Werner Spitz, The Original Medical Detective, a Body Bags Tribute

Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan

CrimeOnline and iHeartPodcasts

True Crime

4.7 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 May 2024

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dr. Werner Spitz is a man who spent his lifetime looking straight into the soul of man and looking death in the eye. On this episode of Body Bags, Joseph Scott Morgan gives a heartfelt tribute to a mentor he never met, a teacher that never gave him a test but one whose approval was sought in every written word and study as a death investigator. Dr. Werner Spitz passed away at the age of 97 on April 14, 2024, and this show is a special tribute to a man that actually did write the book of his profession, "Spitz and Fisher's Medicolegal Investigation of Death; Guidelines for the Application of Pathology to Crime Investigation.

Transcribe Highlights
00:33.95 Introduction to the life of Werner Spitz

05:59.93 Discussion of Spitz impact on forensic pathologists

09:53.32 Discussion of fleeing Nazi Germany

13:51.43 Talk about being the lone voice of truth that you see

17:35.73 Discussion of Mary Jo Kopechne

24:16.10 Discussion of Spitz being called into high profile situations

28:15.52 Talk about examination using photographs

31:38.41 Discussion of not being afraid to take on cases others wouldn't

36:52.60 Talk about paying for an opinion

37:01.94 Conclusion Those who fail to remember history, are doomed to repeat it

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Bodybags with Joseph Scott Morgan. Think about living in Alabama is this.
0:20.0	When spring comes along, we do enjoy the glorious weather that we have here, but we also live day
0:29.8	to day with a chill that goes up and down our spine about the possibility of the worst weather
0:35.7	you can possibly ever imagine.
0:37.6	We've had deaths for years and years related to tornadic activity.
0:42.6	With that, we learn to understand when there is a gathering storm, something off to
0:51.7	our west most of the time that's headed our way.
0:55.0	But you know in life in general you can see where there are gathering storms
1:01.0	headed your way. The fellow I'm going to talk about today. His
1:07.0	family saw such a storm gathering in Europe prior to World War II and if his family had not made the decision to leave their little town in Germany.
1:28.0	It's quite possible that the world would have been deprived of one the single greatest scientific minds of the 20th century.
1:45.4	Today, of the 20th century. Today in a memorial we're going to be discussing the life of Dr. Werner
1:50.9	Schwitz. I'm Joseph Scott Mork Dr. We've talked a little bit, Dave, about my history as a death investigator, and for those
2:07.7	that aren't necessarily familiar with that, I'm not going to assume that everybody knows
2:11.6	me. My journey in this field started in Jefferson Parish,
2:18.7	Louisiana, and I was working on the morgue. I was not working full time as an investigator then I was volunteering working the
2:26.1	morgue that would have been in 85 and I became enamored with the field of forensics and death investigation because of a friend of mine named Bill Donovan.
2:39.0	Bill has passed on now, but he was truly my mentor, probably one of the best forensic
2:44.8	scientists I ever knew.
2:47.1	And I viewed him as a brother and older brother.
2:51.5	But Bill said if you're going to work in this field, you have to have the correct information.
3:01.6	And he said the best information I can give you and of course this is you know before the days of the internet and all that sort of thing
	...

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