America Undercover (TV Series) Autopsy: Confessions of a Medical Examiner (1994) User Reviews

Autopsy:Confessions of a Medical Examiner

[Scarecrow-88 · 10/10 · 27 June 2010]

HBO has this series which used to run chills down my spine called AUTOPSY, regarding specific cases where a famous medical examiner, Michael Baden, solves specific crimes through forensic evidence. This series offers us a look into the destructive side of human nature or natural causes(such as the case of a seizure, at the onset ruled as a strangulation where a teenage girl was arrested). We get a case about a mother who killed her 9 children due to Munchausen By Proxy(she was a "sympathy junkie" as labeled by Baden), the horrifying murder of a prison guard(sexually savaged by an inmate, his bite marks were his undoing, as he had bitten into her nipple, with a past case revealing the same kind of bites on another victim's nose and face), the amazingly well kept corpse of Civil Rights Activist Medgar Evers(which should put a lump in your throat, it's astonishing how his body had looked as if it hadn't aged more than a day!), the determination that a man who police thought had thrown himself from an apartment building was in fact a murder(the killer had actually used a hatchet which Baden discovered a laceration of this weapon in a photo of the victim's fedora!), a killer is implicated by a certain type of french fries(!), the fact that Billy Martin was not behind the steering wheel during the wreck which took his life, and we see the discovered remains of a 5000 year old Italian found in the Alps. It's the haunting power of the subtly creepy score and the narrative voice of Marlene Sanders which also add potency to the disturbing subject matter and autopsy footage. This is a must see for those into forensic science and interested in the darkness of mankind.