Georgia teen was stuffed with newspaper after death

[ASTalumna06]

This whole story is incredibly bizarre and extremely sad. I think there are a lot of people involved who are trying to cover up a murder and potentially a myriad of other illegal activities.

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013...wyer-says?lite

The mysterious death of a Georgia teen has taken a bizarre twist with the revelation that an autopsy of his exhumed remains found his internal organs missing and his body stuffed with newspaper.

The family of Kendrick Johnson, 17, of Valdosta, Ga., was "outraged" and "devastated" by the discovery and believes his death was a murder that is being covered up, a lawyer representing them said Thursday.

Johnson, a three-sport athlete, was found dead on Jan. 11 in a rolled-up wrestling mat in his high school gym. State medical examiners concluded that he accidentally suffocated while trying to retrieve a sneaker.

But his parents, Kenneth and Jacquelyn Johnson, were doubtful about that conclusion

......

In June, they won a court order to have Kendrick's body exhumed for a second autopsy.
What the private pathologist who performed the second autopsy found was shocking. The results came back in September.

.....

Organs from the teen's torso up to his skull had been removed and replaced with newspaper after his death...

[atrianglepi]

Don't they remove organs during an autopsy? This story is bizarre.

[WCsweet<3]

Originally Posted by atrianglepi

Don't they remove organs during an autopsy? This story is bizarre.

Yes. The organs were removed and examined. According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, who did the first autopsy, the organs were returned to the body. The funeral home wouldn't comment to the news, but in a letter to the family they said they never received the organs.

According to CNN: The funeral director

wrote that the organs "were destroyed through natural process" due to the position of Kendrick Johnson's body when he died, and "discarded by the prosector before the body was sent back to Valdosta." A prosector dissects the body for pathological examination.

I've been reading this about this story for months now. While I'm never one for conspiracy stories, this one gives me a bad feeling. There are a lot of things that don't appear to add up and would more likely point to a poor police investigation or a cover up of some sort.

[lake]

About 4-5 years ago, I remember reading a news story about this 17 or 18 year old boy who had been murdered - shot in the head - by a classmate in the winter of 1978. When they found his body the next April, it had obviously decomposed and the remains were sent to a medical examiner for the standard autopsy/criminal investigation. The body was buried and that was that...or so they thought.

Thirty-plus years later, a skull was found in the garage of a retired medical examiner who had passed away, along with 2 other skulls. The skulls were numbered, and they were able to trace them. It was discovered that one of the skulls was of the boy who had died in 1978. So authorities contacted the family and told them of the discovery, which of course devastated and horrified them. They never dreamed their loved one wasn't buried completely intact, missing what is obviously a very important part of his body. They ended up exhuming the boy's body and re-burying it, this time with his skull.

Afterwards, it was determined that what probably happened was that the medical examiner removed the skull during the autopsy and kept it - without permission from the family - because it made a good teaching tool the way the bullet hole had pierced it. Then the remains were sealed in a casket, and of course no one after that point thought there was any reason to look at the remains. A funeral director was quoted in the news story as saying that back in the day, this type of body-part removal was not uncommon at all. After all, who would really know? And who would really care (or so they thought). The same funeral director was quoted as saying that these days something like that wouldn't happen without permission from the family, because there was more awareness and understanding of the grief process, etc.

I wouldn't be surprised if maybe something like this had happened in this case. After all, no one probably ever expected that the body would later be exhumed, so who would know? Very unfortunate. I feel for the family.

[PersistentDST]

Oh my gosh! I read about this story around February and never heard anything else about it. I remember there being a LOT of odd things surrounding the whole situation, but the police kept calling it an accident...really a shame!