No homicide in porch fall, 3rd autopsy of teen finds

LITTLE ROCK — A Searcy County teenager who died at a party in the woods almost 20 years ago wasn't slain, the special prosecutor investigating the death of Olivia Jane Ward announced Monday.

The results of a third autopsy and a computerized tomography scan failed to turn up any significant injuries that could have contributed to the teen's death, said Tim Williamson of Mena, but new forensic techniques helped investigators rule out homicide. Ward was 16 when she died at a party with classmates at a Searcy County cabin on Sept. 9, 1989.

"We unfortunately can't have a definitive answer based on the extensive forensics that we have," Williamson, prosecuting attorney of the 18th Judicial District-West, said during a news conference at Arkansas State Police headquarters in Little Rock. "There's no definitive answer as to her manner and cause of death, and they'll both remain as undetermined."

Williamson was named the special prosecutor in Ward's case in December 2004.

Dr. John Pless, the Indiana forensic pathologist Williamson retained to re-examine the case, suggested that Ward could've died of a heart abnormality or by choking on a foreign object, but he said neither hypothesis could be put forward with a reasonable medical certainty.

The Ward family rejected the latest findings, which dismiss those of Dr. Harry Bonnell of San Diego, Calif. Bonnell's 2004 autopsy concluded that the teen was killed and precipitated Williamson's appointment as special prosecutor.

Bonnell concluded that Ward suffered a blow to the head forceful enough to break her neck. He also reported an impact to the left side of her face, with bruising of the left cheek, fracture and bleeding in the cartilage of the nose and bruising of the left forehead. Further, Bonnell said, he found no evidence of any impact to the back of the head, as described in the original autopsy by Dr. Fahmy Malak, the state's former chief medical examiner who resigned in 1991.

In determining Ward's death a homicide, Bonnell said the injuries he found didn't agree with statements witnesses gave after Ward's death.

The initial autopsy concluded she died from injuries suffered in a fall from the cabin porch, a distance of less than a foot. After that autopsy was brought into question, the cause of death was changed to undetermined. The Wards eventually obtained a court order to exhume their daughter's body and enlisted Bonnell to perform his autopsy.

Williamson and Pless briefed the family on the forensic findings before speaking with reporters. Williamson has said he sought the third autopsy to confirm Bonnell's findings.

"We didn't think the autopsy was about confirming anything," said Mona Ward, the teen's mother. "We just thought it was about confusing the issue, which they thoroughly have. But it's not over. The state might rest, but we won't because we know what we saw. We know.

"We saw the bruises, we saw the broken nose, we saw the X-ray of the neck injury. We saw it all. ... And nothing is going to change that."

Pless said the injuries cited by Ward's mother weren't revealed by his examination, which included a computerized tomography scan performed by the UAMS Medical Center in Little Rock. A computerized tomography scan consists of X-ray pictures of the inside of the body taken from different angles by a computer.

Williamson said he knew of no other case for which the scan was used as an investigative forensics tool.

The only injuries Pless said he found were "localized minor superficial contusions or bruises of the right elbow, left lower back and left knee," according to his report to Williamson.

Both Pless and Williamson said Bonnell's report was less than thorough. Neither Bonnell nor Malak supported their statements regarding the spinal chord injury they describe in their separate reports.

"Neither one of those doctors described the damage, its exact location or its degree," said Pless, who has disagreed with Bonnell on one other case. "Nor did they confirm the damage with microscopic slides. So although statements were made, there's no confirmation of them."

Arkansas' chief medical examiner, Dr. Charles Kokes, also has dismissed Bonnell's autopsy as"grossly substandard."

Bonnell, who has performed more than 6,000 autopsies, was the deputy chief medical examiner in San Diego for 10 years until his dismissal in 2001. Bonnell told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette last year that he was fired because he wouldn't follow a supervisor's order that he believed was unethical. He opened a private forensicsconsulting firm afterward and has qualified as an expert witness more than 400 times in 17 states.

Bonnell couldn't be reached for comment Monday. Messages left on a voice mail at his office and on his mobile telephone wasn't returned.

A report from a radiologist noted that the latest scan found what appeared to be a fracture of Ward's nose. Pless said that represented a post-mortem incision. The scan report also suggested the nose anomaly might have been made post-mortem.

Pless said Bonnell didn't help matters when he failed to enlist another forensic pathologist to assist him in his autopsy. A forensic anthropologist, Stephen Nawrocki, and a pathologist for the Wards, Dr. David Hause, were present when Pless performed his autopsy last August.

"That's very important here because all these misunderstandings as I see them in this particular case have to do with people with no experience whatsoever, no training or expertise making proclamations about what was found either in the first or the second autopsies," Pless said.

"They will make proclamations about what I found. There's no way around that. This is a free country, and people are entitled to their own opinions."

Pless, who has performed about 10,000 autopsies, said it's understandable that the Wards don't accept the latest forensic findings.

"The Wards have been told a lot of different things by a lot of different people," he said. "They don't know what to believe. Frankly, I understand that."

The Wards said they haven't heard from their own pathologist yet.

"He hasn't issued us a report," said Ron Ward, Olivia Ward's father. "He was supposed to, but he hasn't."

The state's forensic reports have been ready for several months, and the Wards received a copy of Pless' report last November, Williamson said. But he didn't want the forensic reports to be made public until he had interviewed most of the witnesses in the case.

Several witnesses remain to be interviewed and some legal research needs to be completed before a final report on the case is issued, said Williamson, who has amassed an investigative file of more than 4,000 pages. The investigation itself has cost more than $20,000.

"The results of the forensic investigation does not answer every question in this case," he said, "but it answers some of the most important ones."