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...
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!