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- [00:00]
Anya Cain
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Kevin Greenlee
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Anya Cain
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Anya Cain
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Kevin Greenlee
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Anya Cain
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Kevin Greenlee
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- [01:15]
Anya Cain
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Kevin Greenlee
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- [01:39]
Anya Cain
Seriously, I'm about to go shopping there and I don't even know what to choose. They've got 100% European linen shorts and dresses from $30 Luxe Swimwear for the beach or pool, Italian leather platform sandals and more. I will keep you all updated on what we get.
- [01:53]
Kevin Greenlee
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- [02:11]
Anya Cain
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- [02:44]
Kevin Greenlee
For today's first person interview, we will speak to an expert witness from the trial, a man whose testimony caused a stir in the courtroom. But this is also a person with an extensive career that we wanted to delve into today. We will speak with Dr. Roland Corr. He was the forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsies of Liberty German and Abigail Williams. He testified in the case about how they died.
- [03:09]
Anya Cain
Dr. Corr has a long and distinguished career. He is board certified in forensic pathology and he has served as a medical examiner and as a coroner for counties in Indiana and Illinois. He has worked with agencies from the Indiana State Police to small police departments to town marshals to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He also served four terms as the Vigo County Coroner.
- [03:33]
Kevin Greenlee
In this episode, Dr. Cora will speak with us about some of the interesting cases he has worked, his testimony in the Delphi case, and about his new project, the Coroner Chronicles, where he shares his stories about his experiences as a forensic pathologist.
- [03:50]
Anya Cain
Now that the gag order is lifted, Dr. Kaur and others close to the case are free to speak about their experiences. This episode is part of our first person interview series. We will seek to interview as many of the individuals with first hand experience in the Delphi case as possible in the coming weeks and months. If you had a direct role in the case and are open to talking to us, email us@murdersheetmail.com this is part of our ongoing efforts to report on the Delphi murders. For many years we have not gotten the chance to hear directly from some of the principal figures in the case. That all changes now. My name is Anya Cain.
- [04:24]
Kevin Greenlee
I'm a journalist and I'm Kevin Greenlee.
- [04:27]
Anya Cain
I'm an attorney and this is the Murder Sheet.
- [04:30]
Kevin Greenlee
We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews and deep dives into murder cases.
- [04:37]
Anya Cain
We're the Murder Sheet and this is the Delphi murders. First person, Dr. Roland Core. To start off with Dr. Core, we just wanted to thank you for being here with us today. We really appreciate you taking the time.
- [05:34]
Dr. Roland Corr
My pleasure.
- [05:36]
Anya Cain
I guess. To start off with, can you just tell our audience a bit about yourself and about your work?
- [05:42]
Dr. Roland Corr
All right. I am a semi retired forensic pathologist. I finished my residency training in Indianapolis in 1984 located in Terre Haute where I stayed the entirety of my career. Originally had no dream that I was going to end up on forensics. But one thing led to another. I was encouraged. Literally the first day I was on medical staff at the hospital I went to, I started having physicians ask if I'd ever consider running for coroner. Being a new pathologist. And thought really had not entered my mind. But after about the fourth person said that the seed was planted. It was middle of an election cycle that year of 84. But I was encouraged four years later to run when the office was up. Had to defeat a third generation corner dynasty in the community and didn't exactly get embraced with open arms by the local police agencies or whatever. I was a newcomer, wasn't born and raised in Beagle county. And they really didn't know what to expect. But didn't take long to kind of win them over that we were trying a scientific approach. Became corner in January of 1989. And then over several years of teaching at Indiana State University in the criminology department, I realized there was an opportunity I could become board certified in forensics Even though I did not have a formal fellowship here by virtue of experience and by passing the same certifying exam anyone else would take I had as one of my sponsors. Dr. John Pless, who was the head of forensics in Indianapolis for almost 30 years, got certified in forensic pathology in 1996. Since then we kind of set up a mini medical examiner system in western Indiana. I was doing 13 counties by the time I finally stepped down from full time practice. But we've over the years I've done a bunch of other counties that then found closer proximity. Forensic pathologist but continue to do cases for Indiana counties as well as three neighboring Illinois counties that didn't have ready access. Taught almost 20 years in the criminology department at Indiana State University. Have served on the Indiana child fatality review team and the Indiana Maternal mortality review team as the governor's appointee for both of those commissions. Some faculty appointments with the school of Medicine both for IU as well as the Marion College of Medicine and just been very active in my career. I very much have enjoyed teaching because it gives me an outlet. And one of my favorite quotes is from a person last name Tryon who said if you would know anything thoroughly, teach it to others. And so that kind of philosophy has helped. And that's one of the reasons I got involved with storytelling in the course of autopsy. Just I would try to educate people observing an autopsy, whether they be law enforcement, medical students, paramedics, nursing students, there's no substitute for actually seeing some of the stuff on hand with your own eyes. In fact, I frequently tell before juries the word autopsy literally means to see for yourself. By sharing that information, I've had excellent support, feedback, have kind of honed my skills, and have become somewhat of a storyteller, to the point now that after all this time, people have been saying, you really need to write a book. You got so many stories of so many bizarre twists and turns out you ought to consider it. So that's one of the projects I've been working on. Now I'm in process of trying to find a publisher.
- [09:08]
Kevin Greenlee
You also have a podcast, don't you? Can you tell us about that?
- [09:11]
Dr. Roland Corr
Okay, well, the podcast basically is because the first time I submitted my book proposal, and that was on the advice of an old high school classmate who I figured maybe had some legitimacy. He had been the editor of the school newspaper in high school, where I was his sports editor. And we were talking a couple years ago at our 50th reunion, and I was telling some of the more bizarre stories I'd handled recently and how I'd been told I needed to write a book. He goes, yeah, that's a great idea. Most people, they're blowing smoke up your backside when they tell you that, because they really don't have the background. But this guy was the chairman of the Department of Journalism at Boston University. So I thought, well, maybe he knows a little more what he's talking about. But the agent he referred me to who rejected me on first attempt was not real helpful in constructive criticism. But one of the things she did say is you really need to have a social media presence. And I've had way too many things going on in my life to ever get involved with social media. But realizing that and having feedback from other people, I said, apparently that's going to be what it takes if I ever hope to get the book published and to promote it. So I've retained the services of a former TV reporter here in Terre Haute that does social media and other types of public relations things. And we've been working together, and we've recorded 14 episodes so far. I think about 10 of them have aired. And getting some good feedback. Again, not sure how legitimate it is, because I'm hearing mainly from friends that I run into, but it's kind of rough. You know, you start off something like this that you've never done before. I'm hard to, you know, pressed to kind of, you know, get up and running. But hopefully it's going to get a good response.
- [10:55]
Anya Cain
Yeah, I mean, we'd certainly recommend it for anyone who's interested about sort of the, what it's like to be the pathologist or the forensic pathologist here. I think that's a job a lot of people are interested in. And you're hearing it firsthand from you about what, you know, what those cases look like.
- [11:11]
Dr. Roland Corr
Well, it's one of those things. It's been, what, about 15 years ago when the CSI phenomena hit and suddenly everybody and their brother wanted to go into forensics, but with really no clue. And one of the sad things was universities started offering forensic science programs and many students at the college level were signing up for these, thinking, if I get my degree, I can walk right in and become a forensic scientist. And the reality was it doesn't work that way. And they were to the point trying to offer coursework with people that really weren't qualified to teach. At one point, Indiana State University had a forensic science course being taught by an ornitholog, you know, somebody who specializes in birds. And I was invited to speak to her class on one occasion. And during our chat time, before the class officially started, I asked her if she'd ever been involved with police work. Well, no, but I know DNA, say, well, are you ever interested in maybe watching an autopsy? No, not really. Yet she was teaching forensics and stuff like that got a little disappointing. So I've tried to emphasize that this is not something you just jump into. The job market is not quite out there where anybody that wants to be a forensic entomologist or a forensic anthropologist is going to find an open job market. Because some of these subspecialties are very unusual and few and far between. There are probably no more than a dozen forensic entomologists that are well qualified in this country, maybe a few dozen. The forensic anthropologists are also kind of scattered here and there, although there are several in Indiana. One has pretty much retired from the active work and now working on publishing many of the research projects he did over the last 20 years. But it's kind of a limited market and people were getting degrees that they really couldn't find jobs with. And that was disappointing. But it's still obviously something of great interest. And that's why I found the comments of the agent I reached out to a little bit unusual, because she told me in her letter, well, there's really not much of a market for that sort of thing. I'm thinking, really, you can't change the channel without running into a reality. Crime show yet that was her take on, or at least her way of letting me down.
- [13:27]
Anya Cain
I do want to ask you for our listeners who may not be. I'm sure they've heard a lot of these terms before, but they may not be super informed or aware of the finer points of this. Can you just tell us a little bit about what a pathologist does?
- [13:41]
Dr. Roland Corr
Pathology is a subspecialty of medicine and most pathologists in this country are hospital based physicians that run the laboratory. They are responsible for overseeing the quality and output of chemistry departments, microbiology, blood bank, hematology and so forth. But they also do the examination of tissue sampling. So whether you have a breast biopsy or a colonoscopy, things like that, anytime a tissue sample is obtained, the pathologist is the person that takes those samples, looks at them under the microscope and comes up with a diagnosis. Forensic pathology uses those same basic techniques, but applies them to the world of the criminal justice system. So we have to be very good at interpreting injury patterns. We have to be able to look at the big picture in terms of incident A led to consequence B to C and then come up with ultimately what the cause of death was, mitigating factors, collecting of evidence, documenting your evidence so it could be presented in a court of law in a way that a layperson could understand. So essentially it's medical training that applied to the field of law in such a way that you kind of merge the two.
- [14:53]
Kevin Greenlee
Yeah, I certainly disagree with that, Agent. I find that a lot of people are interested in this. And one thing that I think you've mentioned in one of your podcasts is that in your work you're not always looking at murders. You're often looking at accidental deaths or natural deaths. Can you talk about how you determine if something is a murder or a natural death with unusual features?
- [15:19]
Dr. Roland Corr
Sure. For one, having worked in the same jurisdiction for 30 plus years and been the corner, I've had access to all kind of data over my own little 13 to 15 county jurisdiction. So I've been able to kind of look at patterns over the years and I'm somewhat data driven. And what I've discovered year after year is we averaged about 5% of coroner cases that were referred to the office being homicides. The overwhelming majority of cases we see in a coroner jurisdiction or medical examiner system are natural deaths, but they're unattended, sudden, unexpected deaths. Deaths of people that weren't suspected of having serious illnesses that just are found dead. We need to know what's going on and that's how We've discovered things like legionnaires and AIDS and things like that. You look at what appear natural and try to get to the bottom of things.
- [16:11]
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- [16:28]
Anya Cain
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- [16:48]
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- [17:01]
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- [17:27]
Dr. Roland Corr
Now, of those remaining 50% natural, we have seen usually about 25 to 30% are accidental. And over my career that has shifted from most of those being motor vehicle related to now being drug related. And then we got about 10% of our caseload tends to be suicides, unfortunately. And those are some of the more contentious cases we deal with because families are often in denial that their family member would commit suicide. And we've got to really kind of prove it beyond reasonable doubt to them so they can accept it. And then we're left. Like I said, you know, 5, 6% are homicides and then there's a small percentage that are considered undetermined. Now, in forensics and on a death certificate, you have five options for a manner of death. Manner of death takes into account what the cause of death is as well as the circumstances. And for instance, a gunshot wound might be accidental, it might be suicide, it might be homicide. But based upon the evidence you have, the circumstances and everything else there, it's the judgment that I have to make in terms of offering an opinion that, you know, this is a homicide versus a Suicide. And sometimes there's just not clear enough distinction. And on those cases, we may fall back to calling them undetermined. And again, it's a judgment call. You know, a lot of things we do, there's, you know, there's certain things that are indisputable, such as DNA testing, things of that nature. But other things, it requires judgment, experience, applying police principles as well as common sense, come up with what is really truly a homicide versus the others. And sometimes the others are more challenging. And at the same time, a lot of my job is disproving theories. I have occasionally encountered family members that we've done complete autopsy, toxicology, everything else we can. And we have to say we're not really sure what the cause of death is. And, you know, with some frequency, they will say, well, then you don't know a thing. What's going on? And I will kind of with, well, actually, I may not know exactly what killed them, but I can give you, you know, 300 pages of what didn't kill them. I know your loved one didn't die from cancer, didn't die from a stroke, didn't die from a ruptured aneurysm, didn't die from a heart attack, and the list goes on and on and on. I can kind of go through a pathology textbook and say, didn't die that, didn't I? And so frequently, what we will do is we will narrow down what the possibilities are. And if we can eliminate foul play, that may be the best we can do. Again, a lot of families, when their loved one dies, don't want to admit that it was possibly their own fault, but would rather put the blame on somebody else, because surely their loved one wouldn't do something foolish or careless ending up in their own death. But when we look at it closely, objectively, without having a personal relationship with the individual, we can oftentimes say, well, there is absolutely no evidence to support this as being foul play. This is just a tragic accident. And then hopefully they can accept that.
- [20:24]
Anya Cain
Yeah, absolutely. Definitely see that in a lot of, you know, crime cases where people have a hard time accepting things.
- [20:31]
Dr. Roland Corr
But in one case that stands out, particularly this was a very high profile case about 15 to 20 years ago in Terre Haute. We had a young man that just disappeared off the face of the earth. He'd been at a party involving college students, was out a little bit late. He had work the next morning, and his mother called him to say, you got to get home. You got to go to work in the morning. You don't want to be late. Well, he left the party, never to be seen again. And this person's disappearance was looked at by police, came up with nothing. Ended up being on multiple TV shows, Unsolved Mysteries, all those sort of things. And five and a half years later, acting on a tip, and they'd been following tips for all five years with all kind of ludicrous accusations like he'd been murdered. He'd been murdered because of his brand new car that had been stripped for parts within 12 hours, yada, yada, yada. But Chip said, you know, look in the Wabash river, just, you know, downstream from where the courthouse is. And so the divers were obligated even five and a half years later. Okay, we got to check this lead out. And bingo, they found his car. Well, when we fished it out, his remains were still there. So we had to employ the forensic anthropologist because we were down to skeletal remains at that point. And we started looking at every possibility. Was there any evidence of any type of injured in at the bones, like might have been resulting from a gunshot wound? Was there any signs of any, you know, mayhem with a car, somebody coming after him with a baseball bat and smashing windshield or things of that type, you know, bullet holes in the car? And the more we worked through this case, we really couldn't come up with anything. Pinpointing the time of death became a crucial factor because we knew from cell phone records when he had last been communicating. We ended up finding a wristwatch on him that had stopped at a certain time when it went underwater because the car was submerged. So we employed the services of a watchmaker we were able to find locally to ask him, you know, this particular brand of watch, how waterproof is it? And we were told, well, this thing would have stopped working as soon as it submerged six feet. And because of when it had stopped, we were able to narrow our timeframe to down about half an hour. Not a whole lot of time for some strange mirror motor plot to have evolved. And then as we started looking at other things, it was interesting that the car he had was a stick shift. And this was a young man who had never had a stick shift car before. And unfortunately, most of the generation out there now that's driving, that's younger than me, has never driven a stick shift and has no clue what to do. But turned out one of the key factors was we we had the car disassembled by a mechanic who found out that it was left in fourth gear. Now, somebody who drives a stick shift knows that if you're parked on an incline. You don't leave a car in fourth gear. You leave it in first or reverse, because then the engine serves as a auxiliary brake. Well, being in fourth gear, it turned out that his car was located just a couple hundred yards from a boat ramp. And what we finally surmised had happened is he must have gone there, decided to cool off, maybe smoke a joint or cigarette or something, and then drifted off to sleep. Because of the alcohol he'd been consuming. And being in fourth tier, the cards slowly rolled down the incline into the water and submerged. And we ended up. When we came up with that theory, we took a identical model of the same car, took it to the boat ramp one late fall day with a police officer at the wheel, and tried to see if we could recreate this. And to our amazement, it went just like we suspected. It sat there, and when he lifted his foot off the brake, there was just a sound of the engine making a revolution and just kind of a clicking sound. And then after a couple more segments, another click as it went through another cycle of the cylinders. And then it started picking up speed and sounded like a train going, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug. It was kind of like, oh, my God, that makes sense. So we reproduced that in third gear, fourth gear, and I think even fifth gear, same thing happened. And when everything else came back negative, we had to conclude he'd fallen asleep at the wheel on an incline, and the car just rolled into the water. No foul play, no other parties involved. And this involved coroner's office, obviously, but the prosecutor's office, state police, county sheriff, city police, dnr. Like I said, a auto mechanic, a watch repairman, all these different factors. And when we all got together, we finally said, okay, is there anything that argues against this? And we finally had a clear no. This was the only logical explanation. Yet. His parents still had trouble accepting that. But, you know, if you can't find foul play, you can't ascribe foul play to something like this.
- [25:23]
Anya Cain
No, no, absolutely not.
- [25:24]
Dr. Roland Corr
And that.
- [25:25]
Anya Cain
And that makes so much sense. I'm just curious, like, if we could go back a little bit just on the forensic side of things. Could you tell us, like, what. What does a forensic pathologist do versus just a regular pathologist?
- [25:38]
Dr. Roland Corr
Well, forensic pathologists essentially applies his skills in pathology and primarily works in, you know, with death. Now, it's not 100% death because I get consulted from time to time just for injury pattern analysis and get my opinions. In fact, I testified up in South Bend just last month on a case that involves an alleged sexual assault. But my knowledge of injury patterns and other things of that nature were such that I was able to testify on the behalf of the defense. We do autopsies, we find out why people died. We collect evidence at the autopsy room. We work side by side with police. We photograph things, we collect blood, urine, vitreous samples from the eye for toxicological analysis. We measure things, we study the tissue samples, we collect under the microscope to look for other unexpected natural disease. And then we take all the information we gather from Nick and I, observations from the scene, stories we're given, cause of death, toxicologic analysis, and then we come up with a cause of death. And once we come up with our cause of death and interpret that in terms of the situation and story we have, then we assign the manner of death. And I will then issue an autopsy report. Mine are classically about five to six pages long, that is forwarded to the coroner, if I'm not the coroner myself at that particular time. And they're responsible for filling out death certificate, and the courts will get copies of it, police agencies, and if there's enough grounds there, file, they will file charges. If not, they don't. So you just, you have to do what needs to be done. And that way we're kind of doing our job. We serve as liaison, we give these other agencies the information they need to proceed with necessary law enforcement jurisdiction.
- [27:31]
Anya Cain
You mentioned being a coroner too, at one time. And I read in an article in 2010, you were the only forensic pathologist who was also a coroner in the state of Indiana. And you also mentioned having kind of a bit of a mini medical examiner system out there in western Indiana. Can you tell us the difference between a coroner system and a medical examiner system?
- [27:51]
Dr. Roland Corr
Yeah, coroner system, which Indiana has had since the constitution was written, you know, over 200 years ago, is an elected official. And the only requirements laid out in the constitution of the state of Indiana are that a candidate for Coroner must be 18 years old, period. So we've had coroners, you know, frequently they've been funeral directors in the old days because they had access to hearses and were not, you know, freaked out by dead people. But we have retired law enforcement. We will have EMTs, we will have paramedics. I've known of tow truck operators. I know of an over the road trucker who drove a semi for Walmart. And so there's a mishmash of qualifications. And some of these people I've worked with Some people that are laypersons, that they are conscientious, they want to do a good job, they know the limitations and they've been outstanding corners. And at the same time I've worked with physicians who really don't give a flying, you know what, and as a result do a very poor job. Now in contrast, a medical examiner system, classically like we have in some larger jurisdictions, whether it be New York, St. Louis, Chicago, is run by forensic pathologists. And then they have a staff that works under them to support their activities. And so a medical examiner system usually is appointed rather than elected. You have to work for the jurisdiction. It is a full time position, not elected. So you're not the whims of the voters. It's a little more professional system, although there are pressures. Now the problem is like with any bureaucracy, if you work for a jurisdiction of, you know, large metropolitan area, sometimes things go badly. One of the big problems in forensics is that dead people don't vote. And so even, you know, outstanding medical examiners, sometimes the city or jurisdiction neglects adequate funding. And over many years, sometimes it takes decades. The system gets more and more in disrepair. They can't maintain staffing because there is a nationwide choice of forensic pathologists. And if you don't pay them, they can always go elsewhere. The systems that were once, you know, premier within the United States become problem ridden and therefore then suddenly there's a big boo boo and the, the politicians raise their hands and oh my gosh, how could this have happened? This is horrible. And they'll fire the people running the thing and then they'll hire somebody new but then suddenly come up with adequate funding. Well, with adequate funding things are solved. Which would have been done just the same if you'd taken your old guy and given him adequate funding and then for a couple of years everything, you're hunky dory and then same cycle reverts and things start slipping because they don't want to give more funding and things get in bad disrepair. So that's one of the problems you can see. But medical examiners basically are run by forensic pathologists who have control of things. But subject to the bureaucracy of whatever jurisdiction you're in. Coroner system is purely elected, can have any type of qualification, at least in Indiana. Now are requirements that you have to be a physician to be the coroner. Indiana certainly not one of those. Illinois is not one of those. And again Illinois, I've never worked with a physician coroner. I worked with several funeral directors who've been coroner and a Paramedic. And each one of those instances I had a very good rapport and very good working relationship. I always took the philosophy that because I was a little bit more educated on this stuff and was more of a long termer, that I made it easy for them to work with me. I would tell them, I'd rather you call me at 2 in the morning, wake me up if you got a problem about what should we do next, then wait till 8 o' clock in the morning when the crime scene's been messed up beyond repair and then say, okay, this is what we found. And like, did you do this? Oh no, it's already been messed with. And that way we developed a very strong working relationship. I mean, I didn't get my 13 to 15 counties by going out and heavily advertising and just the word of mouth got out there that I was willing to work very closely with these people regardless of political affiliation and, you know, word of mouth from, you know, corner to corner built my practice with.
- [32:03]
Anya Cain
All of that in mind. I'm curious, do you think at this point, you know, given the drawbacks and benefits to both systems, do you think Indiana should switch over from coroner system to medical examiner system? Or do you think it's fine the way it is?
- [32:17]
Dr. Roland Corr
Well, it's not fine the way it is because there are still gaps. I mean, you know, we had a guy, yeah, I won't name the county just for privacy, but had absolutely zero qualifications. He had graduated from high school without being able to read, but had been given a sports scholarship, then blew out his knee before the season ever started and was denied admission at the college. And then he just kind of bounced around job to job, and one day he woke up and said, oh, I think I want to run for office. And in that particular county, the party that he filed for, you know, dominated and he got elected and he really had no business in the office. And two weeks before he was supposed to be sworn in, he had made no effort to locate any deputy coroners do anything to prepare for taking over the office. And the sheriff of that county gave me a call, said, oh my God, what are we going to do? And the sheriff is somebody I had worked with for many years. And so we basically had to kind of hold this guy's hand to get him through things. And it was not a pretty situation. The problem is that the mindset of a lot of coroners is we don't want forensic pathologists telling us how to run our jobs, that it's better on a local politician to hold the job. And again with coroners like this guy I had that kind of argues against that sort of philosophy now. Interestingly, one of the first people I trained with back in the early 80s when I was a resident, had been around when they tried to make Indiana a medical examiner state. They actually brought in from Baltimore a person who had established the medical examiner system for the state of Maryland. And they were optimistic that he could transform things. And after about three years, he threw up his hand, said there's just too much inertia. Politics are too much against this. I give up. And he went down to Dallas and set up a system there. His trainee that was a native born Hoosier was Dr. Jim Benz. And he said, well, I'm going to stay put and see if I can maybe work from within. You know, that's still a worthy goal. And he never made any progress. It's probably been 10, 15 years ago I was actually contacted the Indianapolis Star was going to be doing an article about the merits of one system versus the other. I was interviewed extensively. I'd actually done some research on my own and showing it would probably cost no more to have an ME system than it would to have a quarter system. They even sent a reporter over to take my picture because this story was going to run starting that, you know, three days from then, and it never ran. Somebody squashed it. One of my arguments for an ME system is this is kind of a good analogy. Say that you need open heart surgery. Do you want to go to a surgeon that operates five times a week or somebody operates twice a year? The answer is kind of obvious. And the problem with some of these smaller counties, and again, I will make it very clear, some of the small county coroners are outstanding in their job, even though they're limited. But small county may have one homicide every year or two. And if you got a coroner and two or three deputies, the chance of them actually being the primary person to work that homicide case is slim. You're going to work one or two cases a year maybe, and you don't get to be proficient doing it that way. If you had a medical examiner system, you would have full time investigators, not people that are part time this, part time that, and they would be doing nothing but death investigations. And, you know, you can set it up very similar to the way the Indiana State Police have set up their csis. You know, every state police posted in the state of Indiana has its own csi. And these are, you know, people that are specially trained and do the same job day in day out and cross cover. Well, if you had a ME system, you would have fully trained full time death investigators who would go to the scenes much like coroners do now and then refer into a centralized forensic pathologist to have the autopsies. And you'd kind of have control of the system from start to finish with people who are doing enough cases to stay good at it that way. There's not the turnover every four years. There's not the constant turnover with deputy coroners. You know, right now I know, you know, certain counties that have never had a problem are struggling to find even the basic number of deputies they need. And so people are, you know, having to cover twice as many weekends as they might otherwise, or, you know, middle of night cases. And again, you know, do you want the heart surgeon that works, you know, five cases a week, or do you want the heart surgeon that does two cases a year?
- [36:44]
Kevin Greenlee
A great way of putting it. You have so many amazing stories and you've worked on so many interesting cases, it's kind of hard to pick just a few to ask you about. But I, I would be remiss if I did not ask you about the Earl Taylor case, because that's one that really jumped out at me. Can you tell us about that one?
- [37:03]
Dr. Roland Corr
Sure. Well, Earl Taylor is an interesting individual. Shortly after I moved to town, within a couple years, Earl Taylor was involved with the death of wife number two, who actually happened to work at the hospital. And I had seen, I didn't know her well, but a very suspicious story. This would have been about 82 or 83. And the story that Earl gave was his young wife was having trouble going to sleep that night. And so in order to help her get to sleep instead of, you know, gutting it out, they wake up their two small children, take them to a babysitter at one o' clock in the morning so that he and her can take a drive through the country to help her relax so she can go to sleep. And they take her little two seat Pontiac Fiero, a little sports car that was made back in the 80s. And as they're driving through Terre Haute, they allegedly near a state or city park, a raccoon jumps out in front of the car. And as she swerves, because she's driving, she swerves into this pond, which is about a 1 acre pond not too far from where I lived. He claims that he was able to get out of the car, but the car sank like a rock. He runs up the hill, knocks on a door where there's a Light on and calls for authorities. 9, 1. By the time they get there, it's too late and she's drowned. Now the problem is, when they got the car out of the pond, there were some very suspicious findings. For one, she was still in the car, belted in, but her seat belt was placed not in her own receptacle, but in the passenger side receptacle. There was a coin jammed in there so that it wouldn't release when you push the button. The seat was scooted so far back that this woman, who was only about 5 foot 2, there's no way she could have reached the pedals with her feet. The dome light in the interior of the car was covered over with black electrician's tape. And there was a child's ball wedged between the pillar and the steering wheel to keep the steering wheel straight. All of which were very, very suspicious. Not to mention the fact that they found out later that he'd taken out several life insurance policies on her without her knowledge. Forged signatures. It really was a bizarre story. The autopsy was referred at the time, Dr. Pless in Indianapolis, because I was not yet involved with the coroner's office and they had to stay consistent with drowning, but they really never quite sure how she'd been incapacitated. But nevertheless, he was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in state prison. Well, with good behavior he got out roughly short of his full term. Just so happened that a TV production crew for one of these true crime stories had been in Terre Haute working on another unusual cold case. And at the end of that production and you know, getting all their story facts together, they asked the sheriff that had been working with him, do you have any more interesting stories in Terre Haute that might be of interest to us? Because it's been pleasure to work with you. And they threw out two stories, one of which was Earl Taylor, because his first wife had died under very suspicious circumstances back in the early 70s. On that occasion, the story that Earl had told was that he'd left for work that morning. When he came home, he found his wife dead in the the bathtub, apparently electrocuted because a clock radio had fallen into the bathtub. They were suspicious at the time. It didn't have enough evidence at the time. They weren't even sending off the corner cases to a forensic pathologist. They had them done locally by one of the hospital based pathologists. And even though these were excellent pathologists for the hospital setting, they really didn't have the pathology or forensic mindset of looking at things with a very cynical Eye. I mean, one of the first things I remember from Dr. Ben's and my rotation with him was forensic pathologists have to operate usually in the 11th commandment. And by the 11th commandment, he meant think dirty. I'm not thinking about being perverted, but basically, you have to be extremely cynical, assume the worst. And if you have that attitude of healthy cynicism and you never accept on face value what you're told, then you're not going to miss stuff. So anyway, the autopsy report was very vague about cause of death. It said consistent with electrocution, but low voltage electrocutions might not leave any marks. And charges were never brought against him. And so, you know, 10, 12 years later, he kills a second wife. Well, with the prodding of this, the sheriff and the production company said, let's look into Earl Taylor's first wife. So they started gathering up all the data they could. They asked me to review the autopsy findings and the scene photos to see if I had any thoughts about the case. And as I'm looking at them, there's a couple things really stood out. Now, we were somewhat hampered. There were very few photographs. The autopsy wasn't even complete. Never found a toxicology report in that regard. A little bit hamstrung, but still, some things jumped out at me. Looking at the autopsy report, you know, no real marks on the body other than a couple bruises on her shoulders and her forehead. Water in the lungs. But that really doesn't mean anything because, you know, people who drown may have wet lungs, may have dry lungs. That's why we always say with drownings it's consistent with drowning, because there's no magic diagnostic test. But the other thing struck me was he'd found her in the bathtub, and when authorities got there, she was laying on the floor next to the bathtub. That he'd taken her out probably didn't mean anything to anybody at the time. But I noticed. Wait a second. If she was taking a bath that morning and was electrocuted, she should have been in full rigor by the time he got home in the afternoon. And, you know, I don't think either one of you are long enough that you wouldn't bend sitting in the bathtub. I mean, you can't lay flat in a bathtub unless you're, you know, 3ft tall and this woman was laying perfectly flat. Well, that doesn't fit with the rigor. You'd expect she would be like a teeter totter bent with at least a 30 to 40 degree angle in the middle and the fact that she's flat tells me, well, she couldn't have been in the bathtub that whole time. Somebody had to get her out while she was still freshly dead and had rigor had not set in. The other thing was she weighed roughly 125 pounds. And Earl was not exactly a bodybuilder. And so he would have had to lift her body out of the shower slash bathtub and place her on the floor. But this was not a bathtub that had a shower curtain. This was one that had one of those sliding glass doors. So somehow he would have had to essentially lift her 125 pound deadweight body up, get it out of the shower door without knocking the shower door off the track, without scraping her back or some other part of her body, and also not managing to knock off the soap dish. That was a little plastic thing just sitting on the edge of the tub. So all those things said, yeah, this story doesn't really add up for me. There's no way she could not be in rigor with a bent waist. And just none of this makes sense. The story with the clock radio also is a little funny. That had actually been looked at closely back in the 70s. The extension cord or the cord to the clock ready was not what it had come with from the factory. It was about a 8 foot long cord, when normally these things came with about a four foot cord. And by being eight foot long, it could extend from the bathroom counter all the way to the tub, which a two foot cord would have not. And you got to ask, okay, well, why would somebody rest a clock radio that's plugged in on the edge of a bathtub, knowing that it could fall in and Hercule, you really need to change stations while you're taking a bath. Are you in that long? So that was a little fishy too. Well, then we came to the issue of the bruises again. One on her forehead and a couple on backs of her shoulders. My impression was that that most likely represented the fact that she'd been held down in the tub by Earl, his knees on her shoulders so she couldn't raise up and his hand, the back of her head, holding her face underwater for whatever reason. This production company didn't really make much of that. But I think it makes much more sense than holding her on her back head underwater. Because let's face it, Anya, if a much larger male is trying to hold you down in the tub and you're fighting for your life, what are you going to do? You're going to Kick the guy where it counts. Right. But if you're face down the tub, you can't kick there. But that would also explain why there's bruises on the backs of her shoulders instead of the front. And it's a whole lot easier to, you know, restrain somebody in that position than it is face to face where she's going to be able to keep a fight and maybe kick you in a certain vital place that males hold dear. So. But that all came together. Well, anyway, that one, we got all the stuff done, other stuff came out and Earl and his infinite wisdom thought he was probably be a good idea to defend himself in court. And nevertheless he was convicted and so now he's going to spend the rest of his life in jail. But that was kind of a interesting case because it allowed me to look at a true cold case, see things other people hadn't noticed. And, you know, that's one of the fun things about forensics. It takes a different mindset and considering different things that a non forensically trained person would never really even consider. I mean, the lack of rigor, the soap dish and the shower door not knocked off tracks, you know, no abrasions on her back from trying to get her out through a door frame like that. So that's kind of what, it's satisfying when you kind of put all those little pieces together that are seemingly insignificant and kind of complete. The story.
- [46:21]
Anya Cain
Absolutely. It's absolutely fascinating. Kind of the details that you would pick out that, I mean, frankly would go over our heads if we were looking at the same thing.
- [46:31]
Dr. Roland Corr
There is, it's of interest I just saw online just a day or so ago, one of the Illinois counties I've worked with discovered a body just off a interstate exit ramp. This has been now like almost 20 years ago. Woman was dressed like she'd been out dancing. She had one of these dresses that had one sleeve and then the other was sleeveless on the other side. And she was decomposed by the time they found her. And of course the first thought is, okay, she's been abducted. Perhaps she was a prostitute working out of a truck stop and a trucker picked her up and then dumped her body. She was found strangled with the ligature still around her neck when we received her. And I had just recently come back from training for what's called namus, which is the National Missing and Identified Persons training. So I had all that fresh data on how we identify these, you know, unidentified bodies. We plugged every bit of data we could into the system and never got A hit. As of yet, we still have never gotten a hit. What was really, though unusual about this case is where you think most women that are working as prostitutes out of a truck stop are going to be drug addicted, bad teeth, whatever. This woman had perfect teeth, no tattoos. And so I had to say, wait a second, this is somebody that's been well cared for, that is not street person. Somebody's got to be looking for her. Yet we've never heard a thing about it. Never shown up in the name of system. Well, apparently the Clark County, Illinois coroner's office, working with a new technology, just recently ran some DNA profiling off of her and have identified her as likely from eastern Guatemala. And so now they're going to try to post on social media, does anybody from this area know of a woman who went missing while she was in the states? But case like that, clearly it's a homicide. But until we know who the victim is, you can't even begin to list the possible suspect or any other circumstances. So, yeah, that's one thing, you know, doesn't always come up. But one of the key things we do in forensics is identifying who people are. Because if you don't know who a person is, you know, where do you start in terms of criminal prosecution?
- [48:43]
Anya Cain
Absolutely. I hope, I hope they're able to identify her and give her her name back. That's.
- [48:48]
Dr. Roland Corr
I am too. I mean, that's one of the frustrating cases of my career. The fact that we've got this woman who obviously, like I said, was, you know, somebody's loved one and, you know, they never come forth to identify who she is or get justice for her.
- [49:02]
Anya Cain
One case that, that actually the case that kind of we became aware of your work in was, was the Delphi murders case. Can you tell us a little bit about how you came to work on that one?
- [49:11]
Dr. Roland Corr
For those not familiar with Indiana geography, Delphi is literally 100 miles from Terre Haute, and there's no good way to get there. I mean, when I had to go up and testify, it's very laborious route. However, I was working on a case one morning the day that the state police were up there. And again, I mentioned, you know, the state police have csis, you know, work out of each district and when one's busy, then the next one over kind of, you know, cover for them. So over the years I've gotten to know a lot of them in western part of Indiana, but I also have been asked over the years to help train them. And so usually kind of one of their Last baptismal things before they hit the road, as on their own, as the head of the CSI program would send them to spend the day with me. And I just kind of sit down in my office, say, okay, this is how you interact with coroners. These are the laws that apply. And, you know, some corners know what they're doing, some don't, but you know, how you interact and maximize. And I'd also share some basic techniques that they may have not seen yet just because of lack of experience. So a lot of these guys I knew, including the one that was there processing the scene that morning. So I'm in the middle of an autopsy and phone call comes into the morgue and one of the people with clean hands, police officers there, answers it and says, you know, state police need to talk to you. I said, okay, well, take a message. I'll call them back in about 20 minutes when I'm done. He said, no, they say they need to talk to you right now. So I degloved and said, okay, what's up? And said, well, we're in a horrible scene and we need you to do the autopsy. I said, okay, well, where are you at? They said, we're up in Carroll County. I said, okay, what's that? Said outside of Delphi. I said, okay, why are you calling me? He said, well, we know you were specifically requesting you do the case. Now at that point, I said, okay, well, I'll be more than happy to do the case. However, state police cannot choose who the coroner is going to order to do autopsies, and that has to come from the court. So if, if he or she says, fine, great. And say, give me a second. And about three seconds later, they stick the corner on the phone and he says, yeah, Dr. Corey, I'm requesting you to do the cases. I said, okay, tomorrow morning, 8 o' clock, we'll do our first one. And so we started getting things in place. So that next day, early in the morning, they showed up with the bodies and did one after the other and had a bunch of very serious, very somber investigators were in this case. And I could tell from the initial phone call this was something really unusual because, you know, you know, these people usually are not quite that somber and serious. You know, cops, you know, you get to know each other and they tend to be, I won't say callous, but just not super formal. And you could just tell from the tone of their voices this was bothering them, everybody at the scene. So, you know, typical case, you know, I get a quick briefing as we're getting ready to put the body bag on the table. And then as we work, I generally keep a dialogue going the whole time. I need to be able to ask them questions about scene findings, circumstances, what we know. At the same time, I'm giving them feedback about possibilities. You know, are you seeing this? No. Are you seeing this? No. And so we got the first case done, got cleaned up. I went back to my paperwork in the second case, and in the course of doing so, like any other case where there's females involved, we did a full sexual assault case examination. We collected all the samples. And of course, when you're dealing with young people, you get personally invested. I mean, you know, obviously I take a personal interest in every single case I do, but it just, it kind of ups the ante when you're dealing with young females that are that age that are obviously been brutally murdered for no good reason. This was kind of out of nowhere. And so everybody was taking this very soberly. So we see with the case and collected everything. And thereafter, I really didn't hear much back. Practically no communication. From time to time, when I'd see state police officers, I'd ask him, said, you know, any updates? And no. And. And then finally, about two years ago, things heated up again. And of interest as things started getting, you know, warming up now and getting ready to start proceeding. I still hadn't heard from the prosecutor's office up there in Carroll county, and I'm starting to read newspaper accounts that, you know, there's been gag orders placed by the judge. Finally, not quite a year and a half ago, we started getting involved. And we started off with a zoom conference call with myself and the investigative team, including the prosecutors that were involved, because they had multiple prosecutors, their investigators. And then things kind of started getting some momentum. After that initial zoom conference, we had, within a week or two, we had a face to face sitting around my kitchen table. They all came down to Terre Haute and go over cases, photographs, scenarios, results of other investigations. Up to that point, I'd never seen the scene photos and had been at that point 5 years roughly since I'd actually seen the bodies myself. And all the photos had been taken by state police, so I didn't have access to those. So I start getting provided all these things that I'm going to need along the way. And then we started meeting on a somewhat regular basis after I'd had a chance to review the pictures, come up with, you know, my impressions of how things may have played out. And eventually it got to the Point where it was just one of the prosecutors who had been designated to be working with me. And I think of the three prosecutors, each one had a designated group of witnesses. They were dealing with the one I was working with. We developed a rapport, and we met, you know, probably half a dozen times, either by zoom or in person. We did have a deposition a year ago in February with the defense and started considering all possibilities. One of the things that I've got to do as part of my case is not only look at the facts, but try to look at things that are going to be potentially defense arguments. You know, it's one thing to say this is what did happen, but I also have to be able to say this could not have happened this way. Maybe totally ludicrous suppositions. Again, defense attorneys do what they have to do, but at the same time, if it's a totally bogus argument they're making, we need to be able to say no, that's absolutely no way that that could have happened. Along the way. One of the things that I got involved with was the whole theory that had been proposed by the defense of this being a ritualistic killing. And so I looked at that in terms of, you know, what I know about rituals and what I know about the scene that I saw and the injuries I found and so forth. I had to try to come up with ideas of potential weapons because these were very unusual types of wounds on these two young ladies. But anyway, at the deposition we had in February, I described one of the wounds on the girls as looking almost like it had a serrated edge. I mean, I think it's probably well known and not, you know, divulge anything that can't be said that these were sharp force injuries. Now, sharp force can include superficial incisions, deep stabs, or sometimes even chop wounds if you have a. Like an ax or machete. But these were sharp wounds, but not classic any sense, like I've seen necessarily before. They were not especially deep and they had clean edges, but they weren't extraordinarily long. And I, in some of the cases, I really couldn't tell if there was multiple versus overlapping wounds. One of the young ladies had really a single wound, whereas the other had at least four to five. And so we're trying to make sense of this in terms of patterns. Now, the young lady that had the multiple wounds on her neck had, in addition to these, what looked like a blunt force type wound that really resembled a little bit like the impressions I've seen occasionally with serrated knife blades, you know, serrated knife blades, as it kind of scraped across the skin, will leave a series of parallel marks. Even though these were not by any means classic serrated, I really didn't know at the time how best to describe them. They were really too wide, too regular to be classic serrations. But. So I described them at deposition as being serrated, like, but that I really wasn't positive these were a serrated knife or what was the type of weapon. It was probably several months after that. And again, you never shut your mind off a case before it's gone to trial. You're always wondering, okay, you know, am I missing something? What else should I consider? Now, this is still an active case until it goes to trial and gets judgment made. And I happen to be in my garage looking over at my workbench and hanging up on a pegboard in my garage. I had a box knife that had a raised rubber set of marks on the side of it for a thumb grip that were about the right width and the right spacing to perfectly replicate the wound that I'd seen on this young lady's neck. And I had one of those eureka moments, like, oh, my God. That would be a perfect explanation how this would happen. And if it was a box knife, that would also explain why these wounds were so sharp and clean looking, why they were not especially deep. That makes sense. When we finally came to trial this past fall, that was brought up well, as you might expect, the defense attorney was a little upset to hear about that and brought up the fact that I had not mentioned that as a possibility during the deposition. I said, well, at the time of the deposition, I hadn't considered it. This was something that showed up months later, just out of the blue. And he protested a little bit, but really didn't take it too far. But of interest, there was one other twist in this story, because you got three different prosecutors. I don't know to what degree they all communicated every last bit of data, because, I mean, there's a tremendous amount of information, a large number of witnesses, and they can't share absolutely every last single detail. But I testified, and then I was following the trial in the news media thereafter to see what other people were saying about this and how the trial was going. About a week and a half later, they reported that one of the prison wardens where he'd been held happened to be one of the people he had confessed to. When he finally started making multiple confessions. And when he confessed to this prison warden, he admitted to him that he'd used a box knife and then disposed of it in a dumpster. And dang. Then I guess I was kind of on track. That makes sense. Kind of validated. I'd never heard that information that had been testified or confessed to this warden until I read it in the paper week and a half after I testified. It might have been helpful. We still got the conviction. But that might have been one more bit of information to have connected those two dots, saying, okay, Dr. Kor theorized this without knowing about it, and then this guy kind of confirmed that he admitted to using a box knife. You know, that's, you know, kind of very damning evidence. Now, the other thing, you know, had to do with the whole theory of, you know, ritual killings. Now, what I do know about rituals, though, from personal experience, is, you know, churches have rituals. You know, typical weddings in the United States follow a very prescribed set of ritual days. You walk down the aisle, everybody spreads out. You take your vows, you bow, you do this, you kiss each other, you leave, you play certain music. When I was in my fraternity house, I was the officer in charge of initiations and ritual for our fraternity. And we have a very set prescribed things. You don't just make it up as you go. You follow a certain prescribed set of circumstances. There are scripts. A ritual is something you do the same way every time, or it's not a ritual. And from what I could observe on the wound patterns on these young ladies and everything else from the scenes, there is no way this was original because there are so many significant differences. You know, one has multiple wounds, one has a single wound. One was, you know, stripped of clothing, the other had clothing on, but not hers. The other girl's clothing, the body positions were not quite fitting, you know, to try to say this was a well prescribed ritual. Just, you know, garbage that just, you know, rituals should have shown similarities in both deaths, and I was certainly not seeing those from an anatomic standpoint or a scene standpoint.
- [61:28]
Anya Cain
One question I had for you, this just came up, and it. That was a bit dramatic moment with. With you mentioning the box cutter at trial. I do. I do remember that very clearly. One other thing that intrigued me that you said on the stand was Abby had marks on her face that almost looked like the edges of duct tape, but there was no adhesive residue.
- [61:51]
Dr. Roland Corr
Yeah, well, I mean, we gotta look for subtle things, and, you know, we will document whatever we see because sometimes it's not apparent on the first glance what it is, and you go back later. You like the box knife Pattern. But there was a very faint, very straight line across her mouth. It looked like it could have been from duct tape or something with a straight edge. But you document those sort of things because they may mean something later. I remember a case, one of the ones that shared with me from Dr. Ben's, when I spent time with him back in the early 80s. He'd had a cold case of a prostitute found in a motel in downtown Indianapolis who was dead. He'd not really been able to come up with a cause of death. It was just kind of a mystery to him. And he'd left it as kind of undetermined, but clearly a homicide. Six months later, he went back to his files and had asked the police officers, are there any other photos that you didn't show me before? Well, they said, well, yeah, we got some. We'll send them over to you. Well, when he got the photos, something he'd not been shown earlier was a pillowcase with a perfect imprint of a woman's makeup, eye makeup, eyeshadow, rouge, lipstick, just on the pillow. And obviously, whoever murdered this woman had held a pillow over her face and, you know, suffocated that way. Only our murderer knows exactly if he did something to her mouth to cover it over and whether he tried to suffocate or anything. But we looked very closely for signs of adhesive. We looked for tape residue. We looked for defensive wounds on their hands and arms and legs. Case like this, you look for everything that could even possibly be remotely related just to document. And you photograph it, you collect it, and you may not find out till five, six years later. Maybe this is relevant and maybe it's not.
- [63:39]
Anya Cain
And the. The prosecutor you were working closely with, that was James Luttrell, right?
- [63:44]
Dr. Roland Corr
Yeah, James Luttrell, yeah.
- [63:46]
Anya Cain
And I'm just curious, what was it like actually getting up there and testifying?
- [63:50]
Dr. Roland Corr
Well, I mean, obviously, it's not my first rodeo. I've been testifying, you know, on, you know, coroner's cases since. Man. Actually, first one of those was when I was right out of training in 1985. First time I got a witness stand. Of course, I'm, you know, not knowing what to expect, and, you know, attorneys try to intimidate. But as years have gone on, one of the things I've realized is I know more about the law than they know about forensics. And the fact that I've been teaching it for so many years and have been in court so many times that I. I can anticipate a lot of things. And so in a Case like this, you know, I knew the defense was going to come after me because, you know, if you can't attack the message, you attack the messenger. But, you know, I'm confident enough, you know, I haven't done this. I know what I'm doing. And I was once told by another prosecutor, you know, he very much likes having a white haired witness on the stand because it conveys certain degree of wisdom and experience as opposed to some, you know, fresh out of the gate, you know, dark haired fellow. But you get used to a certain style. And my style has evolved and, you know, I've gotten excellent feedback over the years from many judges that I've known that have complimented me, my style, and how effective I am in front of a jury. In fact, the recent trial I did last month in South Bend, one of the options was to have me testify by Zoom. And that might have been effective, but I told the defense attorney that was retaining me, he said, you know, yeah, I don't want to sound arrogant, but I'm much better at witnessing person than I am on Zoom because I can kind of relate to the jury and make eye contact with them and, you know, communicate better. Because I'm used to, used to being in front of a classroom and in a way, you know, teaching the classes in criminology I've done for so many years has enhanced my ability to, you know, testify in front of juries. One of the things you have to do in these cases is not only, you know, state facts, but try to explain to juries so they can relate to it. And for the most part, juries do not have the background in forensics. You know, they may have watched a couple episodes of csi, but that doesn't make them experts. And if you can really get down and explain to them in terminology they can understand, which means in a way you've got to, you know, explain complicated science in layman's terms, you end up being a pretty good witness. So it's something. Again, you know, I've been working on this for 30 plus years and I'm, you know, like I say, I'm pretty dang good at it by now. And I think attorneys would agree because right now I've been, I'm doing a lot of private consults these days, including I've got a public defender in Montana that has now sent me about three or four cases because they like my style and my effectiveness and my thoroughness. So again, you do one case for them, they decide, you know, what you're.
- [66:37]
Kevin Greenlee
Doing and more follow this has been wonderful. Before we wrap up and let you go, is there anything about the issues we've discussed today that we haven't covered that you'd like to mention?
- [66:48]
Dr. Roland Corr
Well, you mentioned my podcast, so probably need to mention where that can be found. Name of the podcast is the Corner Chronicles, using K o H R O N E R Play on my name for the thing. You can find it on Spotify, amongst other sites. Just look up Coroner Chronicles and it will show up on a search engine again, trying to share cases and educate people as I go. These are generally up to this point, and I'm still evolving because this is kind of a new territory for me. I'm not experienced podcasters such as you two are. I'm kind of learning as I go, and we're doing like 20, 20 minutes or so per podcast using actual case examples for what I've done. These are firsthand. You know, names are changed to protect the innocent or the guilty, but kind of covering a variety of subjects and trying to make people realize that what we see on TV is not necessarily true. I mean, one of the big things I've had to dispel over the years is the CSI effect. In fact, this, you know, another story that's, I think, amusing is years ago, when CSI first came out, of course, that was the big buzz. And we have a program here in Terre Haute associated with Indiana State University called the Osher Institute of Lifelong Learning. And I was asked if I would be a speaker for that and talk about what they called CSI Terre Haute. And I said, well, yeah, I can do that, I guess. When is this? When would you want me to appear? Oh, it's like six months from now. I said, okay, yeah, fine. I said, just, yeah, give me a call a month before so I don't space it and forget about it, and, you know, we'll be good. Well, of course, had enough irons in the fire that I spaced it. And a month beforehand, I get a call saying, oh, remember you're going to talk. At which point I think, oh, rats, I haven't thought about this. And by that point, after watching about the second or third episode of csi, I realized, this is stupid. I mean, you know, anybody in any walk of life that has been portrayed on television can tell you that's not the way real life is. So I was now faced with, okay, how do I talk about CSI for an hour or so when it's a program I don't like, which I think is, you know, a lot of bs. And I got inspired by Dave Letterman, another fellow Hoosier. And if you remember, Dave Letterman used to do his top 10 list, counting backwards, you know, top 10 reasons for this or that. So I came up with my top 10 list of things I hated about CSI and would do the countdown, you know, for, you know, for one, you know, you know, four guys can't cover every known discipline in, you know, you know, forensic science, you know, you know, test turnaround time is not in the matter of minutes. It takes weeks or months, blah, blah, blah. But the number one thing that I really had a gripe with was the dang flashlights. Because if you think about csi, they'd walk in a room that was dark. Instead of flipping the light switch on, they'd get out their little flashlight and look for evidence. And I think, okay, come on. You know, forensics is a very visual science. You got to look for trace evidence, and you don't see it with a flashlight in a dark room. You want as much light on the subject as possible. So I turned that into a program. I would open the first five or ten minutes with my top ten things I hated, and then I'd segue into, okay, this is what really takes place. And I gave that talk probably three or four dozen times over the years, various outlets in Terre Hope. So that was always kind of fun. And I still do things similar. I'm scheduled tomorrow to talk to a high school class about forensics because there's still that interest out there, I guess. Closing message would be, don't believe everything you see on tv. Some of the true crime shows are valid and some are kind of out there, but it is still a fascinating field. There's a reason why there's so many podcasts out there. And so my TV shows on real crime type of things about forensics, and it's been a very rewarding career that I've engaged in. Very satisfying, sometimes very sobering, but at the same time wouldn't have changed it.
- [70:56]
Anya Cain
Well, Dr. Corr, thank you so much for taking the time to share those insights with us. We really, really appreciate it and my.
- [71:01]
Dr. Roland Corr
Pleasure talking to you, and maybe we'll have time again to talk sometime in the future.
- [71:06]
Kevin Greenlee
Thanks so much, Dr. Corr, for speaking with us and sharing his insights. We will include a link in our show notes to his website, and please check out the Coroner Chronicles wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks so much for listening to the murder Sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover, please email us@murdersheetmail.com if you have actionable information about an unsolved crime, please report it to the appropriate authorities.
- [71:40]
Anya Cain
If you're interested in joining our Patreon, that's available at www.patreon.com murdersheet. If you want to tip us a bit of money for records requests, you can do so at www. Buymeacoffee.com murdersheet. We very much appreciate any support.
- [72:03]
Kevin Greenlee
Special thanks to Kevin Tyler Greenlee, who composed the music for the Murder Sheet and who you can find on the web@kevintg.com if you're looking to talk with.
- [72:14]
Anya Cain
Other listeners about a case we've covered, you can join the Murder Sheet discussion group on Facebook. We mostly focus our time on research and reporting, so we're not on social media much. We do try to check our email account, but we ask for patience as we often receive a lot of messages. Thanks again for listening. So we want to shout out one of our wonderful sponsors right now, and that sponsor is Happy Mammoth. This is a wonderful natural wellness brand. We've been using it and it's been terrific. They're a great solution if you feel like you might be dealing with some hormone disruptors. I mean, that kind of happens to everyone. It's in the air, it's in the food, it's in lots of different products.
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Kevin Greenlee
So it's really reduced your cravings.
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Anya Cain
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