Morgue (24 page)

Like I said before: The forensic pathologist's only mission is finding the truth. It's not supposed to be for the police or against the police or for a family or against a family. I'm supposed to be impartial and tell the truth. Now, sometimes what I told them they didn't want to hear, and sometimes they did. But I didn't care, because I was telling them the truth.

The truth isn't always satisfying.

SAN ANTONIO. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 11, 1984.

Something wasn't right.

A cold wind blew out of the north, plunging the normally balmy South Texas temperatures well below freezing. A low, sepulchral sky made this morning feel like death.

Ann Ownby didn't sleep well the night before. Her husband Bob hadn't come home. He hadn't even called to say he'd be late. So before dawn, she drove to the Army base where he'd gone that night, Fort Sam Houston, to see if he was still there.

She entered the two-story building where he kept an office, but it was locked. She drove around a while, then returned, but he still wasn't there, so she left.

Then there was a sudden commotion in the building. At 0640, the duty day hadn't even really started, but a base employee coming to work early had used a vaulted stairwell toward the rear of the building and found Bob.

He'd been hanged, dangling in the cold open space between floors. The noose around his neck was tied to the stairway's handrail on the floor above. There was a little blood on his face and his hands were tied behind his back with a military-style web belt.

Pinned to Ownby's sweater was a chilling typewritten message, in all capital letters:

CAPTURED. TRIED. CONVICTED OF CRIMES BY

THE UNITED STATES ARMY AGAINST THE PEOPLE

OF THE WORLD. SENTENCED. EXECUTED
.

In the next hour, investigators found another foreboding note on Ownby's office desk, hastily scrawled in the general's own handwriting:

10 Jan 84. I started out of the building and caught a glimpse of some people inside who quickly moved toward the back. I don't know who they are or what they are doing. They were apparently startled. I came back here to call the MPs, however I cannot get any of the telephones to work. Just as a precaution, I am placing my office keys in my shoe. I will call the MPs as soon as I can get to a working phone.

Reserve major general Robert G. Ownby—a two-star general in charge of the 90th Army Reserve Command, and at forty-eight, the youngest general in the Reserves' history—had been murdered.

And his killers might be terrorists who'd infiltrated an Army base on US soil.

Anti-American terrorism didn't start on September 11, 2001, not by a long shot. We've been in revolutionaries' and anarchists' cross hairs for at least a century, and our military provides the easiest target. A steady stream of menacing attacks made headlines in the early 1980s.

In 1981, US brigadier general James Dozier was kidnapped in Italy by the radical Marxist terror group known as the Red Brigades, who threatened to kill him. After forty-two days in captivity, he was rescued by an Italian counterterrorist team, but the terror was just beginning.

Nine months before General Ownby's body was found, a suicide car bomber crashed a stolen van full of explosives into the American embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing sixty-three people. Eighteen were Americans.

Less than three months before he died, another suicide car bomber crashed through the gates of the US Marine barracks in Beirut, killing two hundred and forty-one American servicemen and wounding eighty-one. And only two months before, a time bomb exploded in the US Senate as a protest against the invasion of Grenada, hurting nobody but sending a shock wave through the government, especially the Pentagon.

It wasn't terribly far-fetched to think evildoers might steal across the porous US-Mexican border and in a mere two hours be in the heart of one of America's biggest military cities.

So on this unseasonably cold day in January, when they found a dead US Army general with a chilling death message pinned to his chest, the possibility of a terrorist hit against the military wasn't unthinkable. In fact, it might even have been some investigators' first fear.

General Ownby commanded sixty-three reserve combat units in Texas and Louisiana, more than four thousand reservists who were ready to deploy to any trouble spot in the world. He wasn't the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but he was an easier target at Fort Sam Houston, an unfenced, ungated post in the middle of sprawling San Antonio. What self-respecting terrorist wouldn't leap at the opportunity to kill a two-star general if his front door were left open, literally and figuratively?

The Army issued an immediate alert, asking border authorities to watch for terrorists fleeing into Mexico. It issued bulletproof vests to two other generals at Fort Sam Houston, and warned high-ranking reservists to be especially vigilant.

But federal agents and Army investigators weren't ready to call it an act of terror. Despite the sinister message left on Ownby's body and his hastily scrawled note about mysterious intruders, the evidence didn't add up to the violent invasion of a military post.

For one, other than a small smear of blood on Ownby's face, we found no bruises or other marks on him suggesting a beating or struggle. There was no sign of forced entry. In fact, his jacket was found neatly folded on the second-floor landing, with his wallet lying tidily on top. His eyeglasses, folded closed, had been laid beside it.

Also, no group claimed responsibility for the assassination, as commonly happened in such crimes.

And the building's telephone system had been working properly all day and all night before, despite Ownby's note about phones not working.

Our only evidence suggesting a terrorist slaying was the note pinned to Ownby's sweater.

Good investigators keep open minds. For several days, they pursued other leads, looked at evidence from all angles, and considered alternative explanations. Yes, it might have been a terrorist execution, they knew … but it might also have been a murder staged to divert attention away from the real killer, or maybe an elaborate ruse to camouflage a suicide.

We began to look closer at General Ownby. Who might have wanted him dead? Might we find clues to his killer in his life story and his final days?

Robert Ownby was born on September 9, 1935, in Durant, Oklahoma. He was steeped in public service: His father, then Durant's postmaster, had risen through the ranks from a buck private in World War I to colonel in World War II. His mother was a public school teacher.

He grew up on Main Street, a quiet, studious kid who was well liked by his neighbors and classmates. He had a paper route and joined the Boy Scouts. A member of the high school honor society, student council, speech club, and Future Farmers of America, he was the epitome of small-town America in the 1950s, a golden boy full of wholesome promise.

In 1957, with a degree in animal husbandry and a commission from the Reserve Officer Training Corps at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Ownby started two years of active duty in the infantry. He attended basic infantry and parachute schools at Fort Benning, Georgia, before becoming a platoon leader in Washington's prestigious Old Guard unit that, among other solemn duties, escorts dead soldiers to their final resting places in Arlington National Cemetery and elsewhere.

After three years in the inactive reserve, Ownby joined the Texas National Guard and switched to the Army Reserve in 1972. In the 90th Army Reserve Command at Fort Sam Houston, he quickly rose through the ranks. In 1981, the youngest major general in Army Reserve history took command of the entire unit.

Ownby seemed equally successful in civilian life. He and his wife Ann had three children, and they lived in a big house in an upscale neighborhood. He could afford it: He was president and CEO of the Bristow Company, which made metal doors and frames for commercial buildings, and director of the Liberty Frost Bank.

His life was full of other strategic moves, some better than others. In 1982, he had left an executive job at a soft-drink maker to become an executive vice president at an independent oil company in San Antonio, but left after a few months, as drilling started to bust.

So why had this deeply religious community leader and exemplary father of three died? His autopsy quickly showed the
cause
to be asphyxiation by hanging, but was it murder or suicide?

Bureaucratic and jurisdictional confusion had delayed the Bexar County Medical Examiner Office's first examination of Ownby's body for nine hours after he was found, so it was impossible for me to determine the precise moment of death.

That's another Hollywood myth, that time of death is a simple, quick, infallible calculation.

When I was young, when you watched TV or went to the movies, the medical examiner or coroner was always this cadaverous guy who showed up at the murder scene carrying this small physician's bag—let's just call him Doc. Since a real forensic pathologist is not supposed to manipulate the body at the scene, I assume Doc carried his lunch in his little valise.

A cop always asked Doc the time of death, and Doc always had an answer. “Oh,” he'd say gravely, “between one and one thirty this morning.”

In real life, detectives might have arrested him immediately because the only person who could give the time that exactly was the murderer himself. Estimation of the time of death is usually an educated guess. Many factors affect a corpse after death, slowing or speeding natural processes, and they can occur in myriad combinations. Time of death might be a good investigative tool, but it is not exact science.

When I was in training, I was instructed to determine when the individual was last seen alive and when he was found dead, then to say he died some time in between. In court, my answer is usually something like “He was dead about twelve hours—give or take six hours.”

So we couldn't precisely peg the general's moment of death, but we could safely say what killed him: asphyxia by hanging.

Ownby's neck wasn't broken; he died by strangling. Another Hollywood myth is that hanging always breaks a neck. Yes, sometimes it happens, but usually only in judicial executions. The only times I've seen broken necks in suicidal hangings is when an elderly victim has severe cervical osteoporosis that makes his neck bones brittle.

Death in these “nonjudicial” hangings is usually caused not by compressing the trachea (windpipe), but by choking the arteries in the neck that carry blood to the head and brain. The hanged person will lose consciousness in about ten to twelve seconds, convulse briefly, then be brain-dead within three minutes of passing out.

How do we know? Sadly, we know a lot more about hanging deaths in the digital age because many people now record their suicides with smartphones, webcams, and high-resolution video cameras. Forensic pathologists now can see all the grim details, captured forever in high definition.

We found no drugs or alcohol in the general's system; no injuries consistent with a physical assault; and no unexplained fingerprints, hairs, or fibers in the area. The handwriting on the note in Ownby's office was definitely his (although the typewritten note didn't come from typewriters in Ownby's Army office or home). The blood on his face wasn't conclusive of a fight; a small amount of blood from the nose and mouth is common in hangings.

Ownby struggled dreadfully to save himself. I noted numerous gouges and scuffs from black-soled military shoes high on the stairwell wall and metal handrail nearest the hanging body. General Ownby might have flailed frantically for several seconds, desperately seeking scant purchase on the slick, steeply slanted rail, trying to relieve the weight on his noose by perching there. But he kept slipping. Or he might have convulsed violently after blacking out. The damage was so prolific that after the crime scene was released, the wall needed two coats of paint to cover the scars.

Bigger questions troubled us. How could he have lashed his own wrists behind his back? If not hanged by his unknown assailants, how could he have hanged himself while awkwardly bound? Where had the purported terrorist note been typed?

We reenacted several possible scenarios at the death scene, seeking answers, while the pieces of our puzzle slowly fell into place.

Three days after his death, some three thousand mourners attended Ownby's funeral at Trinity Baptist Church, a stone's throw from the military building where he died.

The Reverend Buckner Fanning, a prominent Texas evangelist and Ownby family friend, delivered a poignant eulogy, aimed partly at defusing media speculation that was now front-page news across the country.

“We are not here today because Bob Ownby died, but because he lived,” Fanning told the somber overflow crowd. “Today, the world is swirling frantically with questions about his death, but we're standing firmly on the unquestionable facts of his life, his faith, his love of family.…

“It is always important to ask the right question. [But] mankind has a propensity for asking questions that don't matter.”

Under corpse-cold, gray skies, Ownby's flag-draped casket was carried to his grave in the Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, in a section reserved for heroes and generals. A howitzer fired a thirteen-round salute, each thunderous clap precisely eight seconds after the last—proper military protocol for a major general.

All the while, Ownby's family and friends believed passionately he'd been murdered and chafed at any suggestion that he killed himself. He wasn't depressed or teetering on a financial brink, they said. Nobody who saw him in his last days saw changes in his usually upbeat mood. His life seemed perfect to them. The general's disbelieving brother, himself a doctor, told the press he planned to hire an independent legal advocate to review everything the medical examiner, the FBI, and the US Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID) found. For them, our questions were intrusive, insulting, and immaterial.