3rd Expert Claims Probe of Brown's Death Botched
James Daugherty (daugh@home.msen.com)
Wed, 14 Jan 1998 18:48:26 -0500
|-----Original Message-----
|From: RuddyUpdate <RuddyUpdate@ruddynews.com>
|To: List Suppressed <List Suppressed>
|Date: Tuesday, January 13, 1998 4:46 AM
|Subject: 3rd Expert Claims Probe of Brown's Death Botched
|
|
||4th Expert Claims Probe of Brown's Death Botched
||By Christopher Ruddy
||FOR THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW
||January 13, 1998
||
||Washington - The head of the Armed Forces Institute of
||Pathology's forensic photography unit, like two other
||senior officials before her, has come forward to
||publicly claim that the military improperly handled the
||investigation of the death of Commerce Secretary Ron
||Brown.
||
||Chief Petty Officer Kathleen Janoski, a 22 year Navy
||veteran, also says she was told missing evidence of a
||possible homicide had been purposely destroyed.
||Janoski, the senior enlisted person at AFIP's
||Rockville, Md., offices, was present when Brown's body
||was examined by military pathologists at Dover Air
||Force Base in Delaware.
||
||The examination of Brown's remains took place four days
||after an Air Force CT-43 jet carrying him and 34 others
||crashed into a mountainside near Croatia's Dubrovnik
||airport on April 3, 1996.
||
||Janoski had initially declined to be interviewed but
||changed her mind shortly before a gag order was issued
||to AFIP staff. She came forward, she said, because AFIP
||had failed to properly investigate possible wrongdoing
||by its own officials in the Brown case, and because of
||the way the military treated two AFIP pathologists, Air
||Force Lt. Col. Steve Cogswell and Army Lt. Col. David
||Hause.
||
||In Tribune-Review articles last month, Cogswell and
||Hause both went public about a small circular hole
||found in the very top of Brown's head. Both
||pathologists contend it looked like a gunshot wound and
||should have prompted an autopsy. No autopsy was
||performed.
||
||Janoski said she was disturbed by criticism of the
||lieutenant colonels and suggestions that their actions
||may be politically motivated. She described both
||pathologists as "serious professionals" and
||"competent."
||
||Partisan politics has nothing to do with the issues at
||hand, she suggested, noting that she has been a
||lifelong and active Democrat, beginning with volunteer
||work for the 1972 presidential campaign of George
||McGovern. She says she voted for Bill Clinton and is
||proud to receive a White House Christmas Card each year
||for having worked as a volunteer at the Clinton White
||House.
||
||INTERNAL PROBE
||
||After Cogswell's allegations first surfaced in the
||Tribune-Review, AFIP launched an internal investigation
||of Cogswell and others to find out why and how the
||information about Brown's head wound got to the press.
||
||Janoski said she was stunned that AFIP inquiry focused
||on the actions of Cogswell when she felt the real issue
||was AFIP's handling of Brown's death.
||
||"The investigation is nothing more than a witch hunt.
||(AFIP) should be investigating what happened to the
||missing head X-rays. No one at AFIP seems to care that
||Brown did not receive an autopsy," Janoski said.
||
||On Easter Sunday, 1996, the task of examining Brown's
||body fell to Col. William Gormley, the highest ranking
||AFIP officer at Dover that day.
||
||While Gormley conducted an external examination of
||Brown's body, Janoski was busy photographing and
||documenting his injuries. Brown was still partially
||clad in a his torn trousers. His body was intact, with
||chemical burns to his torso and face and several
||noticeable lacerations on the front, sides and top of
||his head.
||
||As she continued to shoot photos, she noticed a large
||area of torn skin that left the top of Brown's skull
||exposed.
||
||She was startled to find another injury. Dead center in
||the top of the head she observed what appeared to her
||to be a gunshot wound: a perfectly circular hole in the
||skull.
||
||"Wow, look at the hole in Ron Brown's head. It looks
||like a gunshot wound," Janoski recalls exclaiming.
||
||Janoski has served as chief of forensic photography for
||2 (1/2) years, and has, by her account, handled
||numerous cases involving either gunshots or plane
||crashes. She received training at the FBI Academy and
||elsewhere in observing, identifying and photographing
||gunshot and other wounds.
||
||Janoski's comments caused an immediate hubbub in the
||morgue facility, and several pathologists came over to
||view the wound.
||
||One was Hause, a former Gulf War combat surgeon with
||significant plane accident and gunshot experience.
||Hause examined the hole and said it looked like a .45
||caliber gunshot entry wound.
||
||Gormley, who has approximately 25 years of experience
||in pathology, has said that he, too, identified the
||wound as a "red flag" and that he consulted with other
||pathologists present, including Hause and Navy Cmdr.
||Edward Kilbane.
||
||"They agreed it look like an entrance gunshot wound,"
||Gormley recalled in a recent television interview.
||
||In two interviews with the Tribune-Review, Gormley
||maintained he ruled out the possibility of a gunshot
||because he observed, on closer inspection, that the
||circular hole did not penetrate Brown's skull into the
||brain. He said the brain was not visible, and had a
||bullet struck Brown's head, it would have penetrated
||the skull.
||
||Soon after the Tribune-Review published a photograph of
||the wound as well as photos of X-rays that showed the
||skull had been penetrated, Gormley changed his story.
||
||During a television appearance, he admitted that the
||photo and X-ray indeed showed the skull was penetrated
||and brown's brain was visible.
||
||Gormley noted it had been more than a year and a half
||since the Brown crash, and said he had simply forgotten
||what the wound looked like. In his initial report on
||the examination, Gormley noted the bullet had
||penetrated the skull. He maintained that the hole
||definitely wasn't a gunshot wound because X-rays showed
||no slug or metal fragments in the head, and there was
||no exit wound.
||
||In a recent press statement, AFIP said extensive
||"forensic tests" disproved a bullet theory. Janoski
||said she was present for the entire examination and she
||did not observe any forensic tests, such those for
||gunpowder residue around the wound.
||
||MISSING X-RAYS
||
||In addition to pictures of the corpse itself, Janoski
||took photos of the original head and body X-rays while
||they were pinned to a lightbox.
||
||After her slide film was developed, Janoski said she
||stored the images, which are typically used by
||pathologists for lectures and are not part of the
||official case file, in her office desk.
||
||Almost six months later, Janoski said she was prompted
||to review the film after Brown's name surfaced during a
||discussion with Jean Marie Sentell, a naval criminal
||investigator assigned to the AFIP. Sentell had also
||been present when Brown's body was examined.
||
||Janoski alleges Sentell told her the original X-rays of
||Brown's head had been replaced in the case file.
||Janoski said she remembers that Sentell specifically
||told her "the first head X-ray that showed a 'lead
||snowstorm' was destroyed, and a second X-ray, that was
||less dense, was taken."
||
||Janoski said she had to ask, "What are you talking
||about?" in reference to Sentell's phrase "lead
||snowstorm." According to Janoski, Sentell explained
||that a lead snowstorm is the description of a pattern
||of metal fragments that appears on an X-ray after a
||bullet has disintegrated inside a body.
||
||Janoski said Sentell did not say who destroyed the X-
||rays.
||
||Sentell did not respond to repeated Tribune-Review
||phone messages seeking comment, even after being
||informed of Janoski's statements. An AFIP spokesman
||said Sentell declined to be interviewed.
||
||After the conversation with Sentell, Janoski said she
||rummaged through her own desk and found the slide film
||she had taken of the original head X-rays. She gave the
||film to Cogswell to review.
||
||Cogswell contends the original frontal X-ray of Brown's
||head indeed showed an apparent "lead snowstorm" of
||metal fragments in brown's head. Cogswell has stated
||that the suspicious hole and the X-ray should have
||prompted AFIP to notify the FBI that Brown's death was
||a possible homicide.
||
||Cogswell, too, has alleged that he heard that the first
||X-rays were destroyed.
||
||Still curious about the matter, Janoski pulled out
||Brown's official case file and discovered that the file
||contained only 15 X-rays of Brown, none of which were
||of the skull. She found neither of the original X-rays
||that she had photographed on the lightbox.
||
||Janoski said she became terrified when she realized
||that "I possessed the only physical evidence that
||those X-rays ever existed."
||
||AFIP director Col. Michael Dickerson has acknowledged
||that all skull X-rays of Brown are missing from the
||case file.
||
||Gormley has stated that the initial head X-rays did
||show possible fragments that concerned him at the time,
||but that Brown's head was X-rayed again and he
||discovered the pattern of fragments on the initial
||X-ray was actually caused by a defect in the
||reusable film cartridge.
||
||The new images did not show any fragments in the head,
||but they, like the originals photographed by Janoski,
||have disappeared.
||
||One of the pathologists involved questions the timing
||of AFIP's explanation.
||
||"I find it interesting that this explanation about the
||film cartridge defect came after Lt. Col Cogswell made
||his allegations, and not at the time we were at Dover,"
||said Hause.
||
||Hause, who made these comments to the Tribune-Review
||before a gag order had been placed on AFIP staff, said
||he does not recall ever being told there was problem
||with the X-rays.
||
||Janoski noted that the photos she took of other Brown
||X-rays on the light box did not show any such pattern.
||
||Gormley and AFIP have not offered any explanation for
||how the X-rays disappeared. Gormley referred calls to
||AFIP spokesman Chris Kelly, who said that Gormley
||would not grant an additional interview.
||
||In recent days, Janoski was contacted and asked if she
||stood by her earlier comments. She said she did and
||added that AFIP officials are determined to "turn Lt.
||Col. Cogswell into scapegoat."
||
||She said AFIP investigators recently presented her with
||a list questions that focused on how the photographic
||images had found their way to the press.
||
||"I was never advised of my rights, and the tone and
||manner... was threatening and coercive," she said.
||
||Janoski reiterated to the Tribune-Review that she had
||done nothing improper, and that AFIP should be
||concentrating on why Ron Brown "did not receive a
||proper death investigation."
||
||http://ruddynews.com/
||
||Awarded Lycos "Top 5%" of the Web
||+-------------------------------------------------------------+
|||Do not reply to this E-Mail, it will be auto-deleted. |
|||To Unsubscribe reply to this with the Subject "Unsubscribe" |
||+-------------------------------------------------------------+
|
|
|Forwarded for info and discussion, not necessarily endorsed by:
|***********************************
|Lloyd Miller, Research Director for A-albionic Research (POB 20273,
|Ferndale, MI 48220), a ruling class/conspiracy research resource for the
|entire political-ideological spectrum. Quarterly journal, book sales,
|rare/out-of-print searches, New Paradigms Discussion List, Weekly Up-date
|Lists & E-text Archive of research, intelligence, catalogs, & resources.
| To Discuss Ideas:
| mailto:lloyd@a-albionic.com http://msen.com/~lloyd/
| For Ordering Info & Free Catalog:
| mailto:james@a-albionic.com http://a-albionic.com/
| For Discussion List:
| mailto:majordomo@mail.msen.com
| text: subscribe prj <your@email.address>
| **FREE RARE BOOK SEARCH: <http://a-albionic.com/search.html> **
| Explore Our Archive: <http://a-albionic.com/a-albionic.html>
|***********************************