Posted on 04/30/2012 12:07:34 PM PDT by Weight of Glory
You’re always thinkin’ aren’t ya Laz. :)
Thanks for the correction, butterdezillion. Usual from DE.
Because I know how to do a Google search. The search terms are los angeles coroners office employees. That led me to an L.A. Times article entitled L.A. County coroner’s office may face shortage of doctors, audit finds, which in turn linked to the audit. The info is in the second paragraph.Whole thing took about three minutes.
Links please.
Management Audit of the Department of the Coroner (pdf)
"The Coroner's budget is approximately $28 million and there are 209 budgeted posititions in Fiscal Year 2009-10."
Maybe it was "Justice for Trayvon".
Nahh! Arsenic is a bit too sophisticated for that bunch. Never mind.
Wow. That management audit document is VERY interesting. Still sorting it out, but from what’s on there - the flow charts and all - the special operations team includes the investigators, which are the people who go out when there is a field call. The people on the response team are the people who take down the initial information from police, witnesses, doctors, etc, photograph the scene, transport the body to the coroner’s office, take complete photos of the body, and fill out forms for the initial case file. Then the investigator gets the medical history from the decedent’s doctor and the case file and medical history are all given to the Deputy Coroner - Ed Winter, who was the guy who reported immediately that Andrew Breitbart had not seen a doctor in over a year. Ed Winter would not necessarily know who had done the photographs of the external body, just that the photos were in the case file.
Once the deputy coroner decides that a complete autopsy is to be done with lab tests, the case is assigned to a physician. If it is a high-profile case or a case where a crime is suspected that autopsy would be done by either the chief coroner, the chief physician, or the deputy coroner. A security hold would be put on the case and only a few people from that point on would be able to access the records. The deputy coroner would know who those people were.
At that point the body would be dissected and lab tests run. This is the point at which the forensic technicians photograph the inner parts of the body.
There are 3 supervisors and 6 technicians who are on the photography unit. Those technicians work closely with the doctors as they do the medical examinations. My understanding is that they would photograph the tissues/organs as the body was being dissected. The medical examiner would know who worked with him on that photography.
Michael Cormier was said to be a photographer for the special operations response team. And that seems to be correct because he is on video transporting a body from the scene of a death. That would mean that he did the initial photographing of the external body as it was being received from the hospital. Ed Winter would have no idea who did that photographing, which would explain him saying that Cormier was not involved with the Breitbart case AS FAR AS HE KNEW. If Cormier had been the forensic technician who aided in photographing the actual dissection Ed Winter would have known that.
The part that would be revealing for a heart attack dart assassination, though, would be the photographs of the external body. Which would be done by the photographer for the special operations response team. Which is the description given for Michael Cormier.
In the LA Times article here they mention this in the very last sentence: Authorities examined Cormier's Auckland Avenue home for clues in the death. Sources said several hazardous materials experts and officers searched the small home. Cormier, who also worked as a coroner's photographer, had registered a small business under the name MAC Autopsy Services at the home.
Someone in comments mentioned that this could have been done to enable an investigation without the political involvement of the county office - an independent investigator. Thoughts on that?
Apparently, Mr. Cormier was a Christian and deeply religious man.
So it wasn't a license that was filed in the past 2 months, as some have been speculating.
I had been meaning to check up on that too. Fictitious. What does that mean? Why would somebody file a fictitious business name? I don’t understand.
Sept 18, 2008. A couple weeks after the run on the bank.
If he was a deeply religious man he probably had objections to lying...
It's a pretty outdated mode of operating, IMO, but it gives them an opportunity to collect more money and give the small business owner one more hoop to jump through, right?
Thanks. I did find a local listing for the business. The email address associated with it was his address at the LA Co Coroner’s office.
I looked up some info on independent autopsy services. I saw an information sheet that is given to hospitals regarding getting consent for an autopsy. It said that hospitals offer that service for free to those whose loved one’s death doesn’t qualify for the county medical examiner/coroner’s jurisdiction. In LA County jurisdiction includes somebody who hasn’t seen a doctor in over a month, IIRC, as well as the typical suspicious deaths. If the coroner decides he doesn’t need to do an autopsy and the family requests an autopsy the body is given to whoever they contract to do the autopsies. That could be the point at which somebody like Michael Cormier would enter the picture, if he’s licensed to do particular kinds of autopsies (the listings for independent services specify adult, fetal/perinatal, pediatric, exhumations, brain only, non-brain only, etc). Or if he’s only licensed as a tech maybe Cormier would contract his services to some of these independent autopsy providers.
I’m looking at the death certificate for my daughter who was stillborn. It has a field asking if there was to be an autopsy (yes) and if the case was referred to medical examiner or coroner (no). There is a signature for the embalmer and his license number. Cause of death just says interuterine death.
On a side note, I was watching an old rerun of Law & Order while I cut out pattern pieces for my daughter’s dress that I’m going to sew, and the case just so happened to be about potassium chloride poisoning to induce a heart attack. It was done in a rest home so there were EKG’s that ended up proving it was a murder; otherwise the presence of potassium in the body is inconclusive because the cells release potassium as they break down (they said). They exhumed the body and found the hole where the potassium chloride had been injected - since the medical records didn’t indicate any legitimate injections that would have been made.
I just thought that was interesting right now...
-—The short, called “Inside the Coroner’s Office: A Tour of the L.A. Coroner’s Crypt,” featured the forensic technician showing writer/director Dave “The Demon” DeFalco around the morgue.——
True story. I sat next to Dave in high school. He had long black hair and wore a navy down jacket year round. I never saw him with a book, but he always carried around an envelope. (cue eerie music)
One day I gathered the courage to ask him about the contents. He pulled out still photos from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He told me all about Leatherface... It was... unsettling.
This was in the late ‘70s, pre-VCR days. Apparently, his father, a dentist, had built a movie theater in his basement, and he bought the film for Dave, along with other horror movies. Apparently Dave spent a lot of time alone in the basement. He was very pale.
A few years ago, I decided to Google him, and, surprise! He had become a low-budget movie director, and the producer of “Chaos,” which Roger Exert called the worst movie he’d ever seen.
Ah, those high school memories.
A fictitious business name merely means that your business has a name other than your own personal name. It's also known as a DBA--"Doing Business As..." When I was providing a freelance service for different clients, I created a name for my business and had to file a fictitious business name application, along with obtaining a tax ID number. Then I had to take both to the bank to open an account in the name of my business so that clients could write checks to the business rather than to my personal name. Lots of tax reasons to do that.
Michael
A (don't know middle name)
Cormier
Probably means nothing...just daydreaming...
Doesn’t arsenic stay in the body for some time? It easily shows up analyzing hair samples that not only detect arsenic but can tell for how long the poisoning has been going on.
Does it make the skin blush red like Breitbarts? Think I’ll google arsenic (but just for study - not to plan a murder, mkay!)!
http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2012/04/micheal_cormier_la_coroner_dies.php
I was searching around various photo sharing sites to see if I could find any thing else about Cormier, as typically technical photographers are also interested in artistic photography (nature, travel, editorial, portraits, weddings, and so on). I came up empty but when I went back to review this article, I realized that the "slant" of it was bothering me. They seemed to want to paint him as some type of kook, especially in their "update" at the end:
He's the bearded guy wheeling the corpse around.
Also, this has no mention of his connection, if any, to AB's case.
I was also not able to find any police reports or the actual coroner's report on AB's death. If you have any links, can you kindly share them? Thanks BDZ!
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