This episode contains disturbing content, including conversations of homicide,

mistreatment of corpses, and language around autopsies. Please take care while listening.

Katrina Gaye was very close with her mother, Joanna. They both lived in Newport,

News, Virginia, and they had dinner together once a week.

She was very friendly, fun-loving, loved family, loved animals. She was just a really great person.

She was my best friend.

Katrina's mother was diagnosed with adult asthma at the age of 64, but other than the asthma

diagnosis, she was healthy, strong. So it was a shock to Katrina in May of 2018 when her mother

was suddenly hospitalized. She was on the ventilator. She was there for a little over two weeks,

and then she passed away. In the blink of an eye, Katrina's life turned upside down.

How had her mother died so suddenly? Was it because of the asthma? Or something else?

She wanted answers, a reason for how this had happened. Her mother's death certificate

listed respiratory failure as the cause of death, but to Katrina that wasn't the whole picture.

Being that she passed kind of fairly rapidly and due to her age, I just wanted to make sure there

was nothing underlying or something we missed that was going on. I felt like I wasn't going to have

peace of mind totally until I had the autopsy and they could go in death.

Katrina told me that the hospital where her mother died does offer autopsy,

but in the days immediately after her mother's death, she was so overcome with grief that she didn't

think about having one done. By the time she decided she did want an autopsy, her mother's body was

at a local funeral home. So she contacted the funeral home and they referred her to a private autopsy

company called National Autopsy Services. Katrina called the owner right away, a man named Sean

Parcells. I felt like he was knowledgeable and he was even more school. He was like I'm sorry for

...