FORENSICS : The Science Behind the Death of Famous People

Expert Profile

Harry A. Milman,  is a consulting pharmacologist, toxicologist, and expert witness with over forty years of experience at the US Environmental Protection Agency, the US National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Health, and the US Public Health Service. He has assisted in over three hundred Civil, Criminal, and high-profile legal cases and has testified at trials and depositions. He has authored over seventy scientific articles, has edited five science books, and has appeared as a toxicological expert on Television and Radio NEWS programs and in true-crime television shows. He is the author of "FORENSICS: The Science Behind the Deaths of Famous People" and two award-winning novels—A Death at Camp David, and SOYUZ: The Final Flight.

Foreground

This session was a detailed insight about the most interesting book of Harry A. Milman entitles "The Science Behind the Deaths of Famous People" . The book describes how coroners determined the cause and manner of death of 23 famous people including Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Natalie Wood, Janis Joplin, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Carrie Fisher, and many more. Dr. Milman has also published two novels -- the wildly successful and award-winning political thriller, "A Death at Camp David," and "SOYUZ: The Final Flight". In this session, Sir has discussed the facts behind the death of famous people & How forensically the death of the people was justified. 

Journey of Harry A. Milman

The session has started with a brief description of the life journey of Dr. Millman sir, how he come into the field of forensics as earlier he wanted to become an Engineer. Today he is an expert witness from 23 years in trials in court. In the course of about seven years ago, while he was still testifying, he came up with his first book it's called  A Death at Camp David

A death at camp David is a mystery and he decided to have the main character a forensic toxicologist so he can take his whole background and experience and put it into the main character and that experience of writing a mystery novel that took two and a half years to complete and at the end of two and a half years, he thought it was going to be one and only book it was just too much work but when he had his first book signing event in one of the big bookstores in the U.S. called Barnes Noble and all the people were asking him what are you going to write next and he didn't have any plans to write anything next. When everyone told him to write more like this from then sir has started writing his another novel named SOYUZ – The final flight, again the same main character the forensic toxicologist but this time it's a science fiction space exploration thriller so upto than he wrote two books and he was still testifying and all that, as he has limited time still he wrote two books and the third and then he visited India two times than he thinks he got some ideas about a story and to be located in India and his next book was going to be on the name of Murder at the Taj Mahal, which was again with the same forensic toxicologist as the main character so he wrote about 30 percent of that book and then one day on the news he hears that Carrie Fisher, (we all know her from star wars) that she had a medical emergency aboard a plane and then the plane landed she went to the hospital three days later she died and the coroner and the medical examiner determined that Carrie Fisher died from sleep apnea.  But as far as sir know that Sleep apnea is a potentially serious sleep disorder in which breathing repeatedly stops and starts, and she was suffering from sleep apnea for some time so it was nothing new so, on the other hand, we all knew that Carrie fisher was a drug addict as she admitted that herself and many times so Millman sir suspected that she died from a drug overdose but here's the coroner said that she died from sleep apnea and not only that the coroner did not do an autopsy because the family refused to do an autopsy so all that didn't sound right to him and so he looked further into her death and then that gave him an idea to look further into other celebrity deaths and that's how he got an idea to write his latest book about Forensics The science behind the deaths of famous people so this book is about eight months old now.

 In this session he has discussed 3 high-profile cases and a few live experiences.  So let's see one by one

1. Carrie Fisher

Some people suggested that she had a heart attack others from the hospital said she did not have a heart attack there was no real explanation what actually happened but three days later she died and in the hospital, so now the two things and one of them is the cause of death is a biological scientific explanation for why a person died, for example, they died from a heart attack they died from respiratory depression a neurological a real scientific explanation for why a person died usually there's no argument with the determination of the cause of death it's usually accepted that there's usually no errors in that analysis the other part that the kind of determines is the manner of death now the manner of death is has five categories it could be a natural death, a person just died of old age, for example, it could be an accidental it could be homicide could be suicide and when none of these categories fit the circumstances it could be undetermined which is listed in the United States. 

As, Forensic scientists we deal with the cause of death, the manner of death, and interpretation of every of all the information for the cause of death, we do an autopsy and then we also do toxicology analysis blood and urine, and tissues if necessary and hair follicles and measure scientific measurements but the family refused to give consent for an autopsy to be done which means that one couldn't do an autopsy in this case. They couldn’t cut up the body to look at the internal organs and they couldn't take any samples like blood or urine for example and why is that well we don't know why the family refused if you read the book you find a few reasons why it could have happened so he did the next best thing that he could do for the autopsy and since he couldn't cut up the body he did a CT Scan, which is like as an X-ray of the body and so it doesn't open up the body but kind of look inside through imaging it's not as good as opening up the body but it gives a kind of a gross examination of the internal organs to see if there are any lumps and bumps if you will and there was nothing unusual about the internal organs the heart had some mild atherosclerosis but not enough to cause a heart attack there was nothing else that was unusual in the and the internal organs to suggest a cause of death, so that didn't help. 

So the next thing is was a toxicology analysis, he started toxicology testing it's usually a two-step process the first step is an immunotoxicology screen it's a quick assay method that tells you the presence or absence of drugs of abuse but it doesn't quantify and is subject to false negatives and false positives. They found the presence of opioids but opioids are a class of chemicals of drugs and so it didn't identify which opioid and it also didn't quantify in the blood, so the next step normally would be a confirmatory test which is very specific and it also quantifies, in this case, it would have been a what we call a GC Mass Spectroscopy confirmatory test which is a very highly specific, expensive, & time-consuming analysis. but he couldn't do it because there wasn't enough sample. He had some urine samples too & he was able to identify some alcohol in the urine & some metabolites of other drugs that this drug that was found in the urine was present in the body at some point was administered but you don't know when it was taken or administered or how much was given, how much was consumed so the presence of any drugs in the urine does not help you with the cause of death it just indicates past usage but it doesn't tell you how much or when past usage in her situation was some pharmaceuticals that she was taking and the metabolites like opioids in the blood but we couldn't identify or quantify and there was a metabolite of cocaine. now they did find another Metabo that did find another metabolite in the vitreous humor of the eye which is the gel-like material behind the lens of the eye and that metabolite was of heroin the second metabolite of heroin so the vitriol of the eye the assumption is that the opioids in the blood were morphine which is the primary metabolite of heroin but again that's the assumption it wasn't met. It wasn't identified by GCMA Spectroscopy confirmatory tests and it wasn't quantified and also he don't know if there was any they are not able to figure out whether there's any cocaine unmetabolized cocaine in the blood because again there was not enough sample to be tested so taking all this information together and as a forensic toxicologist this is what he tends to do. For example, whether it was an accidental death because she took an overdose or suicide or what so all because it didn't have sufficient information so he labeled her manner of death undetermined and the cause of death sleep apnea and a lot of questions in the conclusion.

2. Marilyn Monroe 

 She is a beautiful blonde actress so there was one day when she was home alone her housekeeper was at home but she was over phone calls until about seven o'clock at night. And sometime during the middle of the night, a housekeeper woke up about three o'clock in the morning or so she saw that there was a light under Marilyn Monroe’s door she tried to open the door she couldn't and she couldn't know that the door was locked from the inside she called out for Meryl Monroe and she didn't answer so the housekeeper called up Marilyn Monroe’s doctor who came right away broke a bedroom window when they went into the bedroom through the window they found Marilyn Monroe dead on the bed.

Some people say she was murdered and specifically by the president of the United States or his brother mainly because she had affairs with both of them there's also a question about the mob and when you know crime people that they may have been involved none of that is true in sir opinion.

In Marilyn Monroe’s case she did have an autopsy and they found overdose levels of  two drugs, two sleeping pills that happened to be have been on her nightstand so on her nightstand there was one bottle of neutral barbiturate that was empty and another one of chlorohydrate that was about three quarters empty both of them are tranquilizers sleeping pills, and those two drugs were found in overdose range in her system in her blood so the conclusion what one she had two drugs in a system that at least one if not both were in the overdose range they both are sleeping pills so they so that pharmacology and toxicology actually combines as opposed to so so taking two is worse than taking just one and then the question was how did she did those drugs wound up in her system so some people who were suggesting it was a homicide that she was murdered some people say well she was injected with the drugs and at autopsy they went over a body with a magnifying glass and they didn't find any injection sites so there was no injection site on her body which suggests which strongly indicated that the drugs came by ingestion she had the pills on her on a nightstand the bottles were empty now she had to take him orally there's no evidence that she was injected there's no evidence that they were forced into her body that somebody forcedly fed her with those pills. As her room was locked from the inside and obviously there was nobody else in the room she had also tried to commit suicide in the same manner in the past whenever she was depressed so it was not unusual for her to try to commit suicide by taking an overdose of pills in the past she called and she was people came in time and they rescued her from the overdose but in this situation that didn't happen so it was too late and she succeeded in committing suicide whereas in the past she did not because she was rescued so the likelihood that it was a homicide it's very unlikely and that it was suicide, and the matter of death was a drug overdose with barbiturates.

3. Michael Jackson   

As we all know Michael Jackson when we see him on tv or stage, a very energetic and individual dancing, singing & jumping around, hyperactive but what one thing no one knows is that entertainment world what you see is not necessarily what it is.

These people are very much like the rest of us but they also suffer from the same problems as we do but when we see them on stage they look different but when as a forensic expert we saw them at the autopsy we find out that they have no difference.

So he is much like any other man, it was in London everything was going great he has to appear in 50 Concerts, before night he had this last rehearsal in an auditorium in California in anticipation of these 50 sold-out. Everything was going great he was dancing he was jumping he was singing everything wonderful and then he drove home and waited for his doctor. As he's performing like that and in dress rehearsal it was a lot of jumping a lot of energy is needed, the adrenaline rush it takes and when he comes home at midnight one o'clock in the morning he can't necessarily go to sleep right away because he feels still active & when your adrenaline is pumping you have to give your body a chance to calm down before you can fall asleep.

In his case, he has another show in the morning but as time passes by he doesn't calm down because tomorrow he has another show or something like that so what happens he asked his doctor to get some pharmaceutical help to fall asleep. For that, he immediately asks his doctor to give him some propanol intravenous anesthetic, which his doctor has given in the past which was usually given in a hospital situation for surgery. 

He first gave him some oral barbiturate tranquilizer,  a tablet or two, and then after half an hour later Michael Jackson is still not sleeping so he gave him another dose and then later he gave him a different drug and,  all barbiturates and tranquilizers and over the next two-three hours he gave him like maybe six different doses of these two tranquilizers and Michael Jackson is still not falling asleep so then he gave him finally this intravenous propanol in his bedroom not in hospital and Michael Jackson as we know was knocked out and during that period the doctor went next door to make a phone call, he later was accused of homicide.

As he said he only went out of the room for a few minutes but in fact a half an hour and the way they know that is because they monitored his telephone calls and they saw that he was gone for about half an hour so when he comes back Michael Jackson is not breathing he was dead so on the table in his house and because it was not in a hospital situation the doctor didn't have the resuscitation equipment necessary and he tried CPR and all that but nothing helped Michael Jackson was taken by ambulance to the hospital but he was declared dead when he was 50 years old. And later the autopsy showed that he had all these various drugs in his system and all these drugs the mobitus and the propanol they're all central nervous system depressant drugs taken together in the overdose range. The combination of the pharmacology and toxicology of all these drugs is worse than taking each one of them alone so he had these several drugs plus the propanol and he died from a drug overdose. The doctor was gone for trial and found guilty, he spent two years in prison. The cause of the death was drug overdose the manner of death was a homicide in this case. 

Conclusion

The session was so amazing and had covered the mystery behind the deaths and autopsies of famous people such as Marilyn Monroe, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, Natalie Wood, Karen Carpenter, JonBenet Ramsey, and Robin Williams, just to name a few. The book is very well written, very interesting and everyone learned a lot of information that if anyone was not aware of. I recommend this book to anyone who loves forensics. For anybody who's not a scientist, it's easy reading and all the science is very clearly understandable because he purposely wrote it for the non-scientists not necessarily for the scientist.

For more detail of the session, I would suggest my readers to definitely visit the YouTube Channel Forensic 365 and watch out for the recording of the session.