Autopsy Cutbacks Reveal 'Gray Homicides'

by Sandra Bartlett, of NPR News Investigations

There's no way that we can look at every case we should probably be looking at. When you only see 1 in every 3 cases, the possibility that a homicide's going to be missed are pretty great.  - Craig Harvey, chief death investigator, Los Angeles Coroner's Office

Many underfunded and understaffed medical examiner and coroner offices have stopped doing autopsies in some categories of deaths. In some states suicides are not autopsied, in others people who die in car accidents, and many jurisdictions have stopped performing autopsies on people over the age of 60 unless it is an obvious violent death. In Oklahoma, for example, they lower the age limit to 40.

An investigation by NPR, PBS Frontline and ProPublica found concerns among law enforcement and health care professionals over the trend to assume the elderly always die of natural causes. They fear there's a quiet epidemic of what they call "gray homicides" going undetected and unpunished.

The article mentions one case in which justice was done, involving a caregiver that had been arrested in connection with the death of one of the residents, and proved to be connected tp that of another which had already been dismissed as natural by the medical examiners office, that of Richard McDonough...

"The deaths are complicated," Allen says. "But we can't just say it's complicated and push it aside. We can't just say they're old and they're going to die soon and not look at it as something that is significant."

Allen says if autopsies on the elderly are stopped, the truth about a suspicious death may never be learned. 

"In this particular case, the truth did go to the grave; it was buried, it was 6 feet under with Mr. Kittower. And this abuse would have just continued," Allen says. "It was only that death that actually got someone to come forward. And I think [if] these secrets go to the grave ... more and more people will just get abused in the process."

For the rest of the article, click here