Forensics: Science Applied to Law -- Text and Photos by Jadrian Klinger

Posted @ Nov. 30 2011 07:41AM by Timmy - in-print

It can happen at any moment. The call can come in the light of day or during the darkest hours of night, and Graham Hetrick must answer it.

On the other end of the line is the sobering news of a life extinguished.

An ultimate act of violence, a self-inflicted end, a deadly accident or a fatal mystery; these are the grim realities of Hetrick’s chosen career. Equipped with the tools of forensic science and directed by the letter of the law, his business is with the dead.

There’s an old saying that “dead men tell no tales,” but Hetrick is tasked with telling the story of those who can no longer speak for themselves. And for more than two decades, he has provided a voice for the deceased as the Dauphin County coroner.

As the son of a funeral home director, the realities of death and dying have been part of Hetrick’s life since he was a child. “I was born and raised over Hetrick Funeral Home on Progress Avenue,” says the 66-year-old. “I was brought up with death all around me.”

As a teenager, Hetrick helped his father around the funeral home, but he did not envision the same future for himself. Growing up with a father whose schedule required him to always be on-call cemented in his mind that this was not a profession he wished to pursue. After he graduated from Susquehanna Township High School, Hetrick enrolled at York College only to drop out soon after. “I decided – in my own brilliance during the Vietnam War – to kick around awhile and not have my student deferments,” he remembers. “So then I was caught in the draft lottery.”

Hetrick made the most of his time in the Army. “I went into Military Police and CID [United States Army Criminal Investigation Command],” he recounts. “I spent a number of years overseas with the Army as a provost marshall investigator for the southern half of Germany because I could read, write and speak German.”

Once he returned stateside, Hetrick began working for his father again to earn money for graduate work he wanted to do in the field of psychology. “I ended up with an interest in the process of death and dying and loss recovery, which at the time, was just coming to the forefront because of a woman named Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who wrote the book On Death and Dying,” he explains. “I was just fascinated by the whole process. I finally was able to get an understanding of what my father had done all those years. It’s true that he was a funeral director, but he was really a grief therapist. He took people through a process, and I was fascinated by that.”
Hetrick had merely delayed the inevitable.

In 1974, he took over control of Hetrick Funeral Home and also became the funeral director. “I ran it until 1989, when I decided to run for [Dauphin County] coroner,” he recalls. “I felt like I could run a very good coroner’s office. Anytime we had death investigations when I was in CID, they’d always say, ‘Let Hetrick do that because his old man is a funeral director; he can collect the evidence and go to the autopsies.’ So I had interest in medical/legal investigation.”

In 1990, Hetrick won the election to hold the office of the Dauphin County coroner. And for nearly 22 years, he has overseen tens of thousands of cases of homicide, suicide and accidental or undetermined death throughout the county.

“It was just funny how fate put me in a position where I’ve dealt with death all my life,” he says. “I’ve seen death in all kinds of ways; in the military, in civilian life as a funeral director and the coroner’s office. So I study it, and I study how we die and what happens after we die. It just seems to be what I’ve been surrounded with. I don’t see it as eerie, but I probably don’t look at life the way other people do.”

Not looking at life, and death, the same way most individuals do seems to be a prerequisite for working in a coroner’s office. Without a doubt, it is grim work, which requires the ability to remain neutral as well as professional in the face of cruel realities far worse than anything found in a horror film.

Hetrick’s office is responsible for all deaths in Dauphin County that are accidental, suicide, homicide or undetermined, which is a death unable to be certified or someone not under a doctor’s care 48 hours prior to passing.

“When we examine the body, there are two things we look at,” explains Hetrick. “One is the cause of death; the mechanical reason why the person could no longer sustain life. Take the example of a gunshot wound, I can say that the person died from bleeding out from the gunshot wound that transversed and dissected the thoracic aorta. Now, that’s the cause of death. But the manner is a separate thing. It’s a more subjective thing, which requires taking all of the facets of your investigation and looking at them – not just the autopsy. It requires good police work, good scene investigation and questioning and good behavior evidence analysis. We look at why the victim was where they were and the history of the victim, because many times, it can tell us who the perpetrator could possibly be. All of these aspects blend together then, and in the end, if it is properly investigated, we come up with the cause and the manner of death. That’s what I’m required to do, by law. But when I do it, I have to do it in such a way that my decision is defendable by a chain of evidence.”

The Dauphin County coroner’s office and its employees have an important job to do, and Hetrick is responsible for it all. Every death certificate that leaves his office must carry his signature to be official. There is no room for error in his line of work.

“Forensics is such a broad field that there are specialties in many different areas,” says Hetrick. “And I’m smart enough to know how dumb I am. I’m not an entomologist, a toxicologist or a physical anthropologist, but I know each one of these fields, and I know who to get and how good they are. I do what I do in concert with everyone involved, from my deputy coroners to the forensic pathologist, Dr. Wayne Ross. I often say that I’m sort of like a conductor because I’m putting all of these facets together. What I’m really good at is crime-scene management. When it all comes down to the end, I know I’ve done everything we have to do.”

Made up of forensic pathologist Dr. Ross, four full-time deputy coroners, one part-timer, an office administrator and Hetrick, the Dauphin County coroner's office clears about 1,200 cases (500 fully investigated) and performs approximately 250 autopsies a year. Since 1990, when Hetrick began his first term as Dauphin County coroner, tens of thousands of cases have passed through his office.

It might be easy to assume – after seeing, examining and investigating the cold realties of humanity at its most inhumane – that an insensitive callous has hardened over his capacity for empathy. But, instead, his appreciation for life, as well as the profound effect the tragedies he presides over has on the families and loved ones involved, has heightened far beyond the norm. “Everybody who works here is faced with mortality every day, and it does give you a different appreciation of life,” he explains. “On a daily basis, I’m certainly aware that life doesn’t last forever, that you had better appreciate today because you could be just like the person on the autopsy table the next day.”

While every case is just as important as the next, some cases stick with him long after his workday is finished. And, perhaps, the fact that he is affected by his work explains why he is so good at it. Becoming jaded by the harsh realities of his occupation is certainly understandable, but he refuses that temptation, opting instead for the much more difficult task of carrying some of the weight that befalls the victims and their loved ones.

“My hardest cases are child abuse cases,” admits Hetrick. There was a horrible child abuse case where the child was beaten over a period of time with a [video game] remote. The brutality of the case was extreme. I got through the autopsy and all the other stuff. But two weeks later, I was driving home, and it just struck me, the horridness of this thing. It really just struck me emotionally. And I don’t get a satisfaction that the guy was convicted, because they’re all losers. This guy who was so angry that it meant he would beat a child to death with a remote or the poor girl who was probably there for 45 minutes being beaten, there are no winners. Most of the time, what I’m looking at, there are no winners, no good feeling.”

Hetrick is certainly not immune to the grisly nature of his work. Being able to draw on his expert training and unique experience of growing up in a funeral home helps, but he also relies heavily on his personal beliefs. “I think you have to have a really good belief system. I believe in both a darkness and a light in the world, and that people can get deeply involved with one or the other. And in the case of darkness, I’ve seen some pretty horrible things.”

Constantly aware of the impact he has on the those caught in the wake of a homicide, suicide, accident or undetermined death, Hetrick knows well what is at stake and the importance of his job. He does not take it lightly. “If we make a mistake, we can absolutely destroy people’s lives,” he says. “I agonize every time I have to write ‘homicide’ on a death certificate because I know what I’m going to put someone through that may be accused of it. Most people would think that I work for the district attorney, but I don’t. I can cooperate with the DA, but I’m working for the dead person. I have to tell their story. I have to look at the facts as an independent forensic scientist. Same thing goes for my death investigators; they have to be absolutely neutral in what they’re doing. We have to let the evidence speak for itself.”
Letting the evidence speak for itself is the result of good science. “What forensics means is science applied to law,” explains Hetrick. “Everything we do here, we have to categorize so that if it ends up in court, we can say that we did this in a manner that was peer-reviewed, that was scientific, that can be tested and re-tested to show we are right – or at least predominately right, because we can’t always come up with exact answers.”

With the proliferation of television shows like CSI [insert your favorite city here], Law & Order or any of the other seemingly countless police procedural dramas across the dial, the general public often expects the impossible when it comes to forensic science. For those who work in the forensics field, like Hetrick, most of the “science” in these shows is laughable. Hetrick admits that much of what is shown on TV is based on some small aspect of forensic science, but the speed and manner in which they use it to solve cases is far from realistic.

While these shows might create some pressure to live up to unrealistic expectations in the minds of many, it was the murder trial of O.J. Simpson in 1995 that raised the level of quality for many crime and death investigators, including Hetrick. “You could almost put on a calendar pre-O.J. and post-O.J. as far as forensic science,” he says. “That event raised the standard for crime-scene investigation because of so many things that were done wrong in that double homicide. The crime-scene procedure was not what it should have been. It left that reasonable doubt. From that point on, there was this tremendous demand to elevate the quality of crime-scene investigation and medical/legal death investigation.”

The combination of that demand for better investigation coupled with the amazing scientific advances of the past 20 years has given rise to a renaissance of sorts in the field of forensics. “There has been this expansion of science,” details Hetrick. “With that expansion, it takes more expertise from people in the area of science, understanding alternative light sources or understanding why Luminol luminesces blood. Today, DNA is also far more critical, so being aware of cross-contamination is far more critical. What is called trace evidence (evidence you can’t see with the naked eye, but you know is there) that you need to collect, you have to know how to collect it, how to look for it and how to protect it once you get it so that it can be processed and later end up in court.”

It is not Hetrick’s job to decide whether someone is guilty or innocent of charges. His only concern is ensuring that the tale of the man or woman lying on the autopsy table is told. “I don’t worry about the justice thing,” he says. “I just want to tell the story of the person. It’s up to the DA to charge them and put them in jail. I just want to get all of the evidence. If I’m clouded in the concept of wanting justice, then I’m clouded as being a neutral observer. I may just as likely collect evidence that proves somebody innocent as proves somebody who the police or the DA may think is guilty.”

Despite being on-call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, combined with the enormous pressures of a career that deals with the consequences of lives often ending prematurely, Hetrick somehow finds time to teach at Harrisburg University, give back to the community through organizations like Estamos Unidos de Pennsylvania, publish a bilingual newspaper called La Voz Latina Central, offer his expertise on the occasional nationally televised show (like Forensic Files and Modern Marvels, just to name two) and practice Isshin-ryu karate.

When asked to describe an average day in the life of the Dauphin County Coroner, Hetrick balks at the question. “I can’t take you through the average day because there is no average day,” he admits. “There just absolutely is not.”

Even the simple luxury of taking a vacation is a foreign concept in Hetrick’s life. “Biggest thing for me in life is if I go away,” he says. “This past June, I took seven days off for the first time in the last seven years. I went to Germany – that was a big deal, seven days off. But even then, I had to take the cell phone along. It’s a really big deal when I don’t need to answer a cell phone.”

As unrelenting as his schedule may sound and one year past the average age of retirement for most folks, Hetrick wouldn’t have it any other way. “I think I’m very lucky because every one of the things I do, I like,” he says. “And, at my age, I don’t want to do things I don’t like or I don’t think are going to make a better community after I’m gone.”

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