Expert Profile
Harry A. Milman, is a consulting pharmacologist, toxicologist, and expert witness with over forty years of experience at the US Environmental Protection Agency, the US National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Health, and the US Public Health Service. He has assisted in over three hundred Civil, Criminal, and high-profile legal cases and has testified at trials and depositions. He has authored over seventy scientific articles, has edited five science books, and has appeared as a toxicological expert on Television and Radio NEWS programs and in true-crime television shows. He is the author of "FORENSICS: The Science Behind the Deaths of Famous People" and two award-winning novels—A Death at Camp David, and SOYUZ: The Final Flight.
Foreground
This session was a detailed insight about the most interesting book of Harry A. Milman entitles "The Science Behind the Deaths of Famous People" . The book describes how coroners determined the cause and manner of death of 23 famous people including Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Natalie Wood, Janis Joplin, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Carrie Fisher, and many more. Dr. Milman has also published two novels -- the wildly successful and award-winning political thriller, "A Death at Camp David," and "SOYUZ: The Final Flight". In this session, Sir has discussed the facts behind the death of famous people & How forensically the death of the people was justified.
Journey of Harry A. Milman
The session started with a brief description of the life journey of Dr. Millman sir, how he come into the field of forensics as earlier he wanted to become an Engineer. Today he is an expert witness from 23 years in trials in court. In the course of about seven years ago, while he was still testifying, he came up with his first book it's called A Death at Camp David.
A death at camp David is a mystery and he decided to have the main character a forensic toxicologist so he can take his whole background and experience and put it into the main character.
The mystery novel took two and a half years to complete and at the end of two and a half years, he thought it was going to be one and only book of its kind.
He had his first book signing event in one of the big bookstores in the U.S. called Barnes Noble and all the people were asking him what are you going to write next and he didn't have any plans to write anything next.
Encouraged by the positive feedback, he began writing another novel titled 'SOYUZ – The Final Flight'. This time, it features the same forensic toxicologist as the main character but is set within a science fiction space exploration thriller.
Despite his limited time, he managed to write two books and was in the process of completing a third. He also visited India twice, which inspired a new story idea set in India.
His next book, tentatively titled 'Murder at the Taj Mahal', was to feature the same forensic toxicologist as the main character. He had written about 30 percent of this book when he heard the news about Carrie Fisher.
We all know her from 'Star Wars'.
She had a medical emergency aboard a plane and, after it landed, she was taken to the hospital.
Three days later, she passed away. The coroner and medical examiner determined that Carrie Fisher died from sleep apnea.
Sir knew that sleep apnea is a potentially serious sleep disorder in which breathing repeatedly stops and starts, and that Carrie Fisher had been suffering from it for some time.
However, given Fisher's well-known history of drug addiction, which she had openly admitted to on multiple occasions, Sir Millman suspected that her death might have been due to a drug overdose.
The coroner, however, attributed her death to sleep apnea and did not perform an autopsy at the family's request. This discrepancy didn't sit right with him, prompting him to investigate her death further.
This led him to examine other celebrity deaths, ultimately inspiring his latest book, 'Forensics: The Science Behind the Deaths of Famous People'. This book has now been out for about eight months.
In this session he discussed 3 high-profile cases and a few live experiences. So let's see one by one.
1. Carrie Fisher
Some people suggested that she had a heart attack others from the hospital said she did not have a heart attack there was no real explanation what actually happened.
But three days later she died and in the hospital, so now the two things and one of them is the cause of death is a biological scientific explanation for why a person died, for example, they died from a heart attack or they died from respiratory depression a neurological a real scientific explanation for why a person died usually there's no argument with the determination of the cause of death.
It's usually accepted that there's usually no errors in that analysis the other part that the kind of determines is the manner of death.
Now the manner of death had five categories it could be a natural death, a person just died of old age, for example, it could be an accidental, it could be homicide, or could be suicide and when none of these categories fit the circumstances it could be undetermined which is listed in the United States.
As, forensic scientists we deal with the cause of death, the manner of death, and interpretation of every of all the information for the cause of death, we do an autopsy and then we also do toxicology analysis blood and urine, and tissues if necessary and hair follicles and measure scientific measurements but the family refused to give consent for an autopsy to be done which means that one couldn't do an autopsy in this case.
They couldn’t cut up the body to look at the internal organs and they couldn't take any samples like blood or urine for example and why is that well we don't know why the family refused.
If you read the book you will find a few reasons why it could have happened.
So he did the next best thing that he could do for the autopsy and since he couldn't cut up the body he did a CT Scan, which is like as an X-ray of the body and so it doesn't open up the body but kind of look inside through imaging.
It's not as good as opening up the body but it gives a kind of a gross examination of the internal organs to see if there are any lumps and bumps and there was nothing unusual about the internal organs.
The heart had some mild atherosclerosis but not enough to cause a heart attack there was nothing else that was unusual in the and the internal organs to suggest a cause of death, so that didn't help.
So the next thing is was a toxicology analysis, he started toxicology testing it's usually a two-step process the first step is an immunotoxicology screen it's a quick assay method that tells you the presence or absence of drugs of abuse but it doesn't quantify and is subject to false negatives and false positives.
They found the presence of opioids but opioids are a class of chemicals of drugs and so it didn't identify which opioid and it also didn't quantify in the blood,.
So the next step normally would be a confirmatory test which is very specific and it also quantifies, in this case, it would have been a what we call a GC Mass Spectroscopy confirmatory test which is a very highly specific, expensive, & time-consuming analysis. but he couldn't do it because there wasn't enough sample.
He had some urine samples and identified alcohol and metabolites of other drugs, indicating that these substances had been present in her body at some point.
However, the presence of drugs in the urine does not reveal when they were taken, how much was consumed, or how they were administered.
This information only indicates past usage, not the cause of death.
In Carrie Fisher's case, there were pharmaceuticals and opioid metabolites in her blood, as well as a metabolite of cocaine, but these could not be precisely identified or quantified.
Additionally, a metabolite of heroin was found in the vitreous humor of the eye, the gel-like material behind the lens.
This suggested the presence of morphine, the primary metabolite of heroin, in her blood. However, this was an assumption and was not confirmed by GC-MS spectroscopy or other confirmatory tests.
There was also an insufficient sample to determine if there was unmetabolized cocaine in her blood.
As a forensic toxicologist, he considered whether her death could have been accidental, due to an overdose, or a possible suicide.
However, due to the lack of sufficient information, he labeled her manner of death as undetermined and the cause of death as sleep apnea, leaving many questions unanswered.
2. Marilyn Monroe
She was a beautiful blonde actress, and one day, while home alone, her housekeeper was present but occupied with phone calls until about seven o'clock in the evening.
In the middle of the night, around three o'clock in the morning, the housekeeper noticed a light under Marilyn Monroe’s door. When she tried to open the door, it was locked from the inside.
Despite calling out to Marilyn Monroe, there was no response.
The housekeeper then contacted Marilyn Monroe’s doctor, who arrived promptly and broke a bedroom window to gain access. They found Marilyn Monroe dead on her bed.
There has been speculation that she was murdered, with some attributing it to the President of the United States or his brother, due to her alleged affairs with both of them.
Others suggested mob involvement. However, in Sir's opinion, none of these theories hold true.
Marilyn Monroe did have an autopsy, which revealed overdose levels of two drugs—sleeping pills that were found on her nightstand.
One bottle of a neutral barbiturate was empty, and another bottle of chloral hydrate was about three-quarters empty. Both are tranquilizers, and overdose levels of these drugs were found in her blood.
The conclusion was that she had ingested two drugs, both in overdose ranges.
The pharmacology and toxicology of these two sleeping pills combined to create a more lethal effect than either would alone. The question arose as to how these drugs ended up in her system.
Some people suggested homicide, hypothesizing that she was injected with the drugs.
However, the autopsy revealed no injection sites on her body, strongly indicating that the drugs were ingested. The empty bottles on her nightstand supported this conclusion. There was no evidence that the drugs were forcibly administered.
Her room was locked from the inside, and there was no one else in the room.
Monroe had a history of attempting suicide in the same manner when she was depressed. In previous instances, she had been rescued in time after calling for help.
This time, however, it was too late, and she succeeded in committing suicide. Given these facts, it is highly unlikely that her death was a homicide.
The manner of death was determined to be a drug overdose with barbiturates, and it was classified as a suicide.
3. Michael Jackson
As we all know, Michael Jackson appeared as an energetic, hyperactive individual on TV and stage, dancing, singing, and jumping around.
However, the entertainment world is often different from reality. These celebrities are very much like the rest of us, suffering from the same problems.
When seen on stage, they appear larger than life, but in autopsies, we find they are no different from anyone else.
Michael Jackson, much like any other man, was in London preparing for a series of 50 concerts.
Everything was going great, and he had his last rehearsal in an auditorium in California, anticipating these sold-out shows. He was dancing, jumping, and singing wonderfully.
Afterward, he drove home and waited for his doctor.
The dress rehearsal required a lot of energy, leading to an adrenaline rush.
When he returned home around midnight or 1 AM, he couldn’t fall asleep right away due to the residual adrenaline. With another show the next day, he struggled to calm down and sleep.
Seeking help, he asked his doctor for pharmaceutical assistance to fall asleep. He specifically requested propofol, an intravenous anesthetic usually administered in hospitals for surgeries.
Initially, the doctor gave him an oral barbiturate tranquilizer, a tablet or two.
After half an hour, Jackson was still not asleep, so the doctor administered another dose, followed by a different drug.
Over the next two to three hours, he received six different doses of tranquilizers and barbiturates.
When Jackson still couldn’t sleep, the doctor finally administered propofol intravenously in his bedroom, not in a hospital setting.
Jackson was knocked out, and the doctor left the room to make a phone call. He later claimed to have been gone for only a few minutes, but phone records showed he was absent for about half an hour.
When the doctor returned, Michael Jackson was not breathing and was declared dead upon arrival at the hospital. He was 50 years old.
The autopsy revealed various drugs in his system, including barbiturates and propofol, all central nervous system depressants in overdose ranges.
The combination of these drugs was more dangerous than each alone, leading to his death by drug overdose. The doctor was tried and found guilty of homicide, serving two years in prison.
The cause of death was a drug overdose, and the manner of death was determined to be homicide.
Conclusion
The session was amazing, covering the mysteries behind the deaths and autopsies of famous individuals such as Marilyn Monroe, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, Natalie Wood, Karen Carpenter, JonBenet Ramsey, and Robin Williams, among others.
The book is exceptionally well-written and highly engaging, offering a wealth of information that many might not be aware of. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves forensics.
It's easy to read, even for those without a scientific background, as the author purposely wrote it for non-scientists.
The science is clearly explained, making it accessible and understandable for everyone.
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