When I started my sculpture depicting Vietnam, I got carried away with my potential abilities. I went to Italy to see the magnificent Michelangelo sculptures. My Vietnam memorial is some version thereof of his Pieta. Michelangelo had cut up bodies to learn anatomy. It was illegal then and it is illegal now.

I had studied at the National Academy and the Art Students League in New York, and was always studying anatomy through art books.

On a flight between NY and D.C. I met someone from the NYC Medical Examiner’s office. I queried about the possibility about going to the Medical Examiner’s office and watching their procedures. The person gave the appropriate name to contact. I made the contact and was allowed access to the Medical Examiner’s Office through the intervention of Senator Vance Hartke’s, Committee on Veterans Affairs.

The Medical Examiner’s Office in Manhattan is located on First Avenue and about 32nd Street. There isn’t much around the neighborhood other than a small Mexican Restaurant that serves strong Margaritas with salt on the rim. The building is 3-4 floors high and covers a big portion of the block. The basement has the bodies, the first floor has the offices, 2nd floor is the laboratory, and the 3rd floor is the Museum .

I threw up the first four times I went to the Medical Examiner’s Office. Thereafter, you just got used to the smell of the morgue, which is similar to your local grocer’s fresh meat counter.

Oppie, with massive flowing white hair, worked in the front office and was my guide. He was to retire soon and had thoroughly enjoyed his work years with death. In such a place of nothing more serious than death, just about everyone has a great sense of humor. There are so many new moments of horror right around the corner, it has to be viewed with humor.

The morgue holds about 120 bodies in refrigerated units, stacked two high. In addition, there is the "baby house" which is just a big walk in refrigerated unit and the decomposition unit at the back by the loading platform.

I went to the Morgue almost every weekend for three months during the summer of 1973. The star of the show was Dr. Michael Baden. Oppie introduced me to Baden as "his favorite" and Baden became my favorite. Dr. Baden loved being a pathologist. When Baden was still in graduate school down the street, he would come to the Morgue and work on bodies during his lunch hour. He was completely enthusiastic about everything. His wife had a double doctorate in a related field, they had 5 children, and she was a Gerber Baby Food heir.

Dr. Baden was tall, good looking with mustache, and personable. He was a professional investigator. His enthusiasm was contagious. I did not know at the time that Baden was well known as a pathologist for his work on the John F. Kennedy assassination, and Baden was seen on TV briefly with the O.J. Simpson murder investigation.

At the NY Medical Examiner’s Office, Dr. Baden would make the "rounds" of the new bodies that had come in overnight. Oppie would go along and take notes in shorthand from Baden. Some bodies required autopsies, some didn’t. Baden had a knife in one hand, would open up the belly cut out a piece of liver or kidney or something, put it in a plastic bag and Oppie would take that part off to the lab for analysis. They were no nonsense and efficient.

The main operating room was a huge room with from 10 to 12 stainless steel operating tables. The first order of business is to cut the skull off to expose the brain. This is certainly the most gruesome part. I think they did that on all bodies who came into that room. After a while you didn’t notice, just a different hairdo.

Early in the morning in preparation for the autopsies, the workers’ electric saws were cutting off the top half of those skulls and the sound filled the room.

Once Dr. Baden showed me the difference between a sick brain and a healthy brain. He told me to hold out my hands. He placed a firm, color fresh, brain in my hands. It was this beautiful big muscle that I guess weighs a couple pounds. Then Baden put into my hands a gray, mushy brain. It was diseased and sick. The difference was remarkable. The healthy brain was really firm and beautiful. Brain beauty - 101?

The refrigerated units are kept one degree above freezing. They can keep the bodies a long time.

There was this black woman they had kept a long time. They could not identify her. Her head and hands had been cut off.

One of the workers there had told me it was good I was coming on weekends "cause that’s when we get the real fresh ones." Oh yes, and the ambulance vehicle is called the "meat wagon". This same worker was with me one early Saturday morning, and the most beautiful, powerful man was taken to his refrigerated unit from the meat wagon. I asked who killed this wonderful looking man; the worker said "who do you think"?

"His wife."

That did somehow change my impression of the place, too.

One of the Pathologist was telling me about doing the autopsy on Tarzan and how exciting it was because his body was so powerful. He was talking about Johnny Weistmuller, the actor, who had died recently. I told this pathologist about my going to Canada to see the great horse Secretariat’s last race and how powerful and beautiful that horse was.

The Pathologist got excited "Oh God, I’d love to do his autopsy."

As Omar Khayyam said "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder".

There were the murder/suicides and just the suicides. I remember the woman who drowned herself in her bathtub. She looked so peaceful, which is what a friend said who came to identify her.

They all look peaceful once the medical authorities have come to close the eyes. Usually the mouth is closed, too. I remember making a big deal out of this "seeing the pain in the face...." The morgue operating room was packed. The group lying on tables l through 3 was the father, the mother, and the 2 year old baby. The father had killed them both and then killed himself. The baby was sharing an operating table with another body.

I just spent the longest time looking into that dead father’s face...for something.

There was this gay guy, who had dressed up as a woman, picked up this guy in a bar, took him to hotel room. Guy discovers girl is guy and slashes the guy’s throat. The gay guy had also been taking hormones, and his breasts were beautifully developed. I remember the fallen fake eyelashes on his rosy cheek.

Sex and murder are dominant themes.

I had spent so much time with Dr. Baden and finally I asked him "if I could dissect a body." You know Doctor, study anatomy, like Michelangelo, like you. He said okay when one came up and he could allow it.

Well, my first subject was named "Harold". He had died about 8 hours earlier from a massive heart attack at the time of ejaculation with a "new" love partner after a long, long time relationship with another guy. When you tell a guy that is the way somebody died.....in the sack ....having sex....he will say "what a way to go". Or come?

I told "Harold" it wasn’t going to hurt as I made some minor incision..

This cop must have seen me talking to this body, and came up to fill the gap. He was a detective and was asking me some stupid question like "are women supposed to be smarter than men to be pathologists...?" I just kept mumbling "yes...yes...yes."

Finally Baden saw what was going on, came up talked to the cop and suggested the cop go away because the student can’t talk about something else and concentrate on what she is doing.

The cop may have been trying to pick up the smart lady pathologists who talks to her bodies.

There was a series of 6 to 8 murders that summer and the victims were always black or Hispanic boys about 7 years old with a large "X" carved into their chests. Reminded me of that TV series in the 50’s or 60’s called "Z" the Sign of Zorro. The actor had a sword and would slash this Z onto the screen.

In addition to the X, the boys had their penis cut off and sometimes stuffed in the boy’s mouth and once put in the mailbox. The boy’s wrists were also slashed.

I remember so vividly the curses to the murderer from everyone there as they first opened his refrigerated unit to have his autopsy done by Dr. Baden. Everybody just stood there and looked for the longest time. Then he was transferred to the operating table.

Dr. Baden performed the autopsy. Considering all the "causes of death" the boy could have suffered: I asked Dr. Baden: "This may sound like a real stupid question, but which way did he die first?"

Dr. Baden said "No, good question." The good news is that the boy died first from his wrists being slashed - loss of blood would have caused him to die within very few minutes. The boy was dead when the other horrible things were done to him.

As far as I know they never caught the murderer and I don’t know if there were any more little victim boys.

Dr. Milton Helper was Chief Medical Examiner for NYC and was known as "the world famous pathologist." Halpern and Baden had a close working relationship until they split over the "use" of Methadone as a substitute for heroin. Methadone is put in orange juice and drank that way. A lot of the regular drug users families were showing up as "victims" who had gone to the addict’s refrigerator and drank their orange juice. I remember one of those cases.

Dr. Baden was the Medical Examiner who was called to the scene when the former New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller died.

As with most "screwing around" by politicians or rich people those days, it was just reported that Rockefeller died of a heart attack and he happened to be in the same apartment with this young woman who worked for National Geographic.

Quite some time later after having left NYC, I received a New York Times article from a NY neighbor.. Dr. Baden had progressed on to becoming Chief Medical Examiner of New York City. However, he made a big mistake. He called a press conference and told everybody within hearing distance on the planet earth that Nelson Rockefeller had died in the sack during ejaculation.

The Rockefeller family did not like Dr. Baden’s interpretation of Nelson Rockefeller’s death, and had Dr. Baden stripped of his "Chief" stripes and sent out to the Queens Medical Examiner’s office, far far away from the excitement of Manhattan.

Those were some of the comings and goings of the Medical Examiner.

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November 200l:  1972 Fischer/Spassky  World Chess Championship Prints: Reykjavik, Iceland:  I recently recovered these Fischer/Spassky Chess Prints from my Mother's house.  I sold prints to Macy's, Brentano's, and  Bloomingdale's in New York City. Prints were featured in Chess Life and Review, and Bobby Fischer  showed them on National Television.  (At chess match, cameras were not allowed.)  Set of three prints (only 8 complete sets left), signed anew by Vivian Westerman and dated 2001, limited edition  complete sets marked number 1 of 8, 2 of 8, etc.  Size of prints with border 13 1/2" x 11"; actual size of picture 11" x 8".  Price $50.00 for 3, plus shipping.  Go to my SSL Order Form.  

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