Meet the La Coroner, who invented the “Celebrity Death”

It was June 6, 1968, and Robert F. Kennedy, the leading candidate who became the democratic presidential candidate, had just been murdered in Los Angeles.

Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the chief searcher and forensic doctor of the city, stood over RFKS body and said only two words to the mournful widow of the senator: “Trust me.”

He knew how much was at stake. It was anything but a given whether Noguchi would make the green light to carry out the autopsy.

But if he intervene the secret service and had the control taken over, there was the possibility that the murderer could be free.

His findings “would be necessary to bring Sirhan Sirhan, who was arrested at the crime scene,” writes Anne Soon Choi in her new book “La Coroner: Thomas Noguchi and Death in Hollywood” (Third State Books) (Third State Books).

Noguchi did not want to repeat the murder of President John F. Kennedy from 1963, who had turned into a power struggle between the local medical examiner and the secret service.

“A game book for something was not to be done,” writes Choi.

It wasn't Noguchi's first top -class autopsy, and it would be far away.

The man, who is referred to by the press as “Coroner to the Stars”, would carry out autopsies for famous names such as Natalie Wood, John Belushi and Sharon Tate (murdered by the Manson family).

He was not just a pioneer in forensic medicine. Noguchi has contributed to changing the way the American public thinks about famous death.

Today it is not enough to know right now How A celebrity died; The public wants a game for play report on its last days. Noguchi was at the top of this cultural change.

He was a pioneer in the forensic doctors who “moved to the public beyond mere physical examination,” writes Choi. “Forensic experts gave opinions on the deaths with celebrities, worked as an expert in court cases and gave newspapers, radio and television a comment.”

This new awareness also expanded “the power and visibility of the chief coroner,” writes Choi. During Noguchi's two decades in the forensic doctor's office in Los Angeles County, he quickly found that he would not work discreetly in the background, as his predecessors had had in generations.

Noguchi was no longer ready to sign the death certificate quietly and not to give an opinion on the investigations. Instead, he organized press conferences that became public glasses.

It converted him into a celebrity. At the height of his career in the 1970s, he was so influential that his public person inspired a TV show “Quincy, Me”

Noguchi's call was “made” by his strenuous six -hour autopsy by Robert F. Kennedy, which many forensic pathologists still see as a “perfect autopsy”.

With careful precision, he proved that despite eyewitness accounts indicate that Sirhan Kennedy had shot from the front, all three balls had come through the back of the body. “He received almost unanimous praise from local and national press and even in the White House,” writes Choi.

It had been a long way to get there. Already in 1962, when he was still a newly shaped deputy forensic doctor, Noguchi was easy to feel.

One of his first autopsies was Marilyn Monroe, whose late body left the young Noguchi “incredulously”, writes Choi.

The autopsy was scattered in controversy after the head toxologist did not carry out a complete analysis of her liver and blood samples and kept it as redundant. A high level of pentobarbital and chloral hydrate in their system was clearly sufficient to kill them. The case pursued Noguchi.

From that moment on, Noguchi led his autopsies with an iron fist. The LAPD described the beginning of a death examination as a “Noguchi show”.

His conscientious nature could sometimes be enough to crack a case. In March 1982, Noguchi was the first to suggest that drugs were involved in John Belushi's death.

In Hollywood's Château Marmont, the hotel in which the actor was found, there were no drug utensils, syringes or signs of needle on the body, so the police suspected a heart attack.

But after examining the body, Noguchi explained: “I think we have an overdose of drugs.” His theory led to the arrest of Belushi's drug dealer, which was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.

Noguchi's stormy trust made him an occasional enemy. At the most famous Frank Sinatra, who rejected Noguchi's assumption that actress Natalie Wood 1981 drowned because she was “slightly intoxicated”.

The Hollywood star provided a letter to the LA board of the supervisory authorities, in which the immediate termination of the forensic doctor was requested. After the board held a four -hour session, they suspended it.

It was the beginning of the end for Noguchi that was involved in controversy for the rest of his career. But he remained unreert.

“The task of the medical examiner is to speak directly and tell it that way,” he said during an interview with American Medical News. He also suggested that if he revealed the number of deaths caused by drug abuse in Hollywood, “I would not only be released, I would be murdered.”

Noguchi was downgraded to the “doctor specialist” in 1982 and finally retired in 1999. Today he is active as a teacher and mentor at the age of 98, but he avoids the media.