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He Was Here: The Lull (Contains Autopsy Information) (Season Five) Limited Series; Open Homicide Case
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THIS EPISODE CONTAINS PARTICULARLY GRAPHIC CONTENT.
In today’s episode, we continue the limited series “He Was Here” about an unsolved 2010 murder in Chicago.
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Music in this episode was licensed for True Crime XS by slip.fm. The song is “No Scars”.
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Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/june-2015/chicago-crime-stats/
https://footprintsattheriversedge.blogspot.com
https://fstoppers.com/education/biggest-dangers-photographers-face-299728#comment-thread
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Listener Discretion
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
Exploring J. Paul Hill's Homicide Case
00:00:58
Speaker
All right, so in this episode of He Was Here, we're still on the unclosed homicide of J. Paul Hill. And Meg and I have talked to a lot of people related to this case as we go along. I've talked directly to several of the investigators that have worked this case. And we had this inkling like very early on that we were going to have to sort of prove this was a homicide.
00:01:29
Speaker
And if you go online and read about Jay's case, that's where most of the discussion lies. Was this a homicide? Was it a suicide? Was it an accident? But while we don't have access to the entire case file, because this is classified as an open homicide in Illinois, everything we're telling you here, we have been able to confirm through multiple different sources. And I thought the best place to start would be to give you the initial paperwork in this case and kind of how that broke out and then move
Medical vs Legal in Death Investigations
00:02:03
Speaker
that through the two autopsy reports. So that's what I'm going to do here today. You think that's a good place to start with this? I think so. And in the onset of this, I would just point out that in all the different cases that we've done, there's always different ramifications for what the medical examiner side of
00:02:23
Speaker
the manner of death is versus what is legally pursued by the prosecutor's office or investigated by law enforcement. And whenever you have two different versions, what I have found is that it's more likely that the initial manner of death, it's more likely to have been done haphazardly than a subsequent addendum to it. So whenever the manner of death is changed, typically it's for a reason, right? And it's not done haphazardly. It's actually really difficult to get a manner of death updated or changed to be something else once the medical examiner has decided.
00:03:11
Speaker
It is. And you and I've talked about this in multiple cases over the years. I, so I take a little different a position than haphazardly. I don't disagree with that word in a lot of cases. I did when I talked to people about Jay's case, I was looking to see if there were problems within the medical examiner's office. And here's sort of my takeaway. I think it's a big deal when you have a very busy medical examiner's office.
Cold Case Investigation Challenges
00:03:41
Speaker
And I do believe that this one is busy. And I was sort of educated along the way, talking to different people that an undetermined like leaning one way or another is really just to keep the case open for investigators. And it means that the the medical examiner could not jump straight to homicide or accidental death or suicide. In this case, it's particularly important because as I'll read out here in just a second, there's a couple of weird things about this that to be quite honest, Meg and I recorded multiple ah and segments of episodes about this autopsy report. And I was kind of constantly being updated and educated on this both by Meg and and like how she looked at it, but also by one of the investigators that
00:04:37
Speaker
we'll We'll talk about him in the next couple of episodes. He came in and he had probably the most difficult job but in that he was the cold case investigator on this case. My conversation with him confirmed a lot of things that I thought about this, a lot of things about the suspect, but the most important thing was he was fact-checking, doing legwork. The initial investigators in this case had one mindset. We talked about that briefly with Jane. That was that Jay had taken his own life. So by the time the cold case investigators came in, they were having to pick up and and piece together
00:05:15
Speaker
not just the timeline of the events around Jay, but also ah how he had ended up being this John Doe, and they were having to move that forward. and I think, to a degree, that was the best part of this investigation. It's all premised on these two documents that I'm about to read for you now.
00:05:37
Speaker
This is your warning if if you're not into graphic information or if if you're squeamish at all and and it bothers you. I'm going to be talking about parts of the autopsy reports that are very graphic and that's going to happen in this episode for the next several minutes.
00:05:53
Speaker
And then in the next episode, Meg and I are going to dissect some of this so that you understand why we're taking the time to put this series out and why we're not just convinced that this is a homicide, but we know that behind the scenes, this is not a question for law enforcement. Law enforcement knows this is a homicide. It's simply unprosecuted for reasons that we're going to get to as this series unfolds.
FOIA Request and Incident Report Discussion
00:06:23
Speaker
The results of my very first FOIA request, and I've compared notes with this with Jay's mom, she got a similar document. This is just a, what I call an incident report. It has a several check boxes, and then it has a narrative.
00:06:42
Speaker
In this particular report, it's just two pages. It does not have a number at the top. It's actually about a John Doe. And so the first box is classification and your choices are accidental injury, attempted suicide, not in police custody, attempted suicide in police custody, death, suicide, not in police custody, suicide in police custody, injury to city employee, injury to citizen on public property,
00:07:11
Speaker
AED uses to would be a defibrillator unit and it could be a mental health transport. This is simply an incident report that the first officer that arrives at a scene is going to fill out. So in this instance, it is checked with code 5084. So that means it's a death. Box two is the beat unit that's going to be assigned to this and Chicago police list beat 433.
00:07:41
Speaker
And the beat that it occurred on is listed as beat 434. Now we get to a ah lot of handwritten notes on here. And some of these things are redacted ah to protect the privacy of the reporting party.
00:08:00
Speaker
Right off the top, it says the address of the occurrence is 12600 South Stoney Island. The date that it occurred is March 2nd, 2010 at approximately 1130. In this instance, that's going to mean that the 1130 is going to be in the morning.
00:08:20
Speaker
ah The reporting time is listed as ah when an officer arrives, and that's going to be also March 2, 2010 at 11.40, so 10 minutes later. The reporting parties are redacted here, just says that they're male. ah There are two of them. One is the person reporting the incident to police, and one is a person that is ah discovering the victim. It does indicate that this was on government property and by a city employee.
00:08:52
Speaker
And all we have like like right off the cuff on this document is that the person reporting the incident incident to the police was a black male and that the person who discovered the victim was a white male. It goes on to say in the next boxes, which it picks up at box 21, everything above that is sort of redacted. But the next thing that it would have would be names of witnesses plus their pertinent information. And that's basically box 21 through 24. They're all empty.
00:09:21
Speaker
Box 25 is the type of premises where this occurred or where the victim was found. It's just this government property. The location code is 330. Then they go through from box 26 to box 30. You're basically listing out a possible cause of injury, a possible reason, a removal code and a removal person's name and where they were taken to. None of those boxes are filled out here. 31 is the sobriety of the victim and that's sober, ah HBD or intoxicated. None of those boxes are checked here.
00:09:58
Speaker
32 is the extent of their injuries. Minor is code one. Serious is code two. In this instance, they have indicated that it is a code three, which is fatal. Was first aid given by the police is box 33? And you simply have the option for yes or no. The answer here is no.
00:10:17
Speaker
Box 34 was medical aid refused by a victim, obviously that does not apply here. Box 35 is the name and address of attending physician. Box 36 is a property inventory. Box 37 is our family members notified, who were they notified by, and then it has a badge number or star number there, and a box to indicate if they were notified in person or telephone. All of those boxes are left out.
00:10:46
Speaker
ah thirty eight 38 is an area detective notified box and there is a name
Autopsy Report and Findings
00:10:52
Speaker
listed here. It's got his name and his batch number, but I'm going to leave that out. Then it has a notified by like who in the chain of command notified him, also a name and a batch number that I'm going to leave out. And then they give it an event number.
00:11:07
Speaker
In this instance, that event number is going to be 06552. The narrative is box 40, and it literally has a little parenthetical expression where it says, the indicated sobriety of victim or witness is the apparent condition when reported. That's just a note for everyone.
00:11:24
Speaker
It has a name blacked out that is the name of the employee. It just says that he's a water reclamation employee. He was working in the area. He walked to inspect the riverbank and observed an unknown male body floating face down in the river.
00:11:38
Speaker
The body had a yellow t-shirt with a gray, and then it scratched out what the next two words were, but they're indicative of another shirt being with them. I think they just had the wrong type of shirt there, but I don't know if it says long sleeve t-shirt or something, but there's two words, and it says on both biceps. It says the body was naked from the waist down,
00:12:03
Speaker
And then it says BT440M8M9M10BT58215810 on scene. These are all all indicative of police codes for shorthand for what happened with the narrative. It says 004 was notified at 1155. So now they're telling us that once the officer arrived at 1140, having the body been found around 1130 or so, and someone calling in,
00:12:33
Speaker
where the officer arrives at 1140, 1155, they notify emergency services, and then they notify the emergency services transportation at 1156. They notify a detective at 1159, and the medical examiner logs this body that's been found as Doe number 63, and that's at 1203, which now we've moved from AM into PM,
00:13:02
Speaker
They give it an ME case, which is 027MAR10, and then everything left in box 40 at this particular junction is related to the chain of command, and it just batch numbers and last names or star numbers as as some ah of the form indicates. Now, from then on,
00:13:29
Speaker
they simply document what's happened and what steps they're taking. It does say that news affairs ah was notified at 1215, meaning if a press release was going to go out, then that is who would do it. They indicate that the crime lab is on scene by 135, and they indicate that a supervisor comes on scene between 1215 for the press liaison and a crime lab. so There's a supervisor that comes out to check out the scene. and and There's a supervisor signature on here with his badge number. He signs off on it, and that's the entire FOIA request. This is all in two pages. it It simply indicates that somebody has found a body. Based on what they're saying here, we know the location of it, but we do not know much more. Then we move into ah the medical examiners report.
00:14:24
Speaker
Now, this is the official Office of the Medical Examiner for ah Cook County, Illinois, or the County of Cook, Illinois. We have a report of post-mortem examination. It is signed off and dated as of June 3rd, but it's actually all done pretty quickly. Now, remember, this body that I'm talking about here, is a he's a John Doe.
00:14:47
Speaker
He's he's ah basically a number for the medical examiner's office and that is how they perform ah this post-mortem examination. They do come back by June 3rd. They have it all lined up with Jay's information in here. It does say the name is Jay Polhill. His case number is 027, marked of 2010. His date of death is listed as March 2nd, 2010. And the date that he's examined is March 3rd, 2010 at 8.15 AM by Dr. Kalikar, who is an MD with a medical examiner's office.
00:15:21
Speaker
His age is 20, his race is white, and his sex is male, and has his home address. The external examination says that the body has received clothes in a yellow short sleeve t-shirt and a gray long sleeve shirt. Both articles of clothing are wet.
00:15:37
Speaker
says the body is that of a well-developed, well-nourished adult white male weighing 147 pounds. Rigor mortis is absent. Post-mortem lividity is present in the anterior and the posterior dependent parts. The body is cold to the touch and appears to be approximately 20 years old. The scalp hair is black in color of medium length and straight. There are long sideburns present.
00:16:04
Speaker
His eyes are brown and clear, and they are both closed. ah The skeleton of the nose is intact. The ears are unremarkable. His teeth are natural. They are in the mouth in good repair. The lips show no injuries. The head is distorted due to extensive skull fractures. Along the hair margin, there is a linear surgical scar extending from the right temple to the left temple, measuring approximately eight inches in length.
00:16:34
Speaker
The neck is not hypermobile and shows an injury that will be described. The chest is symmetrical. The abdomen is scaphoid. Upper extremities reveal wrinkling of the fingertips of both hands. On the right wrist, there is a morgue identification band and a Chicago Police Department transportation identification band. The numbers here are 13896. The fingernails are short and clean. The lower extremities are symmetrical.
00:17:02
Speaker
There are injuries to the distal thighs to be described. The back is unremarkable. Now then they provide us, after this external examination, that kind of ends on page two, they give us a list of the external evidence of injuries. The first one is on the left there in the parietal region, there is a jagged laceration three inches in length with contusion of the wound margins.
00:17:27
Speaker
I'm not going to explain all of the medical jargon as I go here. Meg and I are going to get into that when we discuss how ah this particular document affected what we were doing. but Number two injury is on the left parietal region. There is a small contusion that is 0.7 inches in length. Number three is on the right side of the previously described laceration. There's an intrusion that is 0.8 inches in length.
00:17:52
Speaker
On the back of the head on the left side, there was a small jagged laceration that's 0.6 inches in length. On the back of the head and the left occipital region, there is a one inch laceration with contusion of the margins of the wound. That's the fifth injury they're describing here. The sixth injury is on the right side of the head in the right frontal parietal region, there is a five inch to five inch area of multiple contusions and lacerations. The largest measures of around 1.3 inches and the smallest measures about half an inch. Seven, on the right side of the forehead at the medial aspect of the eyebrow, there is a linear laceration that's about one inch in length. And then eight, on the right side of the forehead above the right eyebrow, there is another linear laceration about one inch in length.
00:18:50
Speaker
They skip number nine and go directly to 10, and it says number 10. On the left side of the neck, there's a laceration that's one inch in length with a cont confusion of the surrounding skin, and that confusion measures three by two inches.
00:19:05
Speaker
Number 11 is across the distal thighs bilaterally. There are post-mortem lacerations that almost measure seven inches on the left thigh and eight inches on the right thigh. The margins of the womb show no hemorrhages. The underlying muscles are lacerated and the underlying femur shows a linear gout. All right.
00:19:29
Speaker
To summarize this, there are a lot of cuts and bruises here. One of the most interesting injuries is that Jay's legs are cut so deep that the bone is also cut.
00:19:44
Speaker
They do an X-ray examination that starts on page three. It just says that the post-mortem X-rays of the head, neck, chest, and pelvis are reviewed. X-rays of the head reveal extensive skull fractures. They note that there are dental restorations with root canal work. There are X-rays of the neck, the chest, and the pelvis, and they fail to reveal any skeletal injuries. X-rays of the lower extremities fail to reveal fractures of the femur.
00:20:13
Speaker
so They don't see anything on as far as the bones being broken on the lower body. I don't know how that gouge would show up. Uh, that linear gouge might just show up as a single line. And since they've already annotated it, that could be why they're not mentioning it in the X-ray section. Then they go on to the internal examination continuing on page three.
00:20:38
Speaker
For the body cavities, they just point out that the body is entered through a standard Y-shaped incision. All of the organs have been placed in their usual anatomic positions and maintain their usual annotonic anatomic relationships. The plural pericardial and peritoneal cavities contain the usual amount of serous fluids, but it is serous sanguineous in nature. They don't note any adhesions. They move on to his tongue and neck.
00:21:07
Speaker
Examination of the tongue reveals that that there is no evidence of intramural hemorrhages, but There are hemorrhages in the anterior strap muscles of the neck along with the fracture of the tip of the hyoid bone on the left side. That's gonna come up later, so remember that. The pharynx is lacerated. He has no petechial hemorrhages present in the laryngeal mucosa. The hemorrhages of the anterior strap muscles extend from the hyoid bone up to the arch of the aorta.
00:21:40
Speaker
His thyroid and his cricoid cartilages are intact. So he has some injuries to his neck. Those are going to be really important as we but continue talking, particularly the fact that his hyoid bone as a 20-year-old male is fractured.
00:21:58
Speaker
They then move on to hit the respiratory system and the cardiovascular system, the gastrointestinal system, the the rest of his body. For the most part, there is not a lot of interesting information here. There is a reference to cut sections of copious amount of frothy fluids ah related to his lungs.
00:22:23
Speaker
but we get all the way down to his central nervous system before we start to see injuries that are going to affect what may or may not be going on with this John Doe that will be identified in just a few hours as J-Pole Hill. Now, when we when we get to the central nervous system, they do say that there are large hemorrhages on the left and right temporal parietal reasons of the scalp.
00:22:50
Speaker
The left bone has a depressed fracture that is 2.4 by two inches, and the skull here is fragmented. There's a linear, non-displaced fracture radiating from this depressed fracture anteriorly and up to the sagittal suture. On the right side of the head, involving the right temporal and parietal bones, there's another large, depressed fracture with fragmentation of the bone.
00:23:19
Speaker
This fracture also involves the right and left frontal bone and severely fragments the base of the skull. On entering the cranial cavity, there is subarachnoid hemorrhage on the left side of the brain along with small contusions of the brain of the left temporal and frontal lobe tips. They reference the weight of the brain and then they go to the base of the skull.
00:23:44
Speaker
Now the brain itself fails to reveal any abnormality, but the base of the skull reveals extensive fractures involving the right and left anterior cranial fossa and the right middle cranial fossa. They do find that there is hemorrhage in the petros temporal bones bilaterally.
00:24:03
Speaker
Now, when they go over the musculoskeletal system, they really just check they're checking the long bones and the vertebra in the back and the ribs, and they basically just reference that they're intact.
00:24:18
Speaker
At the bottom of page five, they get into diagnoses. The first one is extensive craniocerebral injuries. Those are all these injuries to Jay's head. I've gone over them kind of individually, but here they're just collectively referring to them. Then the second thing they reference is the hemorrhage and the strap muscles of the neck.
00:24:40
Speaker
The third thing they reference is the fracture of the hyoid bone. Now here they call it the right hyoid bone. I think this is just a situation where they were going by like physically looking out from the body and then they flip-flop it when they're going over their notes and they are referencing it from how they're looking at the body.
00:24:59
Speaker
Then they do reference the pulmonary edema, which is the extensive amount of fluid that they found. And they reference the, in number five, they reference the injuries to his legs as post-mortem propeller injuries to the right and left distal thighs. Their opinion here, which rounds out page five, is that the cause and manner of death of this 20-year-old white male is undetermined.
00:25:28
Speaker
Then they reference on page six a disposition of evidence and they say that they took specimens that they submitted to toxicology and those sesen those specimens were bodily fluids and they made a blood card and they gave the blood card and his clothing to an officer representing the crime lab division of the Chicago Police Department.
00:25:51
Speaker
Then they go on to reference what was in Jay's system. He had a very minor amount of alcohol in his system, and he's essentially negative for the rest of toxicology. That's the medical examiner's report that we have available for review, and that's out of the office of the medical examiner for Cook County, Illinois. So we've covered the incident report. We've covered the medical examiner's report. Those reports are important.
00:26:21
Speaker
they're how this investigation gets kicked off. But what we end up with that sort of creates some complications with this is that as Jane has already explained, her private investigator felt like a new pathology report would be important. So out of New York,
00:26:46
Speaker
In September of 2010, they received a letter from a forensic consulting service and that letter has a new summary attached. I can say that this is a reputable firm doing this, and then I'm going to give you what the letter says beyond that. It just says, read the Pole Hill death investigation. Thank you for asking me to review the death of Mr. J. Pole Hill. I have reviewed the autopsy report signed by Dr. Calacar documenting the autopsy examination performed on March 3rd, 2010.
00:27:27
Speaker
I have also reviewed photographs documenting the autopsy's findings. It is my understanding that currently there are no investigative reports or notes that have been made available. And it says, investigation. My review of this case is somewhat limited by the absence of any type of formal investigative report. I have not reviewed any investigative information from either the police agency or the medical examiner's office.
00:27:55
Speaker
This report should therefore be considered preliminary since potentially important investigative details are unknown. According to a summary written by the private investigator, Mr. Paul Hill was a 20-year-old man attending Columbia College in Chicago, Illinois. He was last known to be alive on February 28, 2010, when recorded on a security camera as he left his dorm room with a camera and laptop back, believed to be containing his laptop. He was also believed to be in possession of his cell phone and his CTS pass.
00:28:32
Speaker
he was wearing a black jacket over a black hooded sweatshirt along with dark pants. His body was found on March the 2nd, 2010, along the bank of the Calamet River, unclothed aside from a yellow short sleeve t-shirt and a gray long sleeve shirt.
00:28:49
Speaker
I have no information regarding his whereabouts in the interim or possible destination upon leaving his dorm room. His cell phone, laptop, and camera have apparently not been recovered. The remainder of his clothing items have not been found. I am not aware if any attempts were made to review phone text records or to localize the phone using cell tower localization.
00:29:13
Speaker
I am not aware if any ah investigation was done to determine whether the CTS pass had been used on the day he was last seen or since. The next section is labeled, discussion of autopsy findings. At autopsy, he was received wearing only the two shirts noted above, which were turned over to the investigating agency. It is unclear whether the two shirts belonged to him.
00:29:38
Speaker
Although I assume they were likely present underneath his outerwear seen in the video wherein he was last seen, it is not possible to determine how the missing clothing was removed. When a body is in flowing water, clothing may be stripped in unusual ways. I have personally seen several cases of water motion, stripping a body in unusual patterns.
00:30:00
Speaker
And this case is within the realm of possibility. Of course, it is also possible that he removed them himself or they were removed by someone else. He was noted to have liver mortise present with no indication of ability to produce blanching. Rigor mortise was described as absent, though it is unclear if it had been previously broken, perhaps by investigators prior to examination by the pathologist.
00:30:28
Speaker
There is no mention of any decompositional changes or insect or larval activity. This pattern of post-mortem changes is not well described and could be consistent with any post-mortem interval over a few hours.
Analysis of Injuries and Cause of Death
00:30:44
Speaker
Post-mortem changes may also be affected dramatically by the time spent in the water, particularly depending on the water temperature.
00:30:52
Speaker
It is therefore not possible to determine when he had died within the time period since he had last been seen. However, if rigor mortis had truly passed, the time interval would be on the longer side of that time period. There were noteworthy findings consistent with a period of floating in water. There were large deep wounds present on the front parts of both thighs, extending down to the bone.
00:31:19
Speaker
These were clearly post-mortem having occurred sometime after death. These were attributed by Dr. Calicar to propeller injury, a reasonably viable hypothesis. He also had pulmonary edema or fluid in his lungs. Pulmonary edema is a common finding in bodies recovered from water as water naturally flows into the airway during submersion and absorbs into the tissues of the lungs.
00:31:47
Speaker
This phenomenon may occur after death and does not indicate whether the individual was alive or deceased upon entering said water. Given the above findings, it appears likely that he was floating in the area for a period he was found. I have seen photographs of the area and it seems likely that the body entered the river upstream and came to rest at the shoreline at this location.
00:32:12
Speaker
Several other significant injuries were present, having clearly occurred prior to death. Specifically, there were injuries caused by a blunt object on both the left and right sides of his head, with fractures of the skull underneath both areas. In both of these two areas, there are multiple irregular areas of tearing of the skin over the skull, with fractures of the underlying skull. In both of these areas, there was at least one and likely multiple blows by a blunt object. There are injuries to the underlying brain which had swollen. Both sides of the head, therefore, show stigmata of direct impact injury with application of blunt force directly to those locations.
00:32:59
Speaker
There were blunt injury to the left side of the neck with tearing of the skin, a large area of bleeding into soft tissues, a fracture of the left side of the hyoid bone, which is the C-shaped bone in the upper part of the neck. There is no mention of the presence or absence of petechiae.
00:33:18
Speaker
which are dot-like hemorrhages commonly seen in or around the eyes in cases of asphyxiation, or of the sizes and symmetry of the pupil diameters. Also noteworthy is the complete absence of injury to any other part of the body.
00:33:34
Speaker
Clearly, these injuries are caused by multiple applications of blunt force in three separate areas of the head and neck. This pattern and severity of injuries is very typical of a severe beating with a hard object. ah characteristics The stellate shape of many of the wounds seen on the skin are also very typical of a blow by a hard object. The nature of the object cannot definitively be determined.
00:34:02
Speaker
Given the three separate locations of injury, it is not possible they were caused by a simple fall. It is not possible, for example, for a fall onto the right side of his skull to also cause direct impact injury to the opposite side of the head. It is also unlikely that a fall could have caused only head and neck injuries without also causing injuries to any other part of the body.
00:34:29
Speaker
The neck injury in a location very high in the neck underneath the chin is also very hard to ascribe to a non-intentional cause without injury to the adjacent chin, chest and shoulder. It is also noteworthy that the brain was significantly swollen and that the injuries are associated with large amounts of hemorrhage.
00:34:50
Speaker
Brain swelling only occurs while blood is actively pumping. Similarly, the large amounts of hemorrhage described are only seen while the blood is still pumping or shortly enough after death that there is still enough pressure in the vascular system to push blood into the soft tissues. It has traditionally been believed that significant brain swelling was an indication of prolonged survival after death of upwards of an hour. More recent studies, however,
00:35:19
Speaker
have suggested that swelling can occur much quicker in less than 30 minutes. Nonetheless, swelling does require active pumping of blood and does take some time to occur. Therefore, he survived for a period of time after the head injury, certainly longer than it would have taken him to have drowned. It is not possible, for example, that he drowned and the head and neck injuries were caused by post-mortem trauma while in the water.
00:35:47
Speaker
He must have sustained the head trauma prior to death for the swelling and hemorrhage to have occurred. There is no mention in the autopsy report that sexual assault testing was done. With a body found nearly naked and in a non-secure location, it is sometimes prudent to test for evidence that a sexual assault had occurred.
00:36:10
Speaker
Given that the body had apparently been in the water for some time, much evidence may be washed away, but it is sometimes still useful to perform that testing. A very basic toxicology screen was performed on peripheral blood and detected the presence of alcohol. His ethanol level was measured at 15 milligrams or at 0.015% concentration. This is the equivalent of approximately one drink and is not considered intoxication.
00:36:38
Speaker
In fact, with decomposition, this level of alcohol may be present as a consequence of post-mortem production by fermenting bacteria and may not necessarily indicate any alcohol consumption prior to death. Testing for opiates, a class of pain medications including heroin, morphine, and a large number of commonly abused pain pills, and benzos, a byproduct of cocaine use, was a negative.
00:37:06
Speaker
It is worth noting that no other classes of commonly abused drugs were tested for, and the standard opiate test fails to detect the presence of some opiates. Conclusions. The cause and manner of death listed by Dr. Kallikar were undetermined. It is my opinion that the cause of death is quite clearly blunt force trauma of the head and neck.
00:37:29
Speaker
The injuries noted are sufficient to have caused death, and there is ample evidence that the injuries clearly occurred prior to death. There are no competing causes of death.
00:37:41
Speaker
Drowning may be considered as a possible contributory factor, but clearly the head injuries were sustained first. I do not necessarily disagree with the manner of death being classified as undetermined, although it is my opinion that it is most likely a homicide for my reasons that I've outlined above.
00:38:01
Speaker
Undetermined is an appropriate manner of death classification when one is unable to reasonably distinguish between one of the other specific possible manner of death classifications, natural, accident, homicide, or suicide. This is clearly not a natural death. However, undetermined is an appropriate classification if the certifying doctor feels there is a possibility of the death being due to a suicide or accident.
00:38:29
Speaker
In my opinion, based on the autopsy findings and my limited knowledge of the facts of the case, accident is very unlikely. These injuries are very unlikely to have been caused by a jump or a fall from a bridge. Similarly, suicide seems very unlikely for the same reasons. I am also unaware of any potential risk factors for suicide or any indication that he had been contemplating such an act.
00:38:56
Speaker
It would be very unusual for someone anticipating a suicide to bring items such as a camera and a laptop. Homicide is clearly the most likely scenario given the pattern of injuries. Often, information gleaned from an investigation can help distinguish these possibilities.
00:39:14
Speaker
There may be other information that the certifying pathologist knew of, which I am unaware. of The absence of investigative records are very significant limitation. Some of the specific investigative data that may be useful and was either not collected or is not being made available would include phone and text records, phone location data, CTS pass records, medical or psychiatric history, and intended destination on the day of his disappearance.
00:39:44
Speaker
And then at the very bottom of the report, there's a summary. And it says, to summarize, I am deeply concerned about this pattern of injuries and strongly suspect that this death may be a homicide. For reasons delineated above, I consider possible theories of suicide or accident unlikely based solely on the autopsy findings. This case should certainly be investigated as a potential homicide.
00:40:12
Speaker
What I read there was the incident report that's the very first report that we had. We have the initial autopsy report, which is actually, you know, when it's done. Jay Polhill is a John Doe. And then with time, his family and their private investigator, they decided to take a second look at this. And that second report, that's from someone who came in and said, I don't think the findings of the initial report point to suicide.
Supporting Pathology Reports and Media Attention
00:40:42
Speaker
And Cook County's medical examiner, they agree.
00:40:48
Speaker
I feel like the first, like you just said, it was undetermined initially, right? And then it was changed to homicide. Yes. Okay. That's a, in my opinion, in the research I've done, that's sort of a monumental feat, right? Because but it's actually not an undetermined manner of death. It doesn't exclude anything. It just says like,
00:41:16
Speaker
we can't really determine what happened, right? And depending on the situation, I've seen it used for a lot of reasons. And it kind of, it can put the case into sort of a kind of a ah lull, right? Because if you don't have the resources to go one way or the other on it, you've got this situation where it's undetermined, right? And so to accelerate it into a situation where it's, you know, very clear that
00:41:53
Speaker
This is not an undetermined death. This is a ah a homicide. you know I say it's a monumental feat because it's actually very, very difficult most of the time to get that addendum made to a medical examiner's finding, right? It takes quite a bit. A lot of times they won't do it, just premised on the fact that they made their initial determination. And to me, this was a pivotal part of this case.
00:42:22
Speaker
It was. it And not only that, it's very collegial in how they did it. It's basically one colleague reviewing another colleague's work and looking at it. They came up with two sets of circumstances and they they end up sort of the having a confluence there where they agree that that this is likely a series of events that starts with a homicidal assault. In the next episode, Meg and I are going to go over our observations of these autopsy reports and how that segues into Jay's case being in that lull.
00:42:59
Speaker
and how we're trying to articulate and change the narrative. We're not giving away anything that you can't get out of a public report here yet. We're trying to change the narrative because if you go and you look for information on Jay's case, you find a lot of speculation that possibly it was an accident or it was suicide. And the bottom line is,
00:43:27
Speaker
That's simply not the case, not to law enforcement, not to the medical examiner, not to Jay's family, and not to us.
00:43:40
Speaker
next time on true crime x s it's interesting because so In terms of the media, he's mentioned in March of 2010, I think the first, like, article I found kind of outside mainstream media. Because mainstream media mentions him, they mention the body being found, they mention the fact that he was missing, and then the Columbia Chronicle mentions him. Over the years, like, little things pop off about him.
00:44:08
Speaker
but nothing seems to grasp that. Like even as recently as 2022 or so, there were there was a brief mention. Those things don't seem to grasp it. Like this case is clearly a homicide. Like you not a thing where ah i'm I'm sort of siding with the experts or like ah looking at it from the perspective of like defense versus prosecution. Like this is simply, it was undetermined And then it was pretty clearly a homicide in the second pathology report. And then they change, the the medical examiner actually changes the cause of death. And we know this because you can read a few articles from 2011 where they assigned an investigator and the investigator gets to work and that guy is able to put together a pretty good scenario for what happened.
Podcast Credits and Listener Engagement
00:45:09
Speaker
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00:46:21
Speaker
Crime XS is brought to you by John and Matt It's written, produced, edited, and posted by John and Meg. You can always support True Crime Access through patreon.com, or if you have a story you'd like them to cover, you can reach them at truecrimeaccess.com. Thank you for joining us.