Mortal Evidence
The Forensics Behind Nine Shocking Cases
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
A lifeless newborn baby is found discarded in a motel Dumpster. Authorities quickly arrest the infant's teenage parents, charging them with murder. Did Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson, in fact, murder their own baby? Tammy Wynette died suddenly at a relatively young age, and yet no autopsy was performed? Was someone trying to hide the real cause of death? Did Sam Sheppard (later dubbed "The Fugitive" based on a television series) really kill his wife? And if not, who committed the murder?Things are not always as they appear, as world-renowned forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht shows in this riveting behind-the-scenes look at nine famous cases. In the nationally known baby case involving Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson, Dr. Wecht reviews the evidence and comes to a startling conclusion. In fascinating detail, he demonstrates how the tools of forensic pathology often uncover murky, long-hidden secrets that crack seemingly unsolvable crimes. Writing in the first-person Dr. Wecht leads you into the heart of the investigation, focusing each chapter on a single engrossing drama. He reveals the most startling evidence that shows why JonBenet Ramsey's killer most likely came from within her home, why O.J. Simpson probably had an accomplice in the murder of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman, shocking revelations about Robert Berdella's grisly torture and sex-abuse crimes against young men, and many intriguing facts about other infamous cases.If you find the fictional plots of such dramas as C.S.I. exciting, you will be amazed by the true stories told by Dr. Wecht, with the help of two top-flight veteran reporters, Greg Saitz and Mark Curriden, in this amazing real-life thriller. As this intriguing page-turner proves, the science of forensic pathology has changed the face of detective work forever.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this review of nine of his cases, pathologist Wecht gives readers a glimpse into the dark secrets that only the police, lawyers and criminals know about some of America's most intriguing murder cases in recent memory. The prose is crisp, and Wecht, writing with crime reporter Saitz and legal writer Curriden, does an admirable job of explaining technical procedures and scientific evidence in layman's terms. While Wecht's forensic expertise helps shed some light on what really happened in this collection of solved and unsolved cases, the book as a whole points out that forensics is not an infallible method for determining who committed a certain crime. For instance, Wecht's review of the Grossberg and Peterson case (two college freshmen accused of murdering their baby in 1996), on which he consulted for Grossberg's defense, demonstrates the different conclusions that doctors can reach from studying the same autopsies. Furthermore, in two of the high-profile stories mentioned in the book, the O.J. Simpson and JonBenet Ramsey cases, the limitations of forensic science are exposed. Having viewed autopsy records in both cases, Wecht does have compelling theories about who committed these headline-making crimes, but his educated guesses are not proof enough to put anyone behind bars. Still, while some of the cases in this volume are still unsolved, the inherent life-and-death dramatics in each of Wecht's reviews will certainly catch the eye of those who like a good murder mystery or fancy themselves armchair detectives.
