sacramento Editor, Coroner Says

The Sacramento County coroner has determined that C. K. McClatchy, chairman of the McClatchy chain of newspapers, was infected with an AIDS-causing virus at the time of his death April 16.

However, the cause of McClatchy’s death was heart failure, and there were no signs that he was suffering from AIDS symptoms when he died, a spokesman for the coroner said Thursday.

The spokesman confirmed a report published Thursday in the Sacramento Union that coroner’s officials tested for the presence of the HIV virus, which causes AIDS, after investigators learned from medical records and interviews that McClatchy may have suffered earlier from “an AIDS-related disease process.”

The test showed the presence of antibodies to the virus, a sign of infection, but McClatchy was not found to have the unusual skin cancer or infections associated with AIDS. “He did not have AIDS,” the spokesman said.

Testing for AIDS is not routinely done by medical examiners but was done in this case for the protection of the people who conducted the autopsy and who needed to take special precautions to avoid infecting themselves, the spokesman said.

An autopsy was required because McClatchy was not under a doctor’s care at the time of his death, which occurred while he was jogging in a local park.

McClatchy was editor of the Sacramento Bee. The McClatchy chain also publishes 11 other papers in California, Washington state and Alaska.