Speaker 1: Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the podcast where I'm
Speaker 1: Robert Evans and we talked about bad people and I
Speaker 1: introduced the show poorly. Uh, this is uh an episode
Speaker 1: about Jeffrey Epstein and my my guest today is Daniel O'Brien. Dan,
Speaker 1: how you doing? Man? Hello, brailed to be talking to
Speaker 1: you for a third episode about Jeffrey Epstein Jeffstein. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I've decided we should call him. Really really
Speaker 1: thought we sort of uh closed the book on this
Speaker 1: one the last time. Has there been any updates? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You know, Dan, it's been a busy year since we
Speaker 1: last talked. A lot has happened. Uh, you want an emmy,
Speaker 1: I went to Syria and our friend Jeffrey Epstein had
Speaker 1: some big Um had some big things happen as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to. You have to offer a bunch of
Speaker 1: retractions for your last episode because it turns out he
Speaker 1: was exonerated on all counts. Right, is that the news? Oh? No,
Speaker 1: Dan um slightly slightly different than that he either killed
Speaker 1: himself or was murdered in prison cell um after being
Speaker 1: arrested at an airport and charged with a whole a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of crimes. Yikes. Yeah, not a great year
Speaker 1: for Epstein. UM. I would imagine you have uh an
Speaker 1: order in which you want to proceed with this episode,
Speaker 1: and that me jumping in right now and ask you
Speaker 1: questions is disrupting that in some way. UM. I know,
Speaker 1: I feel like I don't care right off the top.
Speaker 1: Do you have strong opinions on suicide versus murder? Um?
Speaker 1: I have strong opinions that the case for murder isn't
Speaker 1: nearly as strong as a lot of people think it is.
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of people misunderstanding in some
Speaker 1: cases deliberately what has actually been revealed. UM. That said,
Speaker 1: there's definitely some fishy as ship, and it's it's not
Speaker 1: on reasonable to want an investigation into it. UM. I'm
Speaker 1: leaning towards suicide though, UM, and I suspect most of
Speaker 1: the listeners think he was murdered. Uh so the people
Speaker 1: where are you on this? I haven't thought too much
Speaker 1: about it, to be completely honest. That seems healthy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's he's I'm sure a compelling case could be made
Speaker 1: for either side. I don't. It doesn't quite matter to me,
Speaker 1: I guess, which probably sounds callous. I don't think you
Speaker 1: can be callous about a mass child rapist. Um. I
Speaker 1: kind of think you can do whatever you want when
Speaker 1: talking about Jeffrey Epstein as long as you're not talking
Speaker 1: about how good an art collector he was or something
Speaker 1: like that. I mean, if not not callous, because like
Speaker 1: it's not I have no respect for Jeffrey Epstein. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't give a ship. But the fact that I
Speaker 1: clearly don't care one way or the other means I'm
Speaker 1: implicitly saying I don't care if someone can sneakily murder
Speaker 1: someone and get away with it, and that's not a
Speaker 1: good stance to have, ideal stance to have. Yeah, it's uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like so, I I guess we should.
Speaker 1: You're probably aware of so. A lot of the things
Speaker 1: that have um recently come out. I think the most
Speaker 1: recent big story about Epstein has actually been a couple
Speaker 1: in the last week. The most recent is a Project
Speaker 1: Veritas video from your Your Hold alumni James O'Keeffe. Did
Speaker 1: you ever run into him at Rutgers by the way, No,
Speaker 1: I did not. Okay, that's good. That's probably good for everybody. Um,
Speaker 1: he seems insufferable. Uh so he put out a video
Speaker 1: of ABC News anchor Amy Roebok, and in the video,
Speaker 1: she claims that the network quashed an interview she conducted
Speaker 1: with a source about Jeffrey Epstein's like child prostitution business
Speaker 1: UM that involved like Prince Andrew and kind of suggested
Speaker 1: that ABC had like pulled the story due to threats
Speaker 1: from like Buckingham Palace and like a number of other
Speaker 1: powerful people. And so this is like, this has been
Speaker 1: pretty prominent on the internet. Uh, And like, I think
Speaker 1: the way that most people have framed it as like, oh,
Speaker 1: James O'Keeffe actually got a scoop is a clear example
Speaker 1: of ABC News um killing a story to protect Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Epstein the powerful people that he provided prostitutes for. And
Speaker 1: I'm not going to say that's a hundred percent not
Speaker 1: what's happening, but I really don't think that's what's happening.
Speaker 1: So I should start by I'm gonna I'm actually gonna
Speaker 1: quote an MPR article here that that kind of gives
Speaker 1: the response from ABC. So we'll start with that. ABC
Speaker 1: News executives say their journalists were simply not able to
Speaker 1: corroborate the details of the reporting sufficiently for broadcast. We
Speaker 1: would never run away from that, Chris Blasto, head of
Speaker 1: investigations for ABC News, tells NPR the network has filed
Speaker 1: approximately two dozen digital and broadcast stories on Epstein since
Speaker 1: early two thousand fifteen, when ABC started talking to the accuser,
Speaker 1: Virginia Roberts Jeffrey. So there's a good point there, which
Speaker 1: is that if you're trying to say ABC was unwilling
Speaker 1: to talk about Epstein, that's really hard to support because
Speaker 1: they've actually done a lot of coverage of this case,
Speaker 1: and the idea that like, Okay, well we we weren't
Speaker 1: able to back into like I think it was to
Speaker 1: them fifteen when this video was or sorry to this
Speaker 1: nineteen is her talking about this, but I think she
Speaker 1: was frustrated that like they hadn't gotten the story out
Speaker 1: earlier and broken the story. But I like there's legal
Speaker 1: concerns when you're reporting something like this and you're alleging
Speaker 1: that like a prince is part of a child sex
Speaker 1: ring and like a bunch of very prominent, very wealthy
Speaker 1: people have been committing horrible crimes um and there is
Speaker 1: like your legal department is going to look over something
Speaker 1: like this in addition to your editorial department and be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: either we have enough back up for this story to
Speaker 1: move forward, or we don't think we can safely d
Speaker 1: op this yet because we don't have enough like evidence
Speaker 1: to support it, right. I mean, it sounds like another
Speaker 1: case where idiots on the internet saw how professional adult
Speaker 1: does a thing, kind of simplified and misunderstood it, and
Speaker 1: then applied it to something else. So like we can see,
Speaker 1: oh NBC actively covered up this running fire was reporting
Speaker 1: on Harvey Weinstein, which they did, and then did the
Speaker 1: idiots of the internet though, the adiots of the world,
Speaker 1: the James O keeps and what not, the trolls and stuff.
Speaker 1: They'll look at something that seems like it shares some
Speaker 1: of the DNA because they're like, hey, big news network
Speaker 1: something something something, scandal something something something, and they knew
Speaker 1: part of it and they didn't tell us these things
Speaker 1: are the same thing, which is not the case. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's on the video. Robots says, I tried for
Speaker 1: three years to get it out to no avail and
Speaker 1: a these new revelations and I freaking had all of it.
Speaker 1: I'm so piste right now, Like every day I get
Speaker 1: one more piste because I'm just like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: what we had it was, what we had was unreal.
Speaker 1: But when the video leaked, she made a public statement. UM.
Speaker 1: As the Epstein story continue to unfold last summer, I
Speaker 1: was caught in a private moment of frustration. I was
Speaker 1: upset that an important interview I had conducted with Virginia
Speaker 1: Roberts didn't air because we could not obtain sufficient corroborating
Speaker 1: evidence to meet ABC's editorial standards about her allegations the
Speaker 1: interview itself, While I was disappointed in nair didn't meet
Speaker 1: our standards. In a years since, no one ever told
Speaker 1: me you're the team to stop reporting on Jeffrey Epstein,
Speaker 1: and we have continued to aggressively pursue this important story,
Speaker 1: which they did again like the network launched like a
Speaker 1: two hour documentary um in like like they've they've covered
Speaker 1: this a lot. Um. It's one of those things, like
Speaker 1: I I'm I'm I'm certainly open to the possibility that
Speaker 1: with his connections and power, um Epstein had an in
Speaker 1: at ABC that tried to quash the story at some point.
Speaker 1: That's certainly not impossible, But I'm not seeing evidence of that.
Speaker 1: Like I'm seeing evidence of it's hard to go after
Speaker 1: billionaires and princes uh and royalty um and politicians when
Speaker 1: they commit crimes if you only have one source, because
Speaker 1: like you can get your ass sued for that stuff,
Speaker 1: Like it's there. Yeah, I think people are blowing this
Speaker 1: out of proportion. I think I think you're right to
Speaker 1: connect it to like what happened with Ronan Pharaoh UM,
Speaker 1: because that is a case of where he came in
Speaker 1: with this big story and they tried to quash it
Speaker 1: for very sinister reasons. And I think O'Keefe was pretty
Speaker 1: smart to launch this pretty fairly shortly after um, like
Speaker 1: Ronan Pharaoh's book came out, because I do think those
Speaker 1: two things have been connected in a lot of people's heads. Yeah. Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: let's talk about Epstein's suicide slash murder. Um. Yeah, that'll
Speaker 1: be this will be fun talk. He's just sitting with
Speaker 1: my buddy Dan talking about a murdered or suicide, multi
Speaker 1: millionaire financier, prostituted child pimp. Oh. I yes, I should
Speaker 1: try to get ahead of this because it sounds like
Speaker 1: we're going to cover some pretty dark stuff. If people
Speaker 1: are easily uh triggered by by talk of child molestation
Speaker 1: and or suicide. I also, just knowing myself, I will
Speaker 1: probably make suicide jokes. I don't think suicide is funny
Speaker 1: or a laughing matter, and it should always be taken seriously.
Speaker 1: But because of the way my brain is wired, yeah,
Speaker 1: it just might happen. I'm just putting the warning out there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I I had to physically fight myself to stop from
Speaker 1: just quoting the lines from the Mash theme song as
Speaker 1: a response to you, which I didn't do. And I'm
Speaker 1: proud of myself, but I might later. Um. Yeah. There's
Speaker 1: a number of things that people find really fishy about
Speaker 1: the Epstein suicide, probably like one of the chief things
Speaker 1: is the fact that he was taken off of Suicide Watch,
Speaker 1: which seems really damning, Like why would you take this
Speaker 1: guy off of suicide Watch? Um, it seems like a
Speaker 1: clear case of the kind of person you would be
Speaker 1: worried would commit suicide. And in fact, a number of
Speaker 1: like corrections at like like people who have like worked
Speaker 1: in prisons and stuff, um like have come out and
Speaker 1: said that, like this was a dumb call to remove
Speaker 1: him from Suicide Watch. Cameron Lindsay, a former warden who
Speaker 1: worked at three federal facilities told NBC. For them to
Speaker 1: pull him off suicide watch a shocking for someone that
Speaker 1: high profile, with these allegations and this many victims who
Speaker 1: has had a suicide attempt in the last few weeks,
Speaker 1: you can take absolutely no chances. And I think this
Speaker 1: seems conspiratorial to people who don't really know how the
Speaker 1: justice system worked. And I kind of think this is
Speaker 1: just a situation of where Epstein was treated like a
Speaker 1: normal prisoner. Um. He was not removed just out of
Speaker 1: like laziness, Like he had a face to face meeting
Speaker 1: with a doctor UM who determined that the suicide watch
Speaker 1: was not warranted anymore and removed him from it. UM.
Speaker 1: And you know, basically he convinced a doctor that he
Speaker 1: wasn't a risk after his suicide attempt. And you can
Speaker 1: say that, uh, that shouldn't have happened, or that um,
Speaker 1: like it was a bad guy. It was certainly a
Speaker 1: bad call. It was obviously a bad call. But this
Speaker 1: sort of thing is incredibly common. We actually don't know
Speaker 1: how many people die in of suicide in prisons right now.
Speaker 1: We only have data up to two thousand fourteen that
Speaker 1: we should get a better. Uh system doesn't it handle,
Speaker 1: doesn't it? Yeah? Um, we we we only have data
Speaker 1: up to two fourteen, because in two thousand fourteen, suicide
Speaker 1: in jails and prisons in America hit a fifteen year
Speaker 1: high and became the leading cause of death in jails. Uh.
Speaker 1: And after that the Department of Justice stopped providing us
Speaker 1: with information about suicides in our jails for some reason,
Speaker 1: which is that might be more of the conspiracy in
Speaker 1: my head that they're hiding this this information. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: suicide accounts for a third more yeah, roughly a third
Speaker 1: of all deaths in in jails. Uh. And in thirty
Speaker 1: percent of all deaths in state prisons. It actually jumped
Speaker 1: thirty from two thousand two fourteen in state prisons. Oh sorry,
Speaker 1: it's seven percent of deaths in prisons. It jumped thirty
Speaker 1: percent over the course of two thoteen in fourteen. And
Speaker 1: we don't know how high it is now obviously, um,
Speaker 1: but it had a thirty percent leap over the course
Speaker 1: of a year in two thousand, thirteen and fourteen, which
Speaker 1: is um huge. Uh. The a P and the University
Speaker 1: of Maryland's Capital News Service recently conducted an inner an
Speaker 1: investigation where they found hundreds of lawsuits against local jails. Um,
Speaker 1: talking about suicides, like against local jails because inmates had
Speaker 1: committed suicide. Um. And that way, that's just in Maryland. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, the Martial Project used public records laws to
Speaker 1: find suicide data from the Bureau of Prisons, which show
Speaker 1: arise since two thousand fifteen. But again they had to
Speaker 1: use like Foyer requests and stuff to get that data.
Speaker 1: Nobody's like publishing it normally. UM. Like it's a huge
Speaker 1: systemic problem, and it might be like the single largest
Speaker 1: problem with American prisons. I found a really good quote
Speaker 1: from David Fathi, who was the director of the National
Speaker 1: Prison Project at the a c l U. UM. In
Speaker 1: most prisons and jails I've seen, and there are exceptions,
Speaker 1: suicide prevention as a joke. We have seen people able
Speaker 1: to attempt suicidal suppose the on constant suicide watch. We've
Speaker 1: seen people taken off suicide watch because staff thought they
Speaker 1: were okay, and then killed themselves that same day. We've
Speaker 1: seen officers who were supposed to be watching someone on
Speaker 1: suicide watch actually sleeping. This ship happens a lot, and
Speaker 1: it can't really be overstated just how big of a
Speaker 1: problem this is. I know that's just what you've been doing,
Speaker 1: but just yeah, only because I've been researching is for
Speaker 1: a future upcoming thing at work is that as mental
Speaker 1: health treatment facilities closed down, more and more people in
Speaker 1: need of mental health end up in jails. And I
Speaker 1: know in a few cases the county jail is the
Speaker 1: largest single provider of mental health services, which is not great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think one area people get when they when
Speaker 1: they see this removal from suicide Watch for Epsney is
Speaker 1: something sinister. Um is sinister in like a conspiratorial way.
Speaker 1: I think what actually is happening here is that for
Speaker 1: the first time in his life, this guy got treated
Speaker 1: like everybody else um. And that's what happens to everybody else.
Speaker 1: It happens to a shipload of people in prison and
Speaker 1: jails they kill themselves. And you can look at it
Speaker 1: as the deep State wanted him dead and so they
Speaker 1: had him moved from suicide Watch and like, you know,
Speaker 1: told him that it was either this or someone would
Speaker 1: murder him and then he did it. Or you can
Speaker 1: look at it like, oh, he did the thing that
Speaker 1: liket of people in his situation do, or something like
Speaker 1: you know, a large chunk of people like it's. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing that is legitimately sketchy is that both of
Speaker 1: the cameras outside the jail cell where Epstein died were broken,
Speaker 1: which is sketchy as hell. I'll give everybody who's on
Speaker 1: the murder side that that ships uh super fishy. It
Speaker 1: would be a hard Yeah, it's another one to work. Again,
Speaker 1: I don't have all the information like that exactly immediately
Speaker 1: at its face value, it sounds sketchy. Um, but I've
Speaker 1: never done the research, you know, just how well maintained
Speaker 1: security cameras are exactly, And again there's not It's not
Speaker 1: like there's data on this because the Bureau of Prisons
Speaker 1: doesn't give people data on fucking anything. So maybe something's there,
Speaker 1: maybe not. I don't know. I'm gonna we're we're we
Speaker 1: are now moving on to the part of the episode
Speaker 1: where I have an actual little essay written. Um, because
Speaker 1: because Dan did you went into a story at the
Speaker 1: end of last month where a uh uh, which you
Speaker 1: mean a forensic investigator who observed the Epstein autopsy said
Speaker 1: that it was consistent with homicide. Yeah, yeah, yeah, did
Speaker 1: you do you look into that at all? Of course? Not? Okay,
Speaker 1: good good, good, good good good. Yeah. So that happened
Speaker 1: last month, and a lot of people shared it on Twitter,
Speaker 1: including myself, and we're like, oh, this is okay. I
Speaker 1: guess maybe he was murdered. Like now we've got some
Speaker 1: fucking hard evidence. And then a couple of my fans
Speaker 1: are like, you should look into the guy who actually
Speaker 1: declared it a homicide, the the specific investigator, and I did,
Speaker 1: and uh, he's quite the dude. Dad, You're you're gonna
Speaker 1: like this, You're you're gonna hate this actually, but I'm
Speaker 1: gonna read this to you anyway. So National Reviews coverage
Speaker 1: that their headline was forensic investigator Jeffrey Epstein's autopsy more
Speaker 1: consistent with homicide. Fox News wrote Jeffrey Epstein's autopsy more
Speaker 1: consistent with homicidal strangulation than suicide. Dr Michael Baden reveals
Speaker 1: now even the New York Times his coverage seemed to
Speaker 1: point towards a pretty damning revelation. They said, Epstein's autopsy
Speaker 1: points to homicide pathologist hired by brother claims um Now,
Speaker 1: as that hired by brother part might suggest this guy
Speaker 1: is not a totally independent analyst. Um, Yeah, because the
Speaker 1: Epstein family is very much taking the line that he
Speaker 1: was murdered. So I looked into this guy, Dr Michael Baden,
Speaker 1: and he spent the last week or so doing a
Speaker 1: pretty brisk business and media appearances. He was on Fox
Speaker 1: and Friends like right after this, uh, and he claimed
Speaker 1: that Epstein's injuries, particularly the broken highoid bone in his neck,
Speaker 1: are in his words, extremely unusual in suicidal hangings and
Speaker 1: could occur much more commonly in homicidal strangulation. Okay that
Speaker 1: I feel like the word could there is doing a
Speaker 1: whole lot of work. Yeah, the word could is doing
Speaker 1: a lot of lifting. Uh, and more commonly is also
Speaker 1: also holding some water. Now, he told Fox and Friends,
Speaker 1: which is where all great forensic investigators go to, uh
Speaker 1: drop their research. I wasn't sure if you were aware
Speaker 1: of that, but yeah, really popular. He told them he
Speaker 1: hadn't seen injuries like this in a suicide in fifty
Speaker 1: years of doing autopsies. And if you just look at
Speaker 1: this guy's credentials. Dr Biden's credentials on paper, it does
Speaker 1: seem like he knows his ship. His website notes that
Speaker 1: he was the chairman of the Forensic Pathology Panel of
Speaker 1: the U S Congress Select Committee on Assassinations. Uh. He
Speaker 1: helped to reinvestigate the deaths of JFK and Martin Luther
Speaker 1: King Jr. He was asked by the Russian government to example,
Speaker 1: you get homicide on those two? Also, yeah, he sure
Speaker 1: shared actually suicide on JFKO. Yeah, yeah, yeah it yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah that I don't I don't have more of a
Speaker 1: joke there, but I'm sure you can piece one together.
Speaker 1: He was asked by the Russian government to examine the
Speaker 1: remains of Zari Nicholas the second and his family, which
Speaker 1: I feel like we know how that one went down.
Speaker 1: And he's conducted more than twenty thousand autopsies and taught
Speaker 1: homicide courses for police, judges, lawyers, and doctors in most
Speaker 1: of the US and at least nine other countries. So
Speaker 1: that's a pretty pretty good resume, I would say, uh,
Speaker 1: pretty solid resume. More autopsies than I have carried out, certainly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I've only carried out three or four. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now that's the overview of Dr Baden's career that his
Speaker 1: website presents, but it leaves a couple of things out.
Speaker 1: So before we make any conclusions about this most recent
Speaker 1: wrinkle in the Epstein case. I want us to take
Speaker 1: a look at this guy's record. But before we do that, Dan,
Speaker 1: you know what, it's time for a time for goods services.
Speaker 1: Yet goods services products is time for an ad break.
Speaker 1: So don't think of out Jeffrey Epstein hanging himself in
Speaker 1: a cell and instead think about capitalism. We're back, So, man,
Speaker 1: those products can't wait to fucking put him in my
Speaker 1: mouth or whatever. You liked the products. I was a
Speaker 1: fan of the services, um. But that's the great thing
Speaker 1: about America, the freedom. Now, speaking of freedom, or not
Speaker 1: speaking of freedom at all, let's talk about Dr Michael
Speaker 1: Baiden's career. UM. In nine, while he was the chairman
Speaker 1: of that Congressional Committee on Assassinations, he was also the
Speaker 1: chief medical Examiner for New York City. Now that's a
Speaker 1: really prestigious posting because New York is America's largest city.
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but
Speaker 1: all of its citizens are very talented murderers. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: it's also I don't know if you know this, but
Speaker 1: it never sleeps, so it did not always murder happening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just it is a murder fa ctory um that's
Speaker 1: in fact what they call it on the streets. I hear, yeah,
Speaker 1: taking the taking a taking the A train into the
Speaker 1: murder factory. I don't know if the A train goes
Speaker 1: into New York. I don't know if there's an A train.
Speaker 1: I don't know about the subway. Dan, Hey, it was
Speaker 1: a good joke, and you were wise for making it.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you for your approval. Now Baden had
Speaker 1: been promoted to that that very prestigious gig in August
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy eight, after more than ten years is
Speaker 1: the Deputy Chief Medical Examiner. Mayor Ed Koch, who promoted him,
Speaker 1: told the New York Daily News that he had known
Speaker 1: Dr Baden since nineteen sixty six and found him to
Speaker 1: be very capable and innovative. Now Mayor Cotch changed that
Speaker 1: tune less than a year later, According to New York Magazine,
Speaker 1: too many unforced errors added up, including a picked apart
Speaker 1: trial testimony in the doctor X case leading the acquittal
Speaker 1: of Mario Jesskolovich in a spate of poison murders at
Speaker 1: Riverdale Hospital, a Housing Authority patrolman who's January nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: nine murder went undetected for twelve hours, his body removed
Speaker 1: from the scene before proper death. Investor Guigetion conflicting conclusions
Speaker 1: related to the chokehold death of a Brooklyn businessman at
Speaker 1: the hands of police, and off the cuff comments about
Speaker 1: the possibly sexual interrupting death of Governor Nelson Rockefeller. So
Speaker 1: he fox up a bunch of really big cases, and
Speaker 1: more than anything, I think that got him fired. It's
Speaker 1: the fact that he started a rumor about the death
Speaker 1: of the former governor. Um Like, there's this rumor that
Speaker 1: Nelson Rockefeller died fucking, which is a great way to
Speaker 1: be rumored to have died. Um if you have to
Speaker 1: be rumored to have died a certain way. But like
Speaker 1: that the origin of that rumor is just dr bait.
Speaker 1: And he was doing rounds at Lenox Hill Hospital and
Speaker 1: was just like, you know, the governor died having an orgasm.
Speaker 1: I can understand that sex is pretty cool, but is
Speaker 1: that a is that a cool death rumor? I don't
Speaker 1: think I'd like that. You don't think, how do you
Speaker 1: want to be a rumor to have died? Uh? Not fucking?
Speaker 1: I guess you know, like like like uh, because that
Speaker 1: seems like it's gonna be traumatizing for the person I'm with, uh,
Speaker 1: and just a real mess to clean up, you know.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I don't want to leave this this this
Speaker 1: plane as a burden to many folks. I mean, I
Speaker 1: get there's the the the association of all he died
Speaker 1: doing what he loved. But yeah, it would be much
Speaker 1: cooler if they were like, yeah, he uh, he just
Speaker 1: finished sucking and then he got hit by a bus.
Speaker 1: I guess. I mean that's yeah, that's still a lot
Speaker 1: of men. I I get if I had, if I,
Speaker 1: if I had to be rumored to have died in
Speaker 1: a in a spectacular way, I would want it to
Speaker 1: be like skydiving and fighting some sort of crypto zoological
Speaker 1: animal like Bigfoot like that. That would be if if
Speaker 1: if a medical examiner is going to create a rumor
Speaker 1: about my death, I would want it to be something
Speaker 1: cooler than that. You know. I think I'd probably just
Speaker 1: want something that was very out of character for me,
Speaker 1: so that it would just confuse everyone around on me,
Speaker 1: just like in a big game hunting accident or oh
Speaker 1: yeah he died, uh he he hit a dunk in
Speaker 1: the Warriors game and he just like fell off the rim.
Speaker 1: Weird people like Daniel can dunk. I mean, it sucks
Speaker 1: that he's dead, but he he just dunk. He died
Speaker 1: doing what he loved, fist fighting rhinos in the serengetti. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he dropped three of them before they got him. Or like, yeah,
Speaker 1: rumor is he was poisoned. And then we were like,
Speaker 1: oh that's interesting. I mean, some people might not like Daniel,
Speaker 1: but but he's got poison enemies. That's very fascinating. Yeah yeah, polonium,
Speaker 1: like you wanta go with, like the government poisoning thing,
Speaker 1: right really? Yeah? Yeah? Okay, So people were pissed a Dr.
Speaker 1: Baden for for for no discernible reason, dropping a rumor
Speaker 1: that the governor had died fucking um, which is a
Speaker 1: weird thing for a professional doctor to do. Um. He
Speaker 1: was also in trouble because he had this really ugly
Speaker 1: habit of con instantly losing crucial evidence. And I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote the New York Times here, and they're talking about
Speaker 1: a case the People versus Levine. The defendant was indicted
Speaker 1: for killing Miriam Winfield. Several important pieces of evidence were
Speaker 1: covered the deceased fingernail clippings, who dress stayed with blood
Speaker 1: A blue towel, a knife, and telephone cord which apparently
Speaker 1: was used in the murder. All the items were lost.
Speaker 1: Perhaps as distressing as the lass itself was Dr Baden's attitude,
Speaker 1: which was characterized by the assistant as unknowing and uncaring
Speaker 1: about the significance of the loss. When the assistant came
Speaker 1: to Dr Baden's office to discuss how to salvage the
Speaker 1: case in light of the lost evidence, he was not
Speaker 1: so politely told to leave. So I mean this, this
Speaker 1: is again, I hate to keep beating this drum that
Speaker 1: is superficially at face value, sketchy and weird and damning
Speaker 1: if you don't know anything else. And I mean, the
Speaker 1: reason I know this is just from or the reason
Speaker 1: I've adopted this attitude is because I work on the
Speaker 1: most there's actually a lot more nuanced to it than
Speaker 1: you think show in the history of uh natvs. H oh. Like,
Speaker 1: we had an episode on on coroners this year, and
Speaker 1: that's how I know that. Like, it's very common for
Speaker 1: coroners to lose things, or misplace important things, or bungle
Speaker 1: things just because uh there it's a position that's like
Speaker 1: written into constitutions. It's a very old position. Uh. Not
Speaker 1: a lot of people know too much about it. Uh.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of people who are unqualified just
Speaker 1: because it's an entire industry where there's there's not enough
Speaker 1: oversight and regulation because there's no one interested in doing that.
Speaker 1: So you hear these wild stories like a coroner who
Speaker 1: uh accidentally, not acidentally, he cremated this this John Doe
Speaker 1: on purpose. Uh and then he realized from watching the
Speaker 1: news that the John Doe that he cremated was Michael
Speaker 1: Jordan's father and he was most important this high profile
Speaker 1: abduction case. And the coroner was just watching the news
Speaker 1: was like, oh, no, I think I burned that guy.
Speaker 1: It's like it makes you think he's a terrible corner
Speaker 1: until you really like, no, it's it's like a very
Speaker 1: it's a very troubled uh industry. Yes, So like maybe
Speaker 1: this guy is uh worse or being flipping this this
Speaker 1: this fellow we're talking about now, or maybe he's just
Speaker 1: like another symptom of this this this broken system. I
Speaker 1: think both of those things are true. Um, because number one,
Speaker 1: I think like he definitely he got fired. So whatever,
Speaker 1: however normal it is for these guys to lose evidence
Speaker 1: he was doing it more than was normal, um, and
Speaker 1: obviously had other issues like randomly talking about the governor's
Speaker 1: un death. Um. But also the guy who replaced him
Speaker 1: was fired within a year or two. Also, so you're right,
Speaker 1: this is like it does. It does kind of seem
Speaker 1: like there aren't a lot of people who were great
Speaker 1: at this job, but he was not great at the job.
Speaker 1: I do think that's fair to say, um, because you know,
Speaker 1: he got fired from it a year in for uh,
Speaker 1: fucking up a bunch of stuff. Now, I should note
Speaker 1: Dr Baden denies losing anything. Um. He claims, like in
Speaker 1: the specific case that I quoted, that the decedent was
Speaker 1: brought in nude, and that he went through hours of
Speaker 1: meetings about the lost evidence, and that he wasn't flippant
Speaker 1: about it. I wasn't there, I wasn't born, so I
Speaker 1: don't know what happened. UM. I can tell you that
Speaker 1: District Attorney Robert morgan Thou and City Health Commissioner Ronaldo
Speaker 1: Ferrer accused Baiden of sloppy record keeping, poor judgment, and
Speaker 1: a lack of cooperation. Morgan Thou called him cavalier and
Speaker 1: unproductive about lost evidence. So this is at least what
Speaker 1: the people who work with him say about him. Now.
Speaker 1: Mayor Cotch demoted Baden back to deputy examiner in August
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy nine. Baden sued the city for a
Speaker 1: lawful termination and was reinstated as chief medical Examiner nineteen eighty,
Speaker 1: but this didn't last long because the suit was brought
Speaker 1: up to another court and the verdict of the lawsuit
Speaker 1: was overturned. UH, and he was fired again. And as
Speaker 1: it stands right now, in official legal terms, he was
Speaker 1: bad at being the City of New York's chief medical examiner.
Speaker 1: That is what the courts decided. So that's that's that
Speaker 1: job now. Dr Biden moved to Suffolk County next UH
Speaker 1: and he was made the chief Deputy Medical Examiner there.
Speaker 1: He lasted less than a year at this job as well.
Speaker 1: In December of nineteen two, he was fired after an
Speaker 1: article in WE magazine quoted him giving advice on how
Speaker 1: to commit murder using undetectable poisons. I don't know, I
Speaker 1: love undetectable poisons um and talking about them, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure it was a fun article. I can see why
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want a chief medical examiner giving murder advice.
Speaker 1: I can understand why that would frustrate people in the government. Certainly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't. I wouldn't call that ideal behavior from a
Speaker 1: corner that said, I'm sure it was a fun article. Now,
Speaker 1: Baden denies having ever even given the interview. Um. The
Speaker 1: reporter later admitted that he'd used Biden's words out of context.
Speaker 1: But I really don't know exactly what happened here. Again,
Speaker 1: I wasn't there. Suffolk County did offer to take him back.
Speaker 1: Dr Biden decided to move on, so he built a
Speaker 1: new career for himself, this time as a celebrity medical
Speaker 1: pathologist coroner to the stars. So, yeah, he's a bad guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah he's not a They're gonna wear anything I said
Speaker 1: about nuance. He's bad. He's gonna go to hell. That's
Speaker 1: not really the job you pick if you're like a
Speaker 1: good dude. I think now, for the next several decades
Speaker 1: up to the present day, whenever someone famous would die
Speaker 1: or get murdered, you could be pretty sure that Dr
Speaker 1: Michael Baiden was going to be there to take a
Speaker 1: six figure consulting fee for the defense or the prosecution
Speaker 1: in the court case that resulted. His first big case
Speaker 1: was the overdose death of John Belushi in nine. A
Speaker 1: New York Times headline at the time makes it seem
Speaker 1: like this was about the easiest gigg pathologist could have quote.
Speaker 1: Pathologist sites heroin and death of Belushi, which like not
Speaker 1: not a real stretch. Um. Now, the prosecution that case
Speaker 1: was working to prove that Kathy Evelyn Smith should stand
Speaker 1: trial for murder since she'd been the one injecting Belushi
Speaker 1: with drugs. Testifying for the prosecution, Dr Baden said that
Speaker 1: if not for the heroine, Belushi would not have died
Speaker 1: that night, and she did get in a shipload of
Speaker 1: trouble for that, which I don't know, I don't have
Speaker 1: a strong opinion on. Like, on one hand, she definitely
Speaker 1: helped him do the thing that killed himself. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, if you read a lot about John Belushi,
Speaker 1: he was going to die that way with regards if
Speaker 1: someone was not injecting him with heroin like he was.
Speaker 1: He was making horrible choices in that last couple of years. Um,
Speaker 1: and it seems like everybody around him was pretty aware
Speaker 1: of what was going on. Yeah, Um, really sad story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel I don't feel qualified to wade
Speaker 1: into no, no, kind of yeah. And obviously like that
Speaker 1: one you look at, like his role in that, there's
Speaker 1: nothing sketchy about that. They brought him into rule on
Speaker 1: whether or not the fact that she was injecting with
Speaker 1: heroin was a factor in his death, and it was,
Speaker 1: and he ruled it seems accurately on that one. So
Speaker 1: that's that's and the Los Angeles this medical examiner concurred
Speaker 1: with him here, So it's hard to view this as
Speaker 1: anything but in an accurate assessment of the evidence. Now,
Speaker 1: over the next decade, Dr Baden mostly stuck to safe
Speaker 1: cases where there was little danger of his work doing
Speaker 1: anyone damage. He investigated the death of the czar in
Speaker 1: the murder of the Lindbergh Baby. Um. Interestingly enough, Dr
Speaker 1: Baden claims the Lindbergh Baby never had a fractured skull.
Speaker 1: He believes it was smothered. No other pathologists seemed to
Speaker 1: agree with him, and fractured skull is still listed as
Speaker 1: the baby's cause of death. I don't know how the
Speaker 1: baby died, but he had to take on the Lindbergh Baby.
Speaker 1: You're leaving a lot of blanks in your reporting their evans.
Speaker 1: I tried to dig up the Lindbergh baby's corpse. It
Speaker 1: turns out that that is hard to do and also
Speaker 1: considered ghoulish, uh and horrible. Um. So I learned a
Speaker 1: lot of lessons working on this story. Um yeah, and
Speaker 1: I'd like to apologize to the Lindberg family finally. Finally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things I actually should apologize to
Speaker 1: them for, but that's that's personal. Um. Now. Dr Michael
Speaker 1: Bayden didn't really run into trouble in his new field
Speaker 1: until nine Now that is the year you might remember this,
Speaker 1: or in fall James Simpson went on trial from murdering
Speaker 1: Too Human Beings Now. Prosecutors contended that the attacks had
Speaker 1: happened very quickly. Um. And this, like the fact that
Speaker 1: he had killed his victims very quickly, was necessary for
Speaker 1: the prosecution's timeline um to be accurate. O. J had
Speaker 1: to have been able to drive back to his home
Speaker 1: before eleven pm on June twelve, so like it needed
Speaker 1: to have been a quick murder. So it became part
Speaker 1: of the defense's job to show that the murder had
Speaker 1: taken a long time. Because if the murder had taken
Speaker 1: a long time rather than being short, and the prosecutions
Speaker 1: timeline was sucked up, and then it would be easier
Speaker 1: to get O J. Off. You know, you're you're trying
Speaker 1: to disrupt whatever case the other side is making. So
Speaker 1: the defense needed to be able to show that had
Speaker 1: been a slow drawn out affair with a later time
Speaker 1: of death, which would have, you know, helped exonerate O J.
Speaker 1: And make his side of things seem more credible. Just
Speaker 1: a nice casual reminder that in high profile murder cases, uh,
Speaker 1: its sides are going to be like, you know, would
Speaker 1: be really helpful if these were the facts and you've
Speaker 1: got yeah, professionals who were like, yeah, okay, then I'll
Speaker 1: make him. We'll do it. Oh yeah, yeah, you'll pay
Speaker 1: me how many hundreds of thousands of dollars of course exactly,
Speaker 1: and that that was that was his job. That was
Speaker 1: Dr Baiden's job in the O J. Simpson case. The
Speaker 1: chief corner of l A, the guy who was not
Speaker 1: getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to weigh in
Speaker 1: who was you know, it was just his job to
Speaker 1: weigh in on murders. Told jurors that he believed that
Speaker 1: a single attacker had murdered both victims very quickly after
Speaker 1: lying in wait in the house. So O J's defense
Speaker 1: needed to counter this conclusion by the l A corner,
Speaker 1: and they went to Dr. Michael Baden for that. Baden
Speaker 1: slammed the l A Coroner's office for performing a crappy
Speaker 1: autopsy uh and argued that Nichole Simpson had struggled and
Speaker 1: was not unconscious when her throat was slashed. He claimed
Speaker 1: the wounds on her hands were defensive. He also argued
Speaker 1: that the cut on O. J's hand was not meaningful.
Speaker 1: Uh and I'm gonna quote from the Chicago Tribune now
Speaker 1: and trying to minimize the cuts importance. Baden revealed to
Speaker 1: the jury for the first time since Simpson's conflicting store
Speaker 1: about how he injured his hand. During an examination the
Speaker 1: week after the murder's Baden recalled that Simpson had said
Speaker 1: he'd cut himself in Los Angeles rushing to pack for
Speaker 1: a business trip to Chicago. He said he wasn't quite
Speaker 1: sure how he had cut himself and noticed he had
Speaker 1: been bleeding, but didn't know how it came about. Baden
Speaker 1: testified he recalled some blood after trying to retrieve his
Speaker 1: phone or some material from the Bronco. Now. Since defense
Speaker 1: attorneys have previously argued that police must have planted Simpson's
Speaker 1: blood in his driveway and Foyer Baden's revelation could help
Speaker 1: the prosecution, But Simpson told the doctor he cut the
Speaker 1: back of his left middle finger when he smashed a
Speaker 1: glass in his Chicago hotel room and anguish upon learning
Speaker 1: of his ex wife's murder. He said he was at
Speaker 1: a sink or something and squeezed or broke or banged
Speaker 1: a glass along a sink top and somehow cut the
Speaker 1: back of his finger, Baden said. Prosecutor Brian Kellberg suggested
Speaker 1: that Simpson's account of how he got the cut doesn't
Speaker 1: hold up under scrutiny. How, in your opinion, can somebody
Speaker 1: get a cut on the back of their hand by
Speaker 1: slamming a glass down without having any cuts or injuries
Speaker 1: on the palm, Kilberg said. Baden countered that Simpson could
Speaker 1: have brushed the broken glass with the back of his hand.
Speaker 1: Then Kelberg displayed photographs of simpson Chicago hotel bathroom shortly
Speaker 1: after he checked out. No blood stained the broken glass,
Speaker 1: shards in the white ink, or a white tail crumpled
Speaker 1: to one side. Do you see any evidence of blood?
Speaker 1: And those photographs. Kelbert gasked, no, I do not. Biden said, so,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. He he didn't do a great job. He
Speaker 1: kind of fucked up for the defense. And also like
Speaker 1: that the reason I read that whole cross examination cases,
Speaker 1: it makes it really clear it's his job to defend
Speaker 1: o j um Like, when he gets hired on one
Speaker 1: of these cases, he's not giving his unverartershed medical opinion.
Speaker 1: It's his job to help the defense. And that's what
Speaker 1: he was, Like, he was arguing for the defense there. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what this guy does. Um. So again, when this
Speaker 1: guy says Jeffrey Epstein was murdered and is hired by
Speaker 1: his brother, he was hired by Epstein's brother to say
Speaker 1: that Epstein was murdered. Like, that's pretty clear. Um Now.
Speaker 1: In two thousand seven, Dr Baden wound up at the
Speaker 1: helm of another high profile Hollywood murder case. This time
Speaker 1: he was hired by the defense for record executive Phil Specter. Now,
Speaker 1: Specter was charged with shooting actress Lanta Clark sent to
Speaker 1: death in his gigantic mansion, a crime he absolutely committed.
Speaker 1: Still in prison for it and will be until he dies. Uh. Now.
Speaker 1: One of the most damning pieces of evidence. Supporting this
Speaker 1: was the fact that Specter's jacket for the night had
Speaker 1: Clarkson's blood on it. Now, this made the defenses case,
Speaker 1: which is that she'd committed suicide with Specter's gun, seem
Speaker 1: less likely. Now. Dr Baden slid in to explain this away.
Speaker 1: He argued that although he'd attended her autopsy four years prior,
Speaker 1: he'd recently concluded that her spinal cord had not in
Speaker 1: fact been severed by a bullet, making it possible for
Speaker 1: her to have spewed blood on Phil Specter after shooting
Speaker 1: herself in the face. During cross examination, the prosecutor asked
Speaker 1: Dr Baiden if he had any conflicts of interest in
Speaker 1: this case that might impact his testimony. He said, none
Speaker 1: that I can think of. You wanna you want to
Speaker 1: guess as to whether or not he had conflicts of interest?
Speaker 1: I think he probably did, but I'd like you to
Speaker 1: confirm that for me. Yeah. Um, yeah, so he he
Speaker 1: kind of did. His wife was one of Phil Specter's
Speaker 1: defense attorneys. Cool that that might be a conflict of interest.
Speaker 1: I'm not a law guy. Yeah, his wife. Dr Baden's
Speaker 1: wife was Phil Specter's defense one of his defense attorneys.
Speaker 1: I mean, what am I doing wrong? How come I
Speaker 1: kicking a wife? Have you tried something forever? Someone? For
Speaker 1: everyone out there? You know, they have a pretty cute
Speaker 1: story have Yeah. Oh yeah, we'll talk about it in
Speaker 1: a little bit, but I want to talk about your
Speaker 1: romantic issues. Have you tried defendings Phil Specter in court?
Speaker 1: Not in court? No, okay, just just socially. I know
Speaker 1: you you're a big Specter fan. Yeah, like I like
Speaker 1: I I host a semi regular It's like dinner slash
Speaker 1: variety show in my salon where people come and perform.
Speaker 1: That's some people just uh, their performances, the food that
Speaker 1: they bring for everyone, Like we all share everything. It's
Speaker 1: a very very chill group. And I, uh, for the
Speaker 1: tenth time in a row, I comprehensively defend Phil Specter,
Speaker 1: and like, I think, I'm just doing it for the
Speaker 1: love of the sport at this point because no one's
Speaker 1: challenging me. Mostly convinced the group. Well that I mean,
Speaker 1: thank you for your service. Um yeah, that's a really
Speaker 1: a noble endeavor. I can think of no one who's
Speaker 1: been railroaded by the justice system more than Phil Spector.
Speaker 1: And it's just a nice night. There are no there
Speaker 1: are no phones. Put our phones in a bucket and
Speaker 1: just just celebrate ourselves and our talents and the truth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I have a similar regular get together. But to
Speaker 1: argue that Michael Jackson was murdered. UM, and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's nice. It's nice to get together with friends and
Speaker 1: um talk about celebrities and crime. Um. I don't know
Speaker 1: where this bit is supposed to go. You know where
Speaker 1: this bit is gonna go? Dan, actually right into products
Speaker 1: and services? Oh sick. I love product products yep, and
Speaker 1: and maybe a service or two. And we're back. We're
Speaker 1: ac and we are talking about variety shows, Phil Specter
Speaker 1: and actually we're we're we're talking about Dr Baton. It's
Speaker 1: time to get back into that. So we we just
Speaker 1: talked about his lovely wife who defended Phil Specter in
Speaker 1: the court in his lack of conflict of interest as
Speaker 1: a result of that. UM. Now, Dr Baden has spent
Speaker 1: a lot of his career in a world where accuracy
Speaker 1: is less important than showmanship. He was the primary analyst
Speaker 1: for the HBO series Autopsy for all nine seasons of
Speaker 1: its run. Uh and he was like an on screen
Speaker 1: presence for that He wrote two nonfiction books, Natural Death,
Speaker 1: Confessions of a Medical Examiner and Dead Reckoning The New
Speaker 1: Science of Catching Killers. He also co authored to fiction
Speaker 1: books with his wife, Remains Silent and Skeleton Justice. Uh,
Speaker 1: just love it. I love those titles. Now, these are
Speaker 1: interesting stories Dan. Both books center around a dynamic duo
Speaker 1: New York City Deputy Chief Medical Examiner Jake Rosen, Philomena
Speaker 1: Manny Man Frida, a beautiful crusade attorney. According to Amazon,
Speaker 1: the two fall in love and solve murders. I love that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty great. I love that in his fantasy fiction
Speaker 1: he gives himself the job he got fired from. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's very very Yes. So I'm going to read from
Speaker 1: the Amazon description of the book, Skeleton Justice, which is
Speaker 1: just a great title. Jake's careful forensic examinations, Manny's courtroom tenaciousness,
Speaker 1: and an unusual clue suggesting that a high ranking politician
Speaker 1: has risen from the grave. Take the pair from the
Speaker 1: bowels of the morgue to the world of international intrigue.
Speaker 1: At the heart of this story is a tragic tale
Speaker 1: of corruption, interlaced with cover ups, conspiracies, death squads, and
Speaker 1: dictators who committed crimes that to this day go unpunished.
Speaker 1: So uh, there you go. Yeah, I think a cool
Speaker 1: thing for listeners to do at home if they, like me,
Speaker 1: didn't know what Michael Baden looked like and just decided
Speaker 1: to look for the first time. Now this is the risk.
Speaker 1: Is the right time to do it? Yeah, he is.
Speaker 1: You definitely want to picture him fucking a crusading and
Speaker 1: beautiful attorney. Yeah, absolutely absolutely. You know, you know what
Speaker 1: he looks like. Who is that fucking the warmonger guy
Speaker 1: that used to be part of Trump's cabinet and or
Speaker 1: then he got in he got fired with a mustache? Yeah, Bolton.
Speaker 1: He looks like if Bolton like ate his sadness away
Speaker 1: for like nine months, this is how Bolton would look.
Speaker 1: He's there's a will for Brimley quality to him, but like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's Brimley asked for a meanness to him. But he's
Speaker 1: certainly he it's my brain is doing a Mandela thing
Speaker 1: because he he feels very at place in Trump's cabinet.
Speaker 1: Like I'm not positive that he's not on the cabinet
Speaker 1: somewhere because he just has that look that they all have.
Speaker 1: He could be the secretary for Health and Services. I'm
Speaker 1: looking at a picture of him right now pointing an
Speaker 1: a graph at a press conference, and like, yeah, he
Speaker 1: does it the way a Trump guy would point at
Speaker 1: a graph. Like it's weird to say that, but he's
Speaker 1: he's got the exact Yeah, he does look like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my god, Um, what a what a what a fella? Now,
Speaker 1: in more recent years, Dr Biden was hired by the
Speaker 1: family of Michael Brown to analyze his autopsy report and testify.
Speaker 1: His report concluded that there were no signs of a
Speaker 1: struggle and that Brown had been shot six times. Now,
Speaker 1: this is more or less consistent with the other reports
Speaker 1: on Brown's death, um, except for the fact that he
Speaker 1: stated with certainty that Brown had been shot exactly six times.
Speaker 1: A lot of Dr Biden's colleagues critiqued him for this,
Speaker 1: um because it's actually really hard to tell in a
Speaker 1: case like that, especially when someone shot, like right over concrete,
Speaker 1: how many times they were shot, because the bullets tend
Speaker 1: to pierce them and then ricochet back, so it often
Speaker 1: someone will have six holes in them, but the only
Speaker 1: have been shot three times. Um. So NBC talked to
Speaker 1: a pathologist who was very critical of Baden for staying
Speaker 1: confidently how many times Brown had been shot. He said
Speaker 1: Brown was way too confident for someone who hadn't seen
Speaker 1: X rays, clothing, or lab reports, all of which can
Speaker 1: be important. It was also worrying that Brown had been embalmed,
Speaker 1: because that would alter the color of the wounds, potentially
Speaker 1: throwing off Baden's analysis of entry and exit wounds. In
Speaker 1: his count of six bullets, it could be that only
Speaker 1: three bullets made those wounds. The pathologists said, So I
Speaker 1: I quote that not because like he was wrong overall,
Speaker 1: Like Michael Brown wasn't struggling. He was murdered, obviously, but
Speaker 1: like the fact that he's talking about exactly how many
Speaker 1: times the dude was shot um when he can't have
Speaker 1: known that, And like as this other pathologists note, he
Speaker 1: didn't see the X rays, the clothing, all of all
Speaker 1: of this context that's critical to actually making an accurate
Speaker 1: assessment of a case. He didn't know that. He just
Speaker 1: wanted to have a take, um, because it was his
Speaker 1: job to have a take, and so he gave a
Speaker 1: take without having the information he would Actually, it's fun
Speaker 1: to have takes. Dolphins, girl, sharks, it's fun. Dolphins all
Speaker 1: are are in fact girl sharks. Um. That is the
Speaker 1: official stance of this podcast, and I think it's fair
Speaker 1: to say the facial stance of I heart media. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: I can dictate corporate policy r E. Dolphins. That's in
Speaker 1: my contract now. Um. Fellow pathologists are generally pretty critical
Speaker 1: of Dr Baden. One former classmate of the doctors who
Speaker 1: also worked as a medical examiner, said this of him,
Speaker 1: He's very bright, but he has a propensity for giving
Speaker 1: out statements and testimony which are not entirely accurate. Uh.
Speaker 1: Dr Lowell Levine, who was the co director to compliment
Speaker 1: Sandwich that, you know, he seems very clever or whatever.
Speaker 1: He's a smart guy, but he lies all the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a good doctor whose patients always die. He's dangerously
Speaker 1: unfit with tremendous consequences. But his book, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: the fucking in that book. I will tell you if
Speaker 1: you want to come while reading someone else's fantasy fiction,
Speaker 1: that's the book. Um. Yeah. Dr Lowell Levine, who was
Speaker 1: co director for pathology for the New York State Police
Speaker 1: and like alongside Dr Baden and worked with him, said this,
Speaker 1: Michael never saw a camera he didn't like. He used
Speaker 1: to yell at me about the press. They're just trying
Speaker 1: to make a living. Why don't you help them? So
Speaker 1: this guy, he likes being in front of cameras. He
Speaker 1: likes the attention. It's not just about the money. It's
Speaker 1: also about being a part of the story, a trade
Speaker 1: shared by all the most normal, balanced people, all of
Speaker 1: the healthiest people in the world. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So
Speaker 1: it shouldn't come as a shock that Dr Michael Baden
Speaker 1: found his way into the employe of Jeffrey Epstein's brother.
Speaker 1: He did not conduct an autopsy and Epstein he did
Speaker 1: observe the autopsy. Uh and again. The bulk of his
Speaker 1: case that Epstein was murdered centers around the fact that
Speaker 1: Epstein's hyoid bone was fractured in three places. Baden calls
Speaker 1: this very unusual for suicide and more indicative of strangulation
Speaker 1: homicidal strangulation. Interestingly, Baden has recently claimed that the doctor
Speaker 1: who performed the autopsy didn't sign off on Epstein's cause
Speaker 1: of death is suicide. Dr Baden claims the call was
Speaker 1: made by the Chief Medical Examiner for New York City,
Speaker 1: which is the person holding the same job he got
Speaker 1: fired from. Doing um now. He insinuated on Fox and
Speaker 1: Friends that this was strange, But the reality seems to
Speaker 1: be that for a case this high profile, it's not
Speaker 1: unusual for the chief medical examiner to want to make
Speaker 1: that final call um and to not make that call
Speaker 1: just during the autopsy, because again, like that other medical
Speaker 1: examiners stated, there's other ship outside of the autopsy that
Speaker 1: you look at to try to determine what happened um,
Speaker 1: So it's not really weird that things would have proceeded
Speaker 1: this way. Rolling Stone interviewed Dr Judy Melinick, a pathologist,
Speaker 1: and she pointed out that highoid bone fractures happened in
Speaker 1: suicide too, and that depending on the placement of the rope,
Speaker 1: it would not be at all weird for this for
Speaker 1: have happened to Epstein, if the fractures are nowhere near
Speaker 1: the ligature furrow, and if there are defensive injuries on
Speaker 1: the arms, and the case is more consistent with the
Speaker 1: homicide being covered up than a suicidal hanging. If there
Speaker 1: are no other injuries to the body and the highoid
Speaker 1: and thyroid fractures correspond to the location of the furrow,
Speaker 1: then it could realistically be a hanging suicide. So again,
Speaker 1: he doesn't really give you all of the context that
Speaker 1: a professional who's not making money and just trying to
Speaker 1: get in front of a camera is going to give you. UM.
Speaker 1: Rolling Stone also spoke with Dr Pria Banergy, who's another
Speaker 1: UH forensic pathologist. Her comments are interesting to me, particularly
Speaker 1: in light of the criticisms made against Dr Baden after
Speaker 1: his work on the Brown murder. The reason we do
Speaker 1: full autopsies is to make sure that the outsides and
Speaker 1: the insides correlate and that everything makes sense. I always
Speaker 1: do an autopsy with a skeptical lens. In addition, any
Speaker 1: death and custody is scrutinized and find detailed to evaluate
Speaker 1: what led to the person's death. Now, Bandergy agreed that
Speaker 1: the broken hyoid bone was worrisome and definitely worthy of
Speaker 1: further investigation, but she didn't go on TV and say
Speaker 1: that she thought Epstein's death was probably homicide. Because she's
Speaker 1: a responsible medical professional. Doesn't really UNDI she has a
Speaker 1: future in the field. No, she's not going to be
Speaker 1: making O. J. Simpson money, that's for sure. UM. Now.
Speaker 1: Dr Samson, who's the Chief Medical Examiner of New York,
Speaker 1: who declared Epstein's death of suicide continues to stand behind
Speaker 1: that conclusion. She pointed out, no one finding can be
Speaker 1: taken in isolation, uh, and referred to the complete investigation
Speaker 1: conducted by her office as opposed to just the autopsy
Speaker 1: that Dr Baden witnessed. So like, that's that's the story
Speaker 1: of Dr Baden. I'm not saying Epstein wasn't murdered. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying I know what happened. I'm saying that, like
Speaker 1: all of this ship that keeps coming out that people
Speaker 1: take is damning stories is more indicative of like the
Speaker 1: media cycle around this and the need for there to
Speaker 1: be stories about it than it is about a smoking gun,
Speaker 1: because there's just not one. It's like, in a lot
Speaker 1: of cases, it's worth knowing the source of this statement.
Speaker 1: It's it's important to have the context of like, yes
Speaker 1: he said this, and uh, you know, there is a
Speaker 1: chance that Epstein was murdered, But like look who you're loo,
Speaker 1: who you're listening to. Yeah, you're listening to the guy
Speaker 1: who was hired to say that. Yeah, yeah, it's his job.
Speaker 1: And that's that's that's our fun story today. Um, are
Speaker 1: are you are you? Are you happy? Dan. Uh, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm always pretty happy. Hey, beier than you were with
Speaker 1: the last Epstein episode, much happier than I was the
Speaker 1: last episode, and not just because it was wildly depressing
Speaker 1: last time and he's fucking dead now. But um, I
Speaker 1: have to digest so much news for work, and a
Speaker 1: lot of it is either very breaking news about something
Speaker 1: that happened that week or news that has just stories
Speaker 1: that have been building for years and years and have
Speaker 1: hours of footage around them that I don't get to
Speaker 1: keep up with everything. You know, I missed so many things,
Speaker 1: and I like that I could just sit down with
Speaker 1: you and you could tell me that the news that
Speaker 1: I missed, it's very very helpful. Yeah, and now you know, uh,
Speaker 1: the rest of the story or slightly more of the story.
Speaker 1: Has this changed how you're leaning our e suicide or
Speaker 1: murder for Epstein? I think I'm leading suicide. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to take the stand on that or anything like,
Speaker 1: but everything you've laid out makes a pretty compelling case
Speaker 1: for it. Yeah. I'm not gonna take a strong stance either, because, like,
Speaker 1: the dude did have dirt on two presidents, including one
Speaker 1: sitting president, and like a royal family member and like
Speaker 1: that's just the top of the list. So like, yeah, fun,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people who wanted the son of
Speaker 1: a bit dead, um, but like I'm not seeing any
Speaker 1: evidence for that yet. Um. And I think people need
Speaker 1: to chill out and a trust that, like, we're just
Speaker 1: not going to get any good information about this for
Speaker 1: a while. Um, it's just going to be shipped like
Speaker 1: Dr Baden trying to stay in the news. So that said,
Speaker 1: I also think I think you'll convince listeners like me
Speaker 1: who knew a little bit about this but not too much,
Speaker 1: that there's not a conspiracy there. But I think the
Speaker 1: people who already believe this is a conspiracy and they're
Speaker 1: like fucket, Hilary Clinton killed f Stein with her hands.
Speaker 1: That's like they're they're they're lost, man, you're not gonna
Speaker 1: get them. Yeah belief. I yeah, it's we all know
Speaker 1: like Hillary Clinton did nine eleven, but I don't think
Speaker 1: she killed Jeffrey Epps. Um. Yeah. Yeah, that, like I
Speaker 1: think we should all just stop living in this this
Speaker 1: conspiratorial world and start trying to make sure that she
Speaker 1: she faces justice for her nine elevening. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: so crazy when when everyone was like Hillary Clinton ben Ghazi,
Speaker 1: which you know she did do also the whole time,
Speaker 1: I'm like, gods, there's a bigger fish. What are you doing?
Speaker 1: There's nine eleven. We've all seen the pictures of her
Speaker 1: flying those planes into the towers and people shooting out.
Speaker 1: She did both of them. Yeah, she is, I mean,
Speaker 1: in fairness to her, an incredible pilot. Um like one
Speaker 1: of the greatest of her generation. Um, it's a shame
Speaker 1: she used her powers for evil. Well, that's gonna be
Speaker 1: all for us today on Behind the Bastards um Uh
Speaker 1: tweeted us with hashtag Hillary Clinton nine eleven Justice. UM.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that will. It had to lead to some
Speaker 1: really fun mentions for both of us. Um, Dan, you
Speaker 1: got any pluggable to plug? Yeah, the season finale of
Speaker 1: the show that I write for will be on that
Speaker 1: week and then we'll be off for a couple of
Speaker 1: months for a nice hiatus. So watched the season finale. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's very A lot of people, a tremendous amount of
Speaker 1: people work very hard to get every episode of this
Speaker 1: show onto your TV or or phone. Um, and so
Speaker 1: watch it because because a lot of us loosely making it.
Speaker 1: Now the show that you work for is is Last
Speaker 1: Week Tonight with Communities? John Oliver, Yes, that's right. Did
Speaker 1: I not mentioned the name of the show? You did
Speaker 1: not mention the name of the very popular and influential
Speaker 1: TV show that you write for and won an Emmy
Speaker 1: for writing for. I'm so cool. Oh my god, that's
Speaker 1: punk Rock. I gotta ask with the Emmy, do you
Speaker 1: wear it around your neck? Ever? Like when you go
Speaker 1: to the gym? I found when we like the night
Speaker 1: you win the Emmy, you they just hand it to
Speaker 1: you and then you walk around with it because you
Speaker 1: don't go like the hotel is far from where the
Speaker 1: Emmys are, so you just go to the party's carrying
Speaker 1: as emmy. You're at the Governor's Ball in the HBO
Speaker 1: party in the last week to night party with an
Speaker 1: Emmy in your hand, and strangers, some of whom are famous,
Speaker 1: will say congratulations to you. So I've just never left
Speaker 1: the house without it. I don't have it on my
Speaker 1: neck or anything like that. But but as soon as
Speaker 1: I discovered that people say congratulations to you and you
Speaker 1: hold an Emmy, and and my brain was like more
Speaker 1: of this, please, I've just I mean, it's filthy because
Speaker 1: I have not let go of it. M M. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you've seen me in the street with the Emmy,
Speaker 1: say congratulations to me please. Oh yeah, no, I I will,
Speaker 1: but I will not shake your filthy emmy hand. Um
Speaker 1: no no. Um, well that's Dan. Give him congratulations on
Speaker 1: his Emmy and ask him how various famous people smell,
Speaker 1: um in case he's met them and some of them. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was talking about smells. You were to come out
Speaker 1: to New York. What You're gonna come out in New
Speaker 1: York visit? Yeah, you know, I think I think my
Speaker 1: my I might wind up there next year to do
Speaker 1: some work. Um, I'm hoping. So I love the apple
Speaker 1: that never is small as people call it. Um. So
Speaker 1: we'll we'll have a we'll have an Emmy party. Um
Speaker 1: and uh yeah. You can find this podcast on the
Speaker 1: internet at behind the Bastards dot com. You can find
Speaker 1: us on Twitter and Instagram at Bastards pod. Um. You
Speaker 1: can buy t shirts at Tea Public. Uh. And you know,
Speaker 1: if you want to steal an Emmy and mail it
Speaker 1: to me, Uh, then I too will be able to
Speaker 1: get compliments from strangers in the street. Um. So you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know who who who who's easy to rob
Speaker 1: this one in Emmy? I don't know. Try Will Wheaton.
Speaker 1: He did he win an Emmy. I don't think so well,
Speaker 1: rob will wait in either way, UM well, maybe don't
Speaker 1: do that. Should not be urging people to commit specific
Speaker 1: crimes on the podcast. Give Will Wheaton an Emmy and
Speaker 1: then take it from him so that it's technically not
Speaker 1: a crime. I should just give you know what. I
Speaker 1: gotta tell you, man, from one right or to another,
Speaker 1: you are sticking the landing here. Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: We try to end every episode gracefully um and with
Speaker 1: a plomb. Um. So the show's done. Yeah, good h