July 29, 1994 - Part 4
July 29, 1994 - Part 4
(15:25:17) The CHAIRMAN. Might I ask over your professional career, how I many deaths of this kind, obviously with different circumstances, 'Would you have had the opportunity to be the chief medical examiner or to be part of an examining team? Dr. BEYER. I have been the Deputy and in charge of doing autop sies at the Northern Virginia Office ever since 1971. CHAIRMAN. Since 1971. How many would you say you have ed over that period of time or participated in? BEYER. I stopped counting when I reached 20,000. CHAIRMAN. So over 20,000? Yes, sir. MAN. Can you give me any estimate as to how many of those might have been suicide situations or gunshot situations? BEYER. We do anywhere from 700 to 800 autopsies a year. aproximately 20 percent of those are suicides and I would say over 50 percent of those are by gunshot. 78 The CHAIRMAN. You have given us the central reason I take it that you ascribe to why you concluded, or one of the main reason you concluded this was a suicide. How were you able to rule out any possibility of an alternative cause of death? Dr. BEYER, There was no other evidence or trauma to the body and with the entrance wound located in the mouth the way it was with abundant power debris, no trauma to the jaws, no trauma to the teeth, it would be my conclusion that this was self-inflicted. The CHAiRmAN. Let me move down the table to you, Ms. Braun and Mr. Rolla. Can you tell us how the investigation in the park was actually conducted? I do not know which of you wants to lead off. I am sure you will both want to contribute your observations but did one or the other of you arrive there before the other per son? Mr. ROLLA. We arrived together. The Chairman. All right, you arrived together, and so I would like to have both of you, in a sense, tell us the manner in which you conducted the investigation when you got there. First, the basic things that I think we need to know is, did you see a gun and where did you see the gun? Mr. ROLLA. First of all, when we arrived into the park, the parking lot, officers were in the park. We parked our vehicle. I spoke to Officer Ferstl. He told me be had the body of a white male up by the second cannon, had a gun in his hand, an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. They thought his car was the fourth spot from the entrance to the parking lot. They thought the Arkansas tags, they thought it belonged to him because there was a suit jacket on the front passenger seat folded over that matched the suit pants that the deceased was wearing at the time, and a tie was in there also. I ran the tags, wrote the tags down, called the communications section via car phone, ran them and they came back to Vincent Foster, Jr., the exact address unknown, Little Rock, Arkansas. At that point, there were some witnesses in the parking lot. Myself and Investigator Braun decided that she would handle the parking lot scene, and I would go up to the death scene. I believe we both went up their at first. Ms. BRAUN. We both went. Mr. ROLLA. We both responded up to the death scene. The CHAiRmAN. So when you arrived at the death scene, did you see a gun? Mr. ROLLA. Right. Well, let me explain. The death scene's about 250 yards into the park, going up bill basically, in a heavily wooded area with very thick foliage. When we arrived there, be said it was a little open field and a second cannon is at the end of the field at the top, just beyond the top of a steep embankment. The officers on the scene had the crime scene taped off. We went over and spoke to those officers to see what they have done, and what had happened. At which time I approached the body, carefully viewing the crime scene, looking for any signs of struggling, signs of broken bushes, any signs of anything that would be evidence. The CHAIRMAN. Had the body been moved at all? I mean, was the body in the position in which it was first found, or had it been moved in any way by the time you arrived, to your knowledge?