He’s the man who launched a thousand conspiracy theories.
From the postmortem examinations of Minnesota‘s George Floyd and Ferguson, Missouri‘s Michael Brown, to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr, these high-profile death investigations all have one thing in common: forensic pathologist Dr Michael Baden.
And Baden, the 90-year-old former chief medical officer of New York City, is typically the one offering the report that runs counter to the official conclusion.
Since his ouster from a medical examiner’s office 40 years ago (then accused of sloppy record‐keeping, poor judgment and a lack of cooperation), Baden has worked as a hired gun.
The brother of Jeffrey Epstein, Mark Epstein, contracted Dr Baden as an independent analyst to observe the autopsy of the convicted pedophile and accused sex trafficker, who died on August 10, 2019, in the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan.
Baden was at the dissecting table, looking on, and free to ask the Manhattan medical examiner Dr Kristin Roman for any additional incisions or tests that he required.
Her findings that day were initially inconclusive.
Since his ouster from a medical examiner’s office 40 years ago (then accused of sloppy record‐keeping, poor judgment and a lack of cooperation), Baden has worked as a hired gun.
The brother of Jeffrey Epstein , Mark Epstein, contracted Dr Baden as an independent analyst to observe the autopsy of the convicted pedophile and accused sex trafficker, who died on August 10, 2019, in the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan.
‘I think we both realized that this was not typical for suicide,’ Baden told the Daily Mail in an exclusive interview. ‘If it was typical for a suicide, she would have made a suicide declaration right away, whatever the politics was of it.’
But over a week later, on August 19, 2019, Dr Roman’s boss, Dr Barbara Sampson, announced that Epstein’s death was officially suicide by hanging.
A few days after that Dr Baden handed Mark Epstein his report, concluding that his brother’s death was more likely a homicide.
‘[Mark Epstein] was surprised when I told him that I thought the findings were more like a homicide than a suicide,’ Baden recalled.
He insisted that Mark Epstein was not seeking a specific decision but instead wanted an independent account. Even if Epstein had pressed for a particular outcome, having paid Baden his standard $1,500-a-day fee, the veteran pathologist insists it would not have changed his mind.
‘To be a proper forensic pathologist, one has to find out what the truth is and advise whoever they’re working for, whether the government or a private citizen, what the findings are, so that the government or the family can then make future decisions,’ insisted Baden. ‘We have no interest in making one person right.’
The likely homicide finding by Dr Baden – perhaps, more than any other – has become a rallying cry of skeptics. ‘Epstein didn’t kill himself’ is now a meme. And many of Dr Baden’s rulings have had similar holding power.
After the May 25, 2020 death of Minneapolis man George Floyd, Dr Baden was hired to perform a second examination by Floyd’s family.
‘The autopsy shows that Mr. Floyd had no underlying medical problems that caused or contributed to his death. He was in good health,’ Dr Baden told reporters on June 1, 2020 adding, ‘I wish I had the same coronary arteries that Mr. Floyd had that we saw at the autopsy.’
It was later determined by the Hennepin County Chief Medical Examiner that heart disease and use of fentanyl were contributing, though not the main factors, causing Floyd’s death.
Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted for killing Floyd.
Additionally, after a Ferguson, Missouri police officer shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown on August 9, 2014, Dr Baden was hired by the family.
Forensic pathologist Shawn Parcells, who assisted Dr Baden in that autopsy, told reporters that a bullet graze wound on Brown’s right arm could have occurred if Brown’s back was turned to the officer, or he could have been facing forwards with his hands above his head in a position of surrender.
Additionally, after a Ferguson, Missouri police officer shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown on August 9, 2014, Dr Baden was hired by the family (above).
The defense argued that Brown was charging at the officer when he was shot, and the officer was acquitted in that case.
Now, nearly six years after his controversial Epstein opinion, Baden is as confident as ever that he made the right call – and informed, he said, by the unusual nature of Epstein’s injuries, and especially those to his neck.
‘My assessment is that the autopsy shows findings that are much more indicative of homicide than suicidal hanging,’ Dr Baden explained. ‘The pattern of injury and the other findings, particular hemorrhages in the eyes, for example, are all common in severe neck compression and not common in hanging.’
Manhattan medical examiner Dr Roman and Dr Baden agreed at the time of the autopsy that there was a fracture of the hyoid bone – the small horseshoe-shaped bone in the front of the neck – and two fractures of the thyroid cartilage, the tissue around the voice box.
Whereas Roman’s office concluded the damage was due to suicidal hanging, Baden thought it may have been inflicted by someone else.
‘I sat for 50 years on the commission that reviews every single death that occurred in jails, lockups and prisons in the state of New York and the city of New York,’ he said. ‘During which time, for the 50 years, there were about 500-600 suicidal hanging deaths. Those type of three fractures had never been seen in any of those 500 cases.’
Baden added that the fact Epstein was found seated with his legs stretched out in front of him, his buttocks only a few inches from the ground, made suicide even less likely.
‘This turned out to be a suicidal hanging where he was seated on the ground, so that there was very much less pressure around the neck, which is what’s required in order to fracture the neck bones,’ he said.
Manhattan medical examiner Dr Roman and Dr Baden agreed at the time of the autopsy that there was a fracture of the hyoid bone – the small horseshoe-shaped bone in the front of the neck – and two fractures of the thyroid cartilage, the tissue around the voice box.
‘Free hanging is the weight of the body, minus about 10 pounds for the head. When somebody is seated, it’s probably half the weight of the body. With seated hangings there’d be less than 10 percent of cases that would have even a single fracture.’
However, there is now more information publicly available than there was when Dr Baden issued his conclusions.
Footage from the Manhattan prison cell block, released by the Justice Department last week, showed video of the only passageway towards the eight-cell tier where Epstein was being held, and where he was found dead.
The ten hours of continuous footage has an approximately one-minute gap missing, from 11:58:58 pm to 12.00.00 am, which Pam Bondi, the attorney general, explained away as standard for prison’s surveillance system, which automatically resets every night at a minute to midnight, creating a lag.
Online sleuths have now speculated that a potential killer may have slipped into Epstein’s cell block at this moment, but Dr Baden dismissed that theory.
Indeed, Dr Baden said Epstein could have been incapacitated quite quickly, but a potential killer would have needed more time to stage the scene and escape.
‘There would be a loss of consciousness within less than 10 seconds with that compression of the neck and the blood vessels in the neck by ligature strangulation, even by whether suicide or homicide, the individual would be unconscious, unable to resist within eight or nine and 10 seconds,’ he said.
Staging the scene, however, ‘would require time to tear the sheets… there were some nooses that were made, and that part of it would take time… a half hour or longer.’
Photos showed the state of the cell Epstein was found hanged in
The ten hours of continuous footage has an approximately one-minute gap missing, from 11:58:58 pm to 12.00.00 am (pictured above) which Pam Bondi, the attorney general, explained away as standard for prison’s surveillance system, which automatically resets every night at a minute to midnight, creating a lag.
Yet still, even after the release of the prison surveillance video, Dr Baden is not convinced that a murder didn’t occur.
Dr Baden believes it is entirely possible that another inmate snuck into Epstein’s cell and killed him at any point in the 10 hours that Epstein was left in his cell – against prison protocol – unsupervised.
The guards within the jail were initially evasive about how Epstein’s body was discovered: it later emerged that they had falsified records, claiming they had checked on him the obligatory two times an hour.
Now, Baden says he is ‘very surprised’ that the Epstein theories and rumors continue to swirl even after he chaired the forensic pathology panel on the House commission into JFK’s murder, and the killing of MLK.
Perhaps Epstein’s ghost will haunt America as long as theirs?
‘It’s not quite up there with those,’ he said. ‘But it does just keep going. It has legs of its own.’
This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .