The Case of the Fabulous Fake

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For many years, my Perry Mason books have been dedicated to leaders in the field of courtroom medicine. For the most part, these people have been forensic (courtroom) pathologists (experts in disease and injury), whose skill in determining the cause of death helps convict the guilty and protect the innocent.

Cause of death is always a medical question.

Manner of death, on the other hand, is never a medical question. If, for example, the cause of death is a bullet through the head, the manner of death is whether it was self-inflicted, accidental or fired by another person in the commission of a crime.

Jack Cadman, Director of the Orange County Sheriff’s Criminalistics Laboratory in Santa Ana, California, is an expert investigator in determining the manner of death.

One of his early cases dealt with a young woman who had been fatally shot in the back with a shotgun. There were two prime suspects, the husband and one of his friends. Cadman asked for the clothing that each was wearing the night of the shooting. He found microscopic droplets of flesh and blood embedded in the sweater of the boy friend, the man entered a plea of guilty, and the case was solved without even the necessity of a trial.

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