Autopsies-To-Go

By Dennis Coffman
Staff Writer

For Vidal Herrera, of El Sereno, an on-the-job injury may have been the best thing that ever happened to him, though he didn’t realize it at the time. Herrera worked as a coroner investigator until, in 1984, he suffered a back injury (trying to life a corpse) and was forced to retire. The following four years were spent trying to get rehired with no success. Then, in 1988 he found that he was able to perform work on a freelance basis even if he did not qualify as a full-time hire. That’s when he began Autopsy/Post Services to perform the procedure for families who seek an autopsy in a case in which medical malpractice was suspected or to find the real reason for a death when suicide has been pronounced. Although the nature of the business is death, the business itself is certainly not dying. He earns in the six figures, often hiring others to help out. He removes organs for transplants or medical research or for DNA analysis in paternity cases. In all, his company performs about 600 autopsies a year. Herrera has performed more than 10,000 in his lifetime of 43 years. But his company has only scratched the surface, so to speak. He plans to franchise his operation to the point where 72 Autopsy/Post Services do their thing nationwide.

But unlike some franchises, performing autopsies is not for mom and pop, unless they have the special skills. Herrera gained his skills through on-the-job training. "I didn’t even know what the word autopsy meant." He had been working as a nursing assistant when he met people from the coroner’s office who encouraged him, with this hefty frame, to get into the field. Ironically, it was by trying to use his physique that he became injured and had to leave his job. He began with the Los Angeles Coroner’s Office in 1975, volunteering four days a week for two and 1/2 years to become a qualified autopsy technician. Then be became a medical and crime scene photographer, then a coroner’s investigator until in 1984 he ruptured three disks in his spine lifting a dead body. He was out of work nearly four years until he got a call from former Los Angeles County Coroner Thomas Noguchi, his former boss, who was in private practice. Noguchi hired him to help do an autopsy and passed around his name to colleagues and the work of mouth got him rolling

But it wasn’t until March 1993 that he really got rolling. He bought a van and painted 1-800-AUTOPSY on the side panels. "That’s when things began to take off," he said, "I offer the same services as a coroner’s office, but on a smaller scale and at a lower price." Families might call him to get a second opinion. A family called him from New York for a review of a shooting death that had been ruled a suicide. But there had been three rounds fired, including two to the head with a .357 Magnum. "It’s highly unlikely you’d get off a second round," he said.

Other requests include analysis of underwear for semen from jealous girlfriends and wives. Or exhuming bodies for re-autopsy. Even after 10 years, he said, the bodies are preserved. "Because fluid has evaporated, it looked a little emaciated and there’s fungus around the body because of condensation within the casket - but the tissue is intact." Most of his customers are attorneys seeking evidence of malpractice actions or criminal defense cases. His most high-profile client was Johnny Cochran, who represents O.J. Simpson

While a death-care worker in Los Angeles County, he assisted with autopsies on the Hillside Strangler and Skid Row Slasher cases, and found a fingerprint on a window that helped snare Richard Ramirez, the "nightstalker" serial killer. One falsehood that Herrera exposes is the notion that a person’s hair and fingernails continue to grow after they’re dead. he said as the body loses fluid, the flesh shrinks "It only looks like the hair and fingernails are longer," he said. Performing as autopsy includes identifying and measuring the body and noting any external injuries; then doing a "Y" incision on the chest and removing the sternum; finally, removing the organs, dissecting and weighing them and photographing them.

The easiest way to remove the sternum, he said, is with a saw, but that produces bone dust. So instead he cuts the rib cage with garden shears. They are the same as surgical instruments but instead of costing $800, they only cost $35. These and other cost-saving ideas give him the reputation of being the McDonald’s of autopsies.

The coroner’s charge $2,854 for a private autopsy, about twice the fee in 1992, Herrera charges $2,000. Even though he has been nicknamed "El Muerto," and has been called "stiff competition," Herrera takes his job very seriously. "What the public sees is sanitized,: he said. "They don’t smell the death or the fresh blood. They can’t smell the body odor or the cologne. They can’t see the tears that were streaming from the victim’s eyes."