Speaker 1: School of Humans. We've all seen episodes of CSI where
Speaker 1: murders get solved in an hour or less. But the
Speaker 1: truth is that in America today, if you put a
Speaker 1: gun to someone's head, you have about a fifty percent
Speaker 1: chance of getting away with murder. In many areas, the
Speaker 1: murder clearance rate is a lot worse. On September ninth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine, sixteen year old Janie Ward collapsed during
Speaker 1: a high school party at a cabin in the woods
Speaker 1: near Marshall, Arkansas. Some friends put her in the back
Speaker 1: of a pickup truck and drove her into town. They
Speaker 1: ended up at the Bank parking lot, where Janie was
Speaker 1: pronounced dead at eight forty five pm. It could have
Speaker 1: been an accident. That's the official story. But the closer
Speaker 1: I look at the case, the more questions I have.
Speaker 1: Did someone get away with murder? I'm Catherine Townsend, and
Speaker 1: this is helen gone. In many cities in America, experts
Speaker 1: say that a lot of people are afraid to speak
Speaker 1: out about what they witnessed, and fear of retaliation. Doesn't
Speaker 1: just happen in big cities with gang problems. It happens
Speaker 1: in small towns too. Small towns also struggle with death investigations.
Speaker 1: A lot of police forces lack the experience and the
Speaker 1: budget to deal with complex murder cases. As a result,
Speaker 1: mistakes are made and valuable evidence can be lost forever.
Speaker 1: In many counties, the person who examined you after death
Speaker 1: is not a medical examiner, but the coroner, who often
Speaker 1: has no medical training. In Arkansas, you just have to
Speaker 1: be eighteen years old and not a felon to be coroner.
Speaker 1: In Janney's case, Tom Martin was coroner of Cercy County.
Speaker 1: He's the one who pronounced Janeye dead at the bank
Speaker 1: parking lot. The medical examiner who performed the autopsy was
Speaker 1: doctor Fawmy Mallick. He was the chief medical examiner for
Speaker 1: the whole state of Arkansas and located in Little Rock.
Speaker 1: Some coroners are working to get additional training and to
Speaker 1: change the system from within to explain what happens when
Speaker 1: someone dies under mysterious circumstances. Here's an Arkansas corner. My
Speaker 1: name is Joseph. Joseph Blake is the coroner in Stone County.
Speaker 1: He's twenty two, making him the youngest coroner ever elected
Speaker 1: in Arkansas. He's very open about the fact that many
Speaker 1: corners have no medical expertise and stresses the importance of
Speaker 1: additional training. He says that his job starts with a
Speaker 1: call from the sheriff. It all starts normally from the
Speaker 1: Sarf's office. They call me. Let's say it's just a
Speaker 1: regular home unattended death, which that means that nobody was
Speaker 1: present of thee walked in the house and pounce on
Speaker 1: man on the floor. So the Sheriff's office is gonna
Speaker 1: call me, and then I'm gonna check in the radio
Speaker 1: and be in that out. Normally, by the time I
Speaker 1: get there, there's normally an officer that's already made it there,
Speaker 1: or CID guy that's made it there, or both, and
Speaker 1: they're they're they've kind of done there an investigation part.
Speaker 1: I'm normally the last person call for anything nine times
Speaker 1: out of ten. That's that's how it's gonna be the
Speaker 1: cause they like to do their investigation first. When talking
Speaker 1: to Joseph, I get a sense that the relationship between
Speaker 1: the Coigner's office and police departments hasn't always been the best,
Speaker 1: and while he's been the Stone County corner, repairing that
Speaker 1: relationship has been one of his top priorities. This is
Speaker 1: getting a lot better since I've took office. But there's
Speaker 1: not been a good relationship between corners and police officers.
Speaker 1: There's not really. If you was a corner, you thought
Speaker 1: police officers were done. If you was a police officer,
Speaker 1: you thro all the corner. So it was kind of
Speaker 1: that hand. But now it's gotten a lot better with
Speaker 1: me after developed a good relationship with their guys here
Speaker 1: just don't county, and so they're normally there. They take pictures,
Speaker 1: get a lot of information, and I get there. My
Speaker 1: job is I'm kind of the missing pieces kind of guy.
Speaker 1: I look and make sure that anything that they didn't miss,
Speaker 1: I get pretty much the same information they get. Who
Speaker 1: found them, down their normal bedtime schedule, just kind of
Speaker 1: gathering information to my corner report. And then I pronounced
Speaker 1: them is legally dead at that point, and then we
Speaker 1: asked the family from there if if everything lo file
Speaker 1: place affected. When I asked the family, you know which
Speaker 1: funeral home they want to choose, and it goes from
Speaker 1: the natural. That's very easy, and it don't sound like
Speaker 1: a lot. Every death, every death I'm you moved to
Speaker 1: the nursing home. Every death is like that. As a
Speaker 1: homicide until proven otherwise. Every death is looked at as
Speaker 1: a homicide until proven otherwise. But in Jennie's case, Ron
Speaker 1: said that coroner Tom Martin didn't even bring up an
Speaker 1: autopsy until Ron insisted. Tom instead just asked which funeral
Speaker 1: home the family wanted to use. This is odd given
Speaker 1: that the paramedics had already said it was a suspicious death.
Speaker 1: Janie's funeral on September fifteenth. After Janie's death, Ron starts
Speaker 1: recording and taking notes everywhere he goes. The funeral was
Speaker 1: no exception. What have you have? A word of Mars
Speaker 1: that's Saturday came the math at age sixteen. He wrote
Speaker 1: down that five hundred people attended the funeral and said
Speaker 1: that a lot of them looked into the open casket
Speaker 1: and sought injuries on Janie's face and body. We read
Speaker 1: in one of his notebooks more trauma showed up on
Speaker 1: her body, things that were not noticed the night of
Speaker 1: her death. What showed up on Jannie's wrists were what
Speaker 1: appears to be restraining marks and bruises on the back
Speaker 1: of her hands, and a splinter about a quarter of
Speaker 1: an inch long under her right thumbnail. Ron had photos
Speaker 1: taken of Jennie at the funeral to document what he saw.
Speaker 1: When we talked to Janie's sister Crystal and her mom,
Speaker 1: Mona Cristal also remembered additional injuries on Jennie. One thing
Speaker 1: I'll never forget and I was eleven when I saw
Speaker 1: Jannie there the first time in the coffin, and I
Speaker 1: pointed this out to Dad. Jenny had claw marks in
Speaker 1: her face. She had nicks different places that were claw marks.
Speaker 1: You don't get that from falling off of port roofs
Speaker 1: all the way down. She had bruises down it was
Speaker 1: fingernails where Nag had clawd her scratched her face and
Speaker 1: that's cat fine. Oh. Yes. She had a splinter under
Speaker 1: her thumb half an inch long. Also. That was never
Speaker 1: spoken of or addressed in the autopsy, but we saw
Speaker 1: it in the cast at a funeral. I saw it,
Speaker 1: Ronnie saw it. We all commented on it. Why was
Speaker 1: that not in the autopsy. The state's chief medical Examiner,
Speaker 1: doctor Fawmy Malick, performed Janey's autopsy at the State Crime
Speaker 1: Lab in Little Rock on September eleventh, two days after
Speaker 1: she died. The cause of death was listed as an
Speaker 1: upper spinal cord and neck injury from landing on the
Speaker 1: back of the head. The manner of death is listed
Speaker 1: as undetermined. The autopsy mentions a single small bruise bluish red,
Speaker 1: circular in shape with a cleared center on Jane's lower back,
Speaker 1: but says nothing about the injuries Ron says that he
Speaker 1: and others saw at the funeral. Doctor Malick wrote, the
Speaker 1: neck is loose, but no apparent external injury is present.
Speaker 1: To Jane's parents, this doesn't make sense. How could someone
Speaker 1: have such a catastrophic injury falling off a portstep that
Speaker 1: was less than ten inches high. Also, Jane's body was
Speaker 1: clean when it arrived in Little Rock. There was no
Speaker 1: mention of the dirt or debris or any ante sort
Speaker 1: of why her body could have been wet. Today is
Speaker 1: Friday's twenty seventh, nineteen eighty nine. This tape is Ron
Speaker 1: Ward at the Arkansas State Crime Lab in Little Rock
Speaker 1: with his friend Robert on Friday, November twenty seventh, nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine. Ron had requested the autopsy report after several
Speaker 1: months of waiting. He said all he received was the
Speaker 1: first few pages determine. Ron heads to Little Rock to
Speaker 1: get the report himself, get help us, get a coffee
Speaker 1: of the roapopture. Well, how are you kneing an autopsy
Speaker 1: report on? He isn't one who needs it. It's w daughter,
Speaker 1: my daughter, okay, And what's your NA award? I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: Ronald Ward Ron. And what's your daughter's fame? Her name
Speaker 1: was Olivia Jane. It was listed I think probably as
Speaker 1: your records as in Janie. When Ron shows up at
Speaker 1: the office, he's told by the receptionist that doctor Malik
Speaker 1: is in the middle of an autopsy elsewhere in the building.
Speaker 1: She motions for him to sit and wait for doctor
Speaker 1: Malick to get back so he can authorize the release
Speaker 1: of the autopsy report. Ron sits in the tight waiting room.
Speaker 1: Then the phone rings, move on and like, okay, I'll go.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you ever talk pay or what?
Speaker 1: Let me kick Yes, come. Doctor Malik invites Ron back
Speaker 1: to his office to explain the autopsy results. I will
Speaker 1: pretend you all to them, to do a lot of
Speaker 1: things for you. Ambo I have for the body. If
Speaker 1: you're left to see if I see it shortly, you don't,
Speaker 1: don't you will see it? Sure? Yeah? Doctor Malick shows
Speaker 1: Ron and photographs and an X ray of Jennie's spine.
Speaker 1: Let's part the junction between the skull and the bone
Speaker 1: then become loose, and the believing was here when she landed.
Speaker 1: The cause of death is an upper spinal cord and
Speaker 1: neck injury. High put extension studn HYGHT extension can snap
Speaker 1: her neck like that. Doctor Mallick clarifies it's a hyper
Speaker 1: extension injury. He says that the next snap back and
Speaker 1: then snap forward with enough force to cause hemorrhaging in
Speaker 1: the upper neck. He says it's severe whiplash and compares
Speaker 1: the injury to one you'd get if you were rear
Speaker 1: ended in a car. When she lived, what would happen?
Speaker 1: Not lucky if she lived? A record with me? Why
Speaker 1: does undertaining Let me explain this to you, because I
Speaker 1: wanted the head for the first hand. Before that, Doctor
Speaker 1: Malick explains why he left. The result is undetermined? Is
Speaker 1: this uh game? As a game? Feeling her own nobody
Speaker 1: touch it could be an extent or that. But if
Speaker 1: somebody just push the ther it can't to change the story.
Speaker 1: Uh As maybe homicide and homicide different. It's a bit
Speaker 1: hard to make out, but here doctor Malick is explaining
Speaker 1: that if someone intended to harm Jenney, that's homicide, but
Speaker 1: there could also be negligence intend to harm her, maybe neighbors,
Speaker 1: and you see what I mean. So he had the
Speaker 1: difference between accident and homicide just a little thin line.
Speaker 1: The difference between accident and homicide is a thin line.
Speaker 1: And because I don't know, I can't U yes, so
Speaker 1: I can't throw it either way. The bottom line is
Speaker 1: he can't rule it either way. He also couldn't tell
Speaker 1: Ron about the missing white pinstriped shirt or why Janie's
Speaker 1: body was wet and covered with sand and dirt. This
Speaker 1: mighty pedipus to show you in order to listen to Roma.
Speaker 1: Here he's saying he doesn't notice any bruising that would
Speaker 1: indicate that someone attacked Jennie. Nobody again seeing and submediate
Speaker 1: the girl landers and had that and snap their neck.
Speaker 1: There are some stretches in the back, as he noted,
Speaker 1: but otherwise no, no, nobody a doctor. Melick seems very
Speaker 1: polite in the tape. He's sympathetic to Ron when Ron
Speaker 1: says he hasn't been getting information from the police. But
Speaker 1: see they haven't told him anything, and he'll ask, I
Speaker 1: mean tell him that he can't, and they say you
Speaker 1: don't need to know that. Well, for me is a
Speaker 1: sorry way, you know, and a way he is a
Speaker 1: father he should he has. Uh, That's why we came
Speaker 1: down here literally, Miss Silver. Let me tell your sense
Speaker 1: against school, the law, the way hit just anything is
Speaker 1: there's some cruel people do as they tell you. The
Speaker 1: uthopic is up confidential, but I'm my father, I don't.
Speaker 1: That's why I do it her if this happened to
Speaker 1: why I would left to know you see what that
Speaker 1: you I do know some people just stick to the
Speaker 1: law and tell the law. But we should be human
Speaker 1: as the child. You know. I know that at that
Speaker 1: funeral home. I know when you saw her she looked
Speaker 1: this way. When I saw her, they had different short arms.
Speaker 1: Ron asked if you could take one of the Autosi photos.
Speaker 1: May may I have this? Doctor Mallick hesitated, but said
Speaker 1: yes you w Later Ron wrote in his notebook that
Speaker 1: what he walked out of the crime lab wod that
Speaker 1: day would become very significant toward helping piece together the
Speaker 1: events of nine nine eighty nine in the death of
Speaker 1: his daughter, sixteen year old Olivia Jane Ward. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back. I'm pouring over autopsy reports trying to find
Speaker 1: similar cases that could explain what happened to Janey. The
Speaker 1: photo doctor Mallet gave to Ron shows a dissection of
Speaker 1: Janey's spinal column. The column is made up of thirty
Speaker 1: three vertebra protecting the spinal cord around the neck. There's
Speaker 1: less space between the bone and the nerves, making it
Speaker 1: much more vulnerable. An arrow points to the injury. Doctor
Speaker 1: Malick examined Janie's stomach. He wrote, the stomach contains ten
Speaker 1: hoursnces of digested food matter, in which tomato particles are encountered.
Speaker 1: No oranges are noted. He mentioned oranges because that's the
Speaker 1: fruit that the party host, Jay had soaked in rubbing
Speaker 1: alcohol for the PGA punch. People at the party saw
Speaker 1: Jane chewing on orange slices, but the contents of the
Speaker 1: stomach were not tested, So if Malach only made a
Speaker 1: visual inspection, it hits me that orange slices soaked in
Speaker 1: red punch would look exactly like tomatoes. He noted that
Speaker 1: it didn't appear that she had any other medical condition
Speaker 1: that would have caused her to drop dead suddenly. Janey's
Speaker 1: blood alcohol level was point zero five, or the equivalent
Speaker 1: of around one shot or glass of beer. No trace
Speaker 1: of drugs was found in her system, which means that
Speaker 1: at least some of the rumors can be put to rest.
Speaker 1: The evidence points to the fact that it wasn't an
Speaker 1: overdose of drugs or drinking that killed Jane. According to
Speaker 1: the rology report, Janney was not pregnant and no blood
Speaker 1: or seamen were found. But there are still so many
Speaker 1: things that are unexplained, like why didn't the crime lab
Speaker 1: test the residue on Jane's body, which Ron insisted was
Speaker 1: from the creek bed. Also, one of the paramedics on
Speaker 1: the scene put a bag around Jannie's hands. This is
Speaker 1: normally done so the material underneath the fingernails can be
Speaker 1: tested later for DNA, but in Janney's case, this was
Speaker 1: never done. This seems to be a huge oversight because
Speaker 1: fingernails can give all kinds of clues. They can point
Speaker 1: to the cause in a natural death case, and they
Speaker 1: can also show if there is DNA from a fight.
Speaker 1: A few weeks after visiting doctor Malick at the crime lab,
Speaker 1: Ron received a copy of his daughter's X rays in
Speaker 1: the mail, but Ron insisted that the x rays were
Speaker 1: not the same ones he saw at the crime lab.
Speaker 1: The X rays looked like they had been tampered with.
Speaker 1: When we met with journalists Mike Masterson and Janie's mom, Mona,
Speaker 1: this was obviously something that still baffles them. The side
Speaker 1: X ray, the one where they blanked it out all
Speaker 1: the way up her neck, which was not the one
Speaker 1: they showed you when you went to the crime lab,
Speaker 1: which she didn't even have the official stamp of the
Speaker 1: crime lab lie in it, so obvious they were tampered with.
Speaker 1: You know, the very area that was supposed to be
Speaker 1: X ray was white it out. You know what when
Speaker 1: you first saw it, because Ronnie dead, he made the statement,
Speaker 1: that's why killed her? Right there it was separated. So
Speaker 1: what was the purpose of an X ray if it's
Speaker 1: all white it out? The lateral X ray shows the
Speaker 1: side of Jannie's skull, but her entire neck is covered
Speaker 1: by a hazy semicircle basically a white blob in the
Speaker 1: bottom part of the X ray film. The crime lab
Speaker 1: seal is also not on this view of the X ray.
Speaker 1: When we asked Mona about doctor Malick, she made her
Speaker 1: feelings clear and he wasn't very smart. You know he
Speaker 1: wasn't smart at all. He was so confident he didn't
Speaker 1: know what he was doing. It was obvious. It was
Speaker 1: so obvious he did not know what he was doing.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to note in case you didn't know this,
Speaker 1: Fammy Malick, he not only watched my sister's case, but
Speaker 1: many many while he was in the Bill Clinton administration
Speaker 1: while he was the governor of the state of Arkansas.
Speaker 1: Fammi Malick's controversial career in the many botched autopsies during
Speaker 1: the years he ran the Arkansas State Crime Lab or
Speaker 1: the stuff of nightmares. By the time doctor Malick performed
Speaker 1: the autopsy on Janey, he'd been working in the crime
Speaker 1: lab for about ten years. At that point, he had
Speaker 1: performed thousands of autopsies. Ron collected articles about doctor Malick.
Speaker 1: One headline from a yellowed article written in nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: accused doctor Malick of lying on the stand, tampering with evidence,
Speaker 1: and manufacturing convictions, and the words wouldn't be the first
Speaker 1: family appalled by doctor Malix's autops the results. Families joined
Speaker 1: together and formed a group called Victims of Malix's Infuriating Testimony.
Speaker 1: The acronym for that group is vomit. The author of
Speaker 1: that article from nineteen ninety was Rod Lorenzen. I asked
Speaker 1: him what made Malix so problematic. He had no oversight
Speaker 1: from state government. His decisions affected things like insurance payouts,
Speaker 1: you know, on life insurance policies. He was in a
Speaker 1: position to do favors for politicians if they needed something
Speaker 1: done in their district, for example, if they needed a
Speaker 1: decision on an autopsy to go a different way. My
Speaker 1: impression was that that would get done, and so he
Speaker 1: just had a lot of power and freedom in how
Speaker 1: he decided cases. You know. That was the one thing.
Speaker 1: This wasn't anybody watching the guy, I don't think. My
Speaker 1: impression was that he was not very good at his job,
Speaker 1: to story, and yet he was there for several years,
Speaker 1: mainly just because there was no ower sight of that position.
Speaker 1: In his article, Rod refers to Malik as a tool
Speaker 1: of the state and points out that in Arkansas at
Speaker 1: the time, the medical examiner held the sole power to
Speaker 1: determine the cause of death. This differs from other states,
Speaker 1: where county coroners also have some input in decisions and
Speaker 1: provide evidence of foul play suspected, but in Arkansas, in
Speaker 1: the late eighties, Malik ran the crime lab. No one
Speaker 1: really knew what happened with the evidence Corners gathered and
Speaker 1: sent to the crime lab and if it was ever
Speaker 1: used in making decisions. Rod told me that while he
Speaker 1: was writing about the crime lab, he reached out to
Speaker 1: doctor Malick multiple times, but that doctor Malik always denied
Speaker 1: requests to speak to media. Then, after Rod wrote his
Speaker 1: pieces about Malik, Malik's attorney threatened to sue him. Rod said,
Speaker 1: when he was writing about the crime lab, he got
Speaker 1: creeped out. Malik's employees were kept on a tight leash
Speaker 1: and afraid of speaking out against him. When I was
Speaker 1: an interview on one of one of the guys that
Speaker 1: worked for Malik, they just called themselves Meathollers. This guy
Speaker 1: told me that in some cases Malik would come into
Speaker 1: the lab and he would know something about, say a
Speaker 1: victim that had come into the lab. And this guy
Speaker 1: told me that Malick would already have his mind made
Speaker 1: up about what the cause of death was gonna be.
Speaker 1: Malix's controversial rulings include the June twenty eighth, nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: five death of Raymond p. Albright, a fifty year old
Speaker 1: man from Mountain home, who was found in his yard
Speaker 1: dead of gunshot wounds. Malik ruled the death of suicide,
Speaker 1: even though Albright had been shot five times in the chest.
Speaker 1: One finding the infamous Boys on the Tracks case in
Speaker 1: Saline County was particularly controversial. On October twenty third, nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty seven, seventeen year old Kevin Ives and sixteen year
Speaker 1: old Don Henry were run over by a train near
Speaker 1: the town of Alexander. Doctor Malick ruled that the boys,
Speaker 1: who were best friends, had been smoking pot and just
Speaker 1: happened to fall asleep on the tracks, but a second
Speaker 1: autopsy indicated that Henry had been stabbed in the back,
Speaker 1: that Ives had been struck on the skull, and that
Speaker 1: both boys probably had been placed on the tracks unconscious,
Speaker 1: maybe already dead. The case would later be linked to
Speaker 1: high level cocaine dealing through an airport in Mina, Arkansas,
Speaker 1: involving state officials at the highest level. Two years after
Speaker 1: Janey died in nineteen ninety one, Malik quit among a
Speaker 1: flurry of allegations that he botched autopsies, and after losing
Speaker 1: the support of then Governor Bill Clinton. He applied for
Speaker 1: a position in Guam, but his employment was put on
Speaker 1: hold after officials there found out about all the contents.
Speaker 1: Malick eventually ended up in Clearwater, Florida. He died in
Speaker 1: August twenty eighteen at the age of eighty five. When
Speaker 1: you ask people in Arkansas about doctor Malick, he's considered
Speaker 1: a pariah in a statewide embarrassment. But when we talked
Speaker 1: with journalist Mike Masterson, he had another perspective on doctor Malick.
Speaker 1: He said he was someone that he once considered a friend. Oh,
Speaker 1: I was going to ask you about I know, you
Speaker 1: told me a little bit about your relationship with Fommy
Speaker 1: and how he was good at his job. But then
Speaker 1: something happened. Yeah, But when he came to Arkansas, he
Speaker 1: replaced a medical examiner named Stephen marx Well. Stephen had
Speaker 1: been canned and I think ended up down in Texas.
Speaker 1: FAMMI started, we became friends. I met him. Pommy started
Speaker 1: telling me about things that he thought, as a journalist
Speaker 1: I should know about involving the medical examiner's office. Well,
Speaker 1: the first one was a girl who had died in
Speaker 1: the Lake Hot Springs. It had been ruled that she drowned.
Speaker 1: He suspected that wasn't true. So I wrote a column
Speaker 1: I'm not called. Back then, I was writing stories. This
Speaker 1: case Mike is describing would end up with the body
Speaker 1: being exhumed and the cause of death change from drowning
Speaker 1: to being shot through the head. And that was just
Speaker 1: the first case that Mike wrote about. Anyway, cases like that,
Speaker 1: there were several, and after they dug up six bodies,
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton said, Okay, we're not going to dig up
Speaker 1: the entire state of Arkansas. Now. I say this only
Speaker 1: because Fomi Malek was at that point struck me very
Speaker 1: much as someone interested in truth and a clean medical
Speaker 1: examiner's office. So another reporter and I after that dug
Speaker 1: into the medical examiner's office and found all kinds of
Speaker 1: stuff wrong with it. Under Stephen Marx Malick seemed to
Speaker 1: be although later in his career he had some pretty
Speaker 1: dark periods until he finally left. During that period, he
Speaker 1: seemed to be trying to help that family, and I
Speaker 1: think he felt for him. He's a father himself. He
Speaker 1: was a smart man. He was from Egypt, but he
Speaker 1: could see the truth this case thinks that I haven't.
Speaker 1: Whatever his motives were, Mike said that doctor Malick inherited
Speaker 1: an already corrupt crime lab, so it's no wonder that
Speaker 1: the Wards would be suspicious of any result. In their eyes,
Speaker 1: Janey's autopsy could be another one that was botched or
Speaker 1: intentionally mishandled to help a political ally. In the years
Speaker 1: that he covered doctor Malick, Rod ended up writing a
Speaker 1: few stories about Janey. I met mister Ward, I guess
Speaker 1: probably twenty years ago at a restaurant, and he's kind
Speaker 1: of showed me a fellow that he had kept on
Speaker 1: his daughter, and he showed me the autopsy photos. And
Speaker 1: it was just very difficult to believe that this girl
Speaker 1: died by falling backwards off a porch ten or twelve
Speaker 1: inches high. I mean, it seemed ridiculous. I remember, really,
Speaker 1: you know, talking with mister Ward, it was he was
Speaker 1: just taunted by the whole thing. I mean, he was
Speaker 1: you could just see in his eyes that he was
Speaker 1: a tortured individual, and he it Goshi. He made an
Speaker 1: incredible effort to try to, you know, see if he
Speaker 1: could he could get it the truth of how his
Speaker 1: daughter died. Before Ron Ward visited the crime lab, he
Speaker 1: knew about doctor Malick's reputation, and when he received the
Speaker 1: X rays, the family grew even more suspicious. So we
Speaker 1: have a medical examiner who some people think is complicit
Speaker 1: in covering up cases for powerful people and Arkansas, and
Speaker 1: we have a crime lab that already has a long
Speaker 1: history of corruption. So here's where Ron made this leap.
Speaker 1: Would doctor Mallick be complicit in a cover up of
Speaker 1: a murder that impacted some of Marshall's elite, like the
Speaker 1: parents of the kids at the party, especially the children
Speaker 1: of the town's doctor, and a judge who delivered Sirce
Speaker 1: County to Bill Clinton. To an outsider, this could all
Speaker 1: sound a little paranoid, But as a great Pi once
Speaker 1: said to me, paranoid people aren't always wrong, especially in Arkansas.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Jane's case is officially closed on
Speaker 1: February fourteenth, nineteen ninety, just five months after she died.
Speaker 1: The prosecuting attorney, H. G. Foster sends a letter to
Speaker 1: the Wards to say that the investigation found no evidence
Speaker 1: of foul play in Jane's death. On November fifth, nineteen ninety,
Speaker 1: the Ward family files affidavits calling for the arrest of
Speaker 1: the prosecutor's assigned to the case, the coroner, the deputy sheriff,
Speaker 1: and doctor Mallick the reason conspiracy, perverting and obstructing justice,
Speaker 1: and helping cover up the facts in Olivia janey Ward's death.
Speaker 1: They also submitted a petition with twelve hundred signatures calling
Speaker 1: for a grand jury and an appointment of a special
Speaker 1: prosecutor to look into the case. Their request is denied.
Speaker 1: The judge writes to Ron, in my opinion, there is
Speaker 1: nothing in the evidence reviewed by me that indicates that
Speaker 1: anyone deliberately murdered her daughter. Two years later, Malick was
Speaker 1: gone from the Arkansas State Crime Lab. Arkansas brought in
Speaker 1: two independent medical examiners to review a dozen of Malick's
Speaker 1: controversial autopsies, one of which was Jennie's and Janey's was
Speaker 1: the only case reviewed where they ended up changing the
Speaker 1: cause of death on the desert teet. Of all the
Speaker 1: cases we looked at, I think I'm not sure what that.
Speaker 1: Ron and Mona spoke with the two pathologists when they
Speaker 1: were in Arkansas, Like he always did, Ron recorded the conversation,
Speaker 1: and over the years this tape sound quality has seriously degreed. Well,
Speaker 1: am I asking to turn what happened? We ask what
Speaker 1: didn't happen? We know he did not offer biopaper in
Speaker 1: course of the pont aug andrew a lot. We know this,
Speaker 1: so we don't have to content with a dull let's
Speaker 1: feel about Okay, we did tell us that what didn't
Speaker 1: happen because we've I didn't know this, so so we
Speaker 1: can go from there. So we want a grand jury.
Speaker 1: We have to know. The Holling me is just all.
Speaker 1: The main thing the family takes away from this meeting
Speaker 1: is that, by looking at the autopsy report, the pathologists
Speaker 1: can't say definitively what killed Jane. They say that some
Speaker 1: of the circumstantial evidence is concerning, like the fact that
Speaker 1: she was wet and the sand on her clothes. They
Speaker 1: suggest that another investigation could yield more answers. The most
Speaker 1: surprising thing these pathologists say is that they are not
Speaker 1: convinced that Jane even died of a spinal injury. Presented
Speaker 1: to me, all the evidence that I have, all the
Speaker 1: autopsis time, the photographs that I've got do not indicate
Speaker 1: the lead that a child dies and techondry, I can't
Speaker 1: tell you that. So you asked me to tell you
Speaker 1: what didn't happen. In the way it looks right now
Speaker 1: that didn't happen okay. Suspicion is that they suggest a
Speaker 1: sudden cardiac event could have been the cause, and they
Speaker 1: say they can't rule out drowning. Drowning is often a
Speaker 1: diagnosis of exclusion. It's not considered a cause of death
Speaker 1: until everything else is ruled out. But Mona and Ron
Speaker 1: are adamant about the X rays. They want to know
Speaker 1: what the pathologists have to say about the lateral view
Speaker 1: of the X ray where Janie's spine looks like it's
Speaker 1: been whited out. First, the pathologists emphasize that they are
Speaker 1: not radiologists, so they are cautious about their opinions on
Speaker 1: the X ray. They also say that the X ray
Speaker 1: images and the photos they received of Janey were photocopies
Speaker 1: and very unclear. But they don't find the white blob
Speaker 1: in the foreground of the side view of the X
Speaker 1: ray suspicious white obstruction there. They suggest the blob could
Speaker 1: just be your shoulder and explain that it's difficult to
Speaker 1: situate a body on an X ray table. Also, they're
Speaker 1: not suspicious that there isn't a crime lab seal on
Speaker 1: the X ray. But then one of the pathologists says, this,
Speaker 1: I have a certain suspicion, and a greated the lateral
Speaker 1: film that you should be the color true daughter. He says,
Speaker 1: I have a certain suspicion the lateral isn't your daughter.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think it might be a male. So
Speaker 1: did the crime lab even give the Wards the correct
Speaker 1: X ray? The pathologists changed Janey's death certificate. Cause of
Speaker 1: death is no longer listed as a neck and spinal injury. Instead,
Speaker 1: just like the manner of death, it's undetermined. But the
Speaker 1: Wards couldn't convince officials to do a second autopsy, at
Speaker 1: least not yet. In two thousand and four, an independent
Speaker 1: medical examiner based in San Diego agreed to review Janie's death.
Speaker 1: He would come to a completely different conclusion. He said
Speaker 1: that Janey was murdered. I'm Catherine Townsend and this is
Speaker 1: Helen Gone. Helen Gone is a joint production between School
Speaker 1: of Humans and iHeartRadio. It is written and recorded by me.
Speaker 1: Katherine Townsend. Taylor Church and Gabby Watts are our producers
Speaker 1: and story editors. Executive producers are Brandon Barr, Brian Lavin,
Speaker 1: and L. C. Crowley for School of Humans and Connell
Speaker 1: Byrne and Chuck Bryant for iHeart our Field. Producer is
Speaker 1: Miranda Hawkins. Theme and original score are by Ben Sale
Speaker 1: available wherever you get your music. Please visit us at
Speaker 1: helen gonpodcast dot com or follow us on social media.
Speaker 1: School of Humans