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It was June 6th, 1968, and Robert F. Kennedy, the leading contender to become the Democratic presidential nominee, had just been assassinated in Los Angeles.
Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the city’s chief medical examiner and coroner, stood over RFK’s body and said just two words to the senator’s grieving widow: “Trust me.”
He knew how much was on the line. Whether Noguchi would get the green light to perform the autopsy was far from a given.
But if he let the Secret Service intervene and take control, there was a chance the killer could walk free.
His findings “would be needed to bring Sirhan Sirhan, who was apprehended at the scene, to justice,” writes Anne Soon Choi in her new book “L.A. Coroner: Thomas Noguchi and Death in Hollywood” (Third State Books), out now.
Noguchi didn’t want a repeat of the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which had turned into a power struggle between the local medical examiner and the Secret Service.
It became “a playbook for what not to do,” writes Choi.
It wasn’t Noguchi’s first high-profile autopsy, and it would be far from his last.
The man dubbed by the press as “coroner to the stars” would go on to perform autopsies on famous names like Natalie Wood, John Belushi and Sharon Tate (murdered by the Manson Family).
He wasn’t just a pioneer in forensic medicine. Noguchi helped change the way the American public thinks about celebrity deaths.
Today, it’s not enough to know just how a celebrity died; the public wants a play-by-play account of their final days. Noguchi was at the forefront of this cultural shift.
He was a trailblazer in coroners “moving beyond the mere physical examination” into the public sphere, writes Choi. “Forensic experts began to offer opinions about celebrity deaths, worked as expert witnesses in court cases, and provided commentary to newspapers, radio, and television.”
This new prominence also expanded “the power and visibility of the Chief Coroner,” writes Choi. During Noguchi’s two decades at the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office, he quickly established that he wouldn’t be operating discreetly in the background, as his predecessors had for generations.
Noguchi was no longer willing to quietly sign the death certificate and offer no opinion on the investigation. Instead, he hosted press conferences that became public spectacles.
It turned him into a celebrity. At the height of his career in the 1970s, he was so influential that his public persona inspired a TV show, “Quincy, M.E.”
Noguchi’s reputation was “made” by his grueling six-hour autopsy of Robert F. Kennedy, which is still considered by many forensic pathologists as the “perfect autopsy.”
With meticulous precision, he proved that despite eyewitness accounts suggesting Sirhan had shot Kennedy from the front, all three bullets had entered through the back of the body. “He received nearly unanimous praise from local and national press and even the White House,” writes Choi.
It had been a long road to get there. Back in 1962, when he was still a newly minted deputy coroner, Noguchi was easily starstruck.
One of his first autopsies was Marilyn Monroe, whose deceased body left the young Noguchi “paralyzed in disbelief,” writes Choi.
The autopsy was mired in controversy after the head toxicologist failed to do a full analysis of her liver and blood samples, deeming it redundant; high levels of pentobarbital and chloral hydrate found in her system were clearly enough to kill her. The case haunted Noguchi.
From that moment on, Noguchi ran his autopsies with an iron fist. The LAPD began calling the start of any death investigation the “Noguchi Show.”
His scrupulous nature could sometimes be enough to crack a case. In March of 1982, Noguchi was the first to suggest that drugs were involved in John Belushi’s death.
At Hollywood’s Château Marmont, the hotel where the actor was found, there was no drug paraphernalia, syringes, or needle marks on the body, so the police suspected a heart attack.
But after examining the body, Noguchi declared, “I believe we have a drug overdose.” His theory led to the arrest of Belushi’s drug dealer who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
Noguchi’s blustering confidence made him the occasional enemy. Most famously Frank Sinatra, who objected to Noguchi’s insinuation that actress Natalie Wood drowned in 1981 because she was “slightly intoxicated.”
The Hollywood star hand-delivered a letter to the LA Board of Supervisors, demanding the coroner’s immediate termination. After the board held a four-hour meeting, they suspended him.
It was the beginning of the end for Noguchi, who was embroiled in controversy for the remainder of his career. But he remained unrepentant.
“The job of the medical examiner is to just talk straight and to tell it like it is,” he said during an interview with American Medical News. He also suggested that if he revealed the number of deaths caused by drug abuse in Hollywood, “I would not only be fired, I would be assassinated.”
Noguchi was demoted in 1982 to “physician specialist” and finally retired in 1999. Today, at 98 years old, he’s still active as a teacher and mentor, but he avoids the media.
English (US)