Private autopsy service give grieving families answers on the cause of death 

Every time they finish a job, Dr. Silvia Comparini and Vidal Herrera offer a reverent toast to the people who keep them in business.

"To the dead," they say, raising their glasses. "To the dead." Comparini, of Bakersfield, works for Herrera, who has found one of the most unusual businesses in the state. Called Autopsy Post Services, it performs private autopsies for $2,000 apiece, taking on jobs that coroner’s offices might not be able to handle because of dwindling funds. Their task is clear but often complicated: Find a cause of death "That’s our job, to make these bodies talk," said Comparini, who is a forensic pathologist, as she donned hospital scrubs to do a post mortem at Crippen Mortuary in La Crescenta. "It’s like I’m having the final conversation. ‘Please, tell me what happened.’"

That type of detective work is in increasing demand. Because so many public agencies are strapped for funds, the number of publicly funded autopsies has fallen. In statistics that are believed to reflect a nationwide trend, the Institute of Medicine of Chicago, a medical research think tank, found that autopsy rates dropped from 51 percent of hospital deaths in 1965 to 12.4 percent in 1994. Local statistics aren’t kept, but there appears to be a similar trend in Kern County, according to Jim Maloug, chief investigator for the Sheriff’s Department-Coroner’s Office. Although the overall coroner caseload rose during the last few years, the number of full autopsies, the most extensive version of the procedure, fell. "We deal with a reasonable cause of death, not an exact cause of death, and the family may be wanting more and may want to know more about contributing factors," he said. That’s when relatives might turn to private service like Autopsy/Post Services, whose team of 12 on-call forensic pathologists performs about 900 post mortems a year. Although the business covers mainly Southern California 15 autopsies were done in Bakersfield in 1995. Herrera is scheduled to do one in Tehachapi today. The reasons relatives request autopsies are many. Some are looking for foul play or medical negligence. Others just want psychological closure.

Whatever the reason, death is a big business. Early next year, he plans to begin offering franchises. Eventually, there may be 72 outlets in the United States and 16 in other nations, he said. Herrera said he has been offered $9 million for the business but he won’t sell, reasoning that as the baby boomers age, business can only pick up. Although he hates the gallows humor that people often use when they talk about his business, Herrera tools around the state, all his instruments stuffed in back of a van with a license plate frame that reads "Autopsy techs do it with more rigor mortis." The business number: 1-800-AUTOPSY. And Herrera quickly earned a nickname in the Latino communities. They call him "El Muerto - The Dead Man."

Comparini graduated in 1967 from Catholic University in her native Chile and finished her residency in pathology at the University of California at San Francisco in 1974. Formerly with the Kern county Coroner’s Office, she learned of Herrera through an article in a legal journal. She began working for him in 1995. Comparini, 57 and never married, is one of about 600 forensic pathologists throughout the nation. During a post mortem, Herrera, 45, often called he by the nickname "Bambina." The graying, bespectacled Comparini was polite, soft-spoken and methodical in her forensic work, but when called to testify at court, she took charge, Herrera said Comparini also relished talking about her profession. "They usually see us as doctors of death, but we help those who are alive," she said as she prepared last week for an autopsy on a woman who appeared to have died of cancer. Comparini and Herrera worked with a practical rhythm. Herrera made an incision from the throat to the pelvis and began removing organs. Comparini cupped each one in her gloved hands and peered through her glasses at the lifeless tissue, looking for the tiniest oddity that might indicate an unusual cause of death. The entire procedure might take anywhere from one to 10 hours.

Every once in awhile, Comparini exclaimed, "It’s beautiful" as she examined an organ that was in perfect condition. "This is the trachea. This is a lymph node," she explained as she picked at the parts with a pair of tweezers, then placed them on a silver tray. "This is the voice box. This is where we sing."

To many, the organs may suggest the fragile nature of human life. The only thing that keeps a tiny morsel of food from being sucked into the windpipe and possibly killing someone is a 1 1/2 inch-long flap of flesh that closes when someone swallows, keeping it out of the respiratory tract. And for all its complicated knowledge of the cosmos, the brain is soft, spongy, vulnerable to injury if it weren’t for the thick skull that surrounds it. Herrera wielded the tools with the confidence of someone who has spent decades in the death business. He worked for years as an autopsy technician before becoming an investigator with the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office. But on Aug. 28, 1984, he blew out two discs lifting a 284-pound suicide victim. During the next few years, he found out jobs weren’t easy to get for a disabled man who uses a cane, so in 1988, he started Autopsy Post Services.

After much time, the steps come automatically. To cut through the ribs, Herrera uses pruning shears. To buzz through the skull, he employs a white electric saw about the size of a hand mixer. Periodically, Comparini spoke into a small tape recorder. "You never know what you are going to find," Comparini mumbled through her face mask. "The whole body is evidence." Evidence that, at times, has spoken the name of a murderer. When she was with the Kern Coroner’s Office, Comparini once autopsied the body of a man who had been beaten to death and dumped in the desert. Police held several suspects for questioning, but nobody knew which one did it.

Then Comparini pointed out that the dead man’s face bore injuries with a familiar pattern. The markings looked like those on the sole of a police officer’s boot. Authorities searched the home of one suspect’s girlfriend and, in the closet , found a man’s boots spattered with blood. Another time, Comparini autopsies a man who died of a skull fracture. She know the object used to kill him was heavy because of the extent of the damage. So, working on a hunch, Comparini peeled an inner layer of skin from the victim’s skull - one that otherwise wouldn’t be examined - and found something strange. "It was a little piece of green stuff," she said, "We didn’t know what it was."

It turned out to be a paint chip from a tire iron the murderer used to bash the victim’s skull. That tiny piece of evidence led police to the murder weapon, and the culprit was eventually arrested. 

"It’s like putting together a puzzle," said Comparini. "The only thing is when you put together a puzzle, you have to have all the pieces. Sometimes, we have to go out and find the pieces." Sometimes, that’s hard. Even with her years in the profession, there is one type of autopsy to which Comparini has never become accustomed.

"Doing autopsies on children," she said, speaking in hushed , almost reverential tones. "That is difficult, even painful, because children aren’t supposed to die. Children aren’t supposed to be abused." And despite the fact that she attended a strict Catholic university, Comparini believes there is no after life. There is only death, and the useless fascination humanity seems to have for its own morality. "It’s a very fascinating field because death is such a final human phenomena," she said. "There is no more death."