Dr. Werner Spitz

Werner Uri Spitz (born August 22, 1926) is a German-American forensic pathologist who has worked on a number of high-profile cases, including the investigations of the assassinations of president John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. He also testified at the trials of Casey Anthony and Phil Spector, the 1996 civil trial against O. J. Simpson, and consulted on the investigation of JonBenét Ramsey's 1996 death.

He wrote and with his son Daniel co-edited the book ''Spitz and Fisher's Medicolegal Investigation of Death: Guidelines for the Application of Pathology to Crime Investigation''.

Biography

Werner Spitz was born in 1926 to a Jewish family in Stargard, Germany (now Poland); his parents, Siegfried and Anna Spitz, were both physicians. Given the growing antisemitism in Germany, his family fled to Mandatory Palestine when he was a child. When Spitz was a youth, his father got him a job working in a medical examiner's office, where he was charged with cleaning and other small duties. Spitz eventually began assisting with the autopsies. He recalls assisting with the autopsy of Morris Meyerson in 1951; he was the husband of Golda Meir, the future Israeli politician and Prime Minister.

Spitz returned to Europe for medical school, where he started studies at Geneva University in Switzerland. After he had been four years in Geneva, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem established the university's Medical School and Spitz transferred there. He received his medical doctorate after an additional three years of studies and clinical work. He graduated at the age of 27.

Spitz immigrated to the United States in 1959. His decision to leave his native Israel was partly inspired by the lack of regional need for his chosen career path. "In seven years in Israel, there was only one murder." He said. "It just wasn't the right place for a forensic pathologist." Spitz later served as Deputy Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore, Maryland, and Chief Medical Examiner for Wayne County, Michigan (Wayne County includes the city of Detroit).

There he made many controversial changes, and in 1976 he was charged with taking parts from bodies without getting permission from the next of kin, privately charging for his services, and improperly conducting ballistic experiments on dead bodies. Although Spitz admitted some of the charges, the Wayne County Prosecutor declined to prosecute him, saying that "He was just being a doctor."

Work as a forensic pathologist

In 1969, Spitz testified on behalf of Joseph and Gwen Kopechne, the parents of Mary Jo Kopechne, who died following a car accident in the vehicle of Ted Kennedy at Chappaquiddick Island. Kopechne was presumed to have died from drowning after Kennedy's car swerved off a small bridge and plunged into the water. Kopechne's parents were seeking to prevent her body from being exhumed and autopsied. Spitz testified that the autopsy was unnecessary, and the available evidence was sufficient to conclude that Kopechne died from drowning. The judge sided with Kopechne's parents and denied the request for exhumation.

In 1970, while Spitz was the deputy chief medical examiner for Maryland, he determined that Sister Cathy Cesnik, a 26-year-old Catholic nun who disappeared in November 1969, had been murdered by a blow to the head. In 1994, a witness came forward and said a priest took her as a young teen, to see Cesnik's body shortly after she had gone missing. She said that he was threatening her not to say anything about the sexual abuse that was allegedly occurring at her Catholic school. The witness told police she remembered maggots on Cesnik's corpse, but was not believed. The police said that maggots were unlikely in November. However, in 2016, when Spitz's original autopsy was made public, it had documented that there were maggots present. Werner confirmed this when interviewed for the 2017 Netflix series ''The Keepers'', about Cesnik's murder.

In 1975, Spitz was asked to work as an advisor to both the Rockefeller Commission
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