After reviewing last week’s twohour session between Ron and Mona Ward of Marshall, Special Prosecutor Tim Williamson of Mena and his medical expert, Dr. John E. Pless of Indiana, I’ve hatched more definitive opinions about that inconclusive third autopsy performed on the remains of the late Janie Ward. Williamson’s latest media whoopde-do in Little Rock revealed after nine months that the state knows nothing about the cause or the manner of Janie’s 1989 death. Simply put, Pless said he has no idea how or why Janie died. He did summarily dismiss Dr. Harry J. Bonnell’s second autopsy and his “homicide” determination, as well as other forensic findings, as if they were chopped liver. Without presenting a stitch of significant supporting evidence, Pless speculated that perhaps the 16-year-old choked to death on a foreign object (nothing was found in her airway ) or maybe died of an undiagnosed cardiac ailment (her heart, now missing, was originally described as normal ).
Pless, a retired pathologist, did not even rule out drowning as a possibility. Did he not know that the official version says Janie fell backward off a porch less than a foot high onto dry ground ?
He did emphatically state that he found no evidence of homicide. But since he, in fact, found nothing, what does that even mean ? I wonder if Pless read the conflicting witness statements, and what about those two missing hours when Janie’s mysteriously water-soaked body was being hauled around who knows where ?
Pless blamed the state’s former chief medical examiner, Dr. Fahmy Malak, for tearing the spinal cord. Asked by the Wards during a private meeting what reason Malak would have to tear the spinal cord, then photograph it, Pless responded, “I don’t know.” At a later news conference, he said Malak had damaged it “in the process of taking sections for microscopic examinations.” For all Malak’s shortcomings, I don’t believe he caused that injury. Investigators shouldn’t, either, especially since Malak essentially found the same cause of death as Bonnell did during a second autopsy in 2004.
Pless speculated that Bonnell may have caused the injury to Janie’s nose by cutting it and not reporting that he had done so. Bonnell documented the injury and even swabbed the nasal passage in search of hemorrhage. The CT scan performed at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences as part of Pless’ autopsy this past August supported Bonnell by documenting a “fracture.” A photo of Janie’s body in the casket shows an injury across the bridge of the nose. (See it at lyncho. com under “pictures.” ) Yet, Pless dismissed even the CT scan as mistaken. That must mean that Pless believes that Dr. Rudy L. Van Hemert, the radiologist for the CT scan, erred by even calling the injury a fracture.
Strikes me that there is an alarming abundance of alleged blundering in Janie’s case by educated medical doctors with the wellcompensated accuser offering only unsupported opinions.
Bonnell, a nationally known forensic pathologist who has performed more than 10, 000 autopsies, has strongly rebutted Pless’ conclusion. As it was with Malak, Bonnell says that Janie’s head was thrust backward with enough force to hyperextend and separate her neck. His autopsy report also describes bleeding into the neck, a black eye, the fractured nose, and other facial scrapes and abrasions.
Seems to me that Williamson’s grossly time-consuming and costly autopsy extravaganza has resulted only in legally and medically confusing the issue. According to Pless and Williamson, it boils down to this: The men who conducted the first two autopsies either caused or imagined any signs of significant trauma that they reported independently, and the CT-scan physician, who I hear is outstanding in his field, also was wrong to call her nasal injury a fracture. Meanwhile, Pless offered unsupported opinions about how Janie died.
It’s significant that Janie’s spinal cord was missing, which meant the only way to know its condition at the time of her death was from the photograph taken at the Malak autopsy. Yet Pless chose not to even note the existence of this highly relevant picture in his report. Nor, apparently, did he take tissue samples from the places on Janie’s head from which Bonnell collected evidence of trauma. Pless said he could see no reason to do that.
Some $ 20, 000 in public money later, the Ward family has been led through the dense jungle of wild supposition and back to the village with zero answers. There has been, however, an aggressive attempt during this nine-month safari to discredit Janie’s first two autopsies as allegedly corrupted, mistaken and worthless.
Rereading my April 23, 2005 column, “Three autopsies for Janie ?” I realize that Williamson’s then-deputy, Paul Bosson, actually telegraphed such results. I wrote: “Bosson initially told me he would ask Williamson to seek enough funds from Searcy County to exhume Janie’s body so an independent pathologist might perform a third autopsy and find it ‘undetermined.’ When I asked why a pathologist would conclude the circumstances of her death to be undetermined, Bosson corrected himself to say whatever findings that pathologist might make in a third autopsy.” Got any more questions ?
—–––––•–––––—Staff columnist Mike Masterson is the former editor of three Arkansas daily newspapers.
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