If You Only Knew by M. William Phelps Page A

the first paragraph, both doctors—Ortiz-Reyes and his boss, Dr. Dragovic, the chief medical examiner—found a “brown spot” on the “base of the anterior surface of the neck,” along with “small old bruises” on Don’s right shoulder, left lower abdomen and right arm. They also now uncovered “multiple brown spots on the back.”
    Those injuries fell in line with someone placing a pillow over Don’s face and putting pressure on it.
    In the “evidence of injury” portion of the addendum (that third, added page, that is): There is a healing bruise of the left eye socket....
    His diagnosis, Ortiz-Reyes wrote, now consisted of: “Asphyxia by smothering” and “Acute alcohol intoxication.”
    In his now renewed opinion, Dr. Ortiz-Reyes was certain Don Rogers had been smothered after being plied with alcohol. The image one conjured while reading this report included someone knocking Don down, or waiting for him to pass out (as he normally would, according to both Billie Jean and Vonlee), pouring copious amounts of alcohol down his throat forcibly (maybe when he was so intoxicated that he couldn’t mount a defense) and then placing that alleged pillow over his face to finish the job.
    The decedent’s body was found face up on the kitchen tile floor, the doctor wrote, without any injury to the back of the head....
    Now, if the doctors would have stopped there, one might ask how those injuries occurred. But the doctors then entered into speculative diagnosis—or maybe speculative opinion —when they followed in the addendum to the death certificate with the idea that Don falling on the kitchen floor should have been accompanied by at least some injuries to the head because they “would have been inevitable” when an individual fell fatally “from heavy intoxication.”
    But what if Don was so wasted he simply decided to lie down and passed out on the floor? Maybe he put a hand on the chair, used it to guide his drunken body down to the floor, then flipped the chair over?
    No one knew.
    Certainly not these doctors.
    What’s more, the doctors added: This finding is indicative of the repositioning of the body after death and the alteration of the scene with the purpose to disguise this violent death as a non-violent one.
    â€œAlteration of the scene”?
    In other words, somebody staged the crime scene.
    What a remarkable document, considering that the certificate of death, under cause, had once reported “acute alcohol intoxication” and “arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.” A document that was then subsequently certified by the city clerk in the town of Troy. Additionally, under item 29 on the original death certificate, where it asked if the medical examiner was notified, Ortiz-Reyes answered affirmatively. So Dr. Dragovic was told about Don’s death and agreed with Ortiz-Reyes’s initial findings on that Saturday morning. It was signed and dated August 12, 2000. If one took this certificate of death into account, it would appear that Don died of a heart attack brought on by an “accidental overdose” of alcohol.
    Period.
    So what happened to exacerbate this sudden change in the OCME’s opinion? This new judgment surrounding Don’s death was the polar opposite to what it had once been. There had to be more than a blood and urine test leading these two distinguished men with nearly fifty years’ experience between them—not to mention thousands of autopsies—to draw this new conclusion that would help to initiate an investigation into a murder?
    And, of course, there was.

CHAPTER 18
    IT STARTED WITH A phone call to the chief medical examiner by Detective Don Tullock on August 31, 2000. The TPD was having problems with Don Rogers’s death, with or without the medical examiner’s findings—there was something about the crime scene and information they were