Crime

CRIME THE BODY DOESN’T LIE

In a grim year for homicides, the medical examiner probes what violence leaves behind

BY CHUCK McSHANE

The sharp rise in homicides in Charlotte last year put added strain on Dr. Thomas Owens, who’s directed the Mecklenburg County Medical Examiner’s Office since 2014, and his staff.

TUCKED OFF A CUL-DE-SAC in an industrial park o Brookshire Boulevard, the Mecklenburg County Medical Examiner’s O ce is easy enough to nd if you know where you’re going but inconspicuous enough to miss if you’d rather not think about what’s done there. It’s where professional pathologists investigate a key piece of evidence in any suspicious or unexplained death—the body.

“Sometimes it’s a little depressing when you think about all these young and middle-aged people who die for no good reason,” says Dr. Thomas Owens, the county’s chief forensic pathologist and the o ce’s director. “But you’ve got to remember you’re dealing with a biased population. You have to think about the millions of people who didn’t die.”

It’s the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and investigators have just con rmed Charlotte’s 99th and 100th homicide victims of the year: a 51-year-old shot at the east Charlotte video arcade where he worked, and the 19-year-old son of a Cabarrus County sheri ’s deputy shot at a University City shopping center. That number is nearly double the total for 2018, when police registered 57 homicides, and marks the rst time since 1993 the number has hit 100. (The total for 2019 ultimately rises to 108.) That count doesn’t include justi able homicides or those that happened in other parts of Mecklenburg County, as well as Anson, Cabarrus, Cleveland, Gaston, and Union counties, which the Mecklenburg o ce also handles.

To date in 2019, homicides make up about 30 percent of the autopsies the four pathologists here perform. That’s up from about 20 percent most years, Owens says. Overdoses, accidents, and suicides make up most of the rest. While the total number of deaths is relatively stable, homicide investigations and autopsies are more complex and mean longer hours for pathologists, the o ce’s 10 investigators, and the rest of the sta .

“They’re spending a lot more time out of the o ce at those scenes,” Owens says. “You can show up at a scene for an overdose or maybe a fall, and those can be worked through pretty quickly. When you’re talking about homicides, there’s a lot more going on at the scene. And every extra bullet can add another 30 to 45 minutes to the autopsy.”

Still, Owens says, there’s no such thing as a routine autopsy. Pathologists start by looking for one of three causes of death: disease, trauma, or drugs. From there, the trail can get tricky. “It can start o as an overdose because it looks like an overdose. Maybe they were shooting up or drinking, but somebody beat the heck out of them,” he says. “Those things do happen, so you never want to y through an autopsy.”

And while the ME’s o ce is independent of the district attorney and police and sheri ’s departments, evidence discovered on the autopsy table can reveal what criminal investigators can’t—like the pattern of gunpowder residue Owens found on a man police thought had committed suicide.

“A guy had a typed suicide note, and he was shot in the face,” he says. “However, he had gunpowder soot on his face, which means the gun had to be a foot or more away when it was red. When I looked at it, he had it on his hands, too. It wasn’t consistent with him holding a gun. What