The state medical examiner is refusing to release basic information — full names and locations — about hundreds of deaths classified as “undetermined” in Baltimore.
“Location of incident is not public,” state medical examiner spokeswoman Cindy Feldstein wrote in an e-mail to this newspaper.
In September, The Examiner filed a Maryland Public Information Act request, seeking the name, age, date of death and location of all women whose deaths were ruled “undetermined” in the past 10 years in Baltimore.
A death is ruled “undetermined” if an assistant medical examiner cannot determine conclusively the manner in which the person died, such as homicide, suicide, accident or natural causes.
The medical examiner’s office provided the last names with the date of death and cause of death, which included such examples as “intoxication, drowning, asphyxiation and multiple injuries.” Some deaths were listed with the cause as “undetermined.”
Full names or locations of the deaths weren’t provided.
Feldstein said in an e-mail that even more undetermined deaths may exist, but even the dates of those deaths and the last names of those women may be withheld because they are under investigation.
“I will request that our [Baltimore Police Department] liaison review the query before releasing it to you in order to remove any inappropriate cases,” she wrote.
But spokesmen for the Baltimore Police Department and Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office said they haven’t asked the medical examiner’s office to withhold any information.
The policy of not releasing basic information about undetermined deaths is at odds with procedures for homicide cases, in which the name, age and location where the victim was killed are made available to the public.
“We would never tell the medical examiner not to release information about undetermined deaths,” said police spokesman Officer Troy Harris. “This directive did not come from us.”
The Examiner requested the names as part of an ongoing investigation of the deaths of women with ties to prostitution. The special report revealed that of the 26 women with histories of prostitution who were slain in the past decade, only seven of those cases have been solved.
But the newspaper also has uncovered several deaths not ruled homicides, but instead classified as “undetermined,” which remain suspicious, prompting relatives to demand more information.
Among those cases is the death of Tyra McClary, whose autopsy revealed the former prostitute’s body was found under a pile of mulch in the Park Heights. The assistant medical examiner who reviewed McClary’s case concluded that “asphyxiation could not be ruled out,” citing a hemorrhaged thyroid gland that could indicate foul play.
Jackie McClary, Tyra’s sister, has since called for police to re-open the investigation of her sister’s death.
The family of Jill Conklin, a 23-year-old whose body was found March 2007 under a highway overpass in Linthicum four months after she vanished from the streets of Southwest Baltimore’s Wilkens Avenue, still believes the circumstances surrounding her death are suspicious.
The medical examiner’s office also ruled Conklin’s death “undetermined,” citing cocaine overdose as the most likely cause of death. But her mother, Gina Adams, said too many unanswered questions exist.
“She didn’t drive, and she was found dead supposedly of an overdose of cocaine on a very long wooded road in Linthicum, but no paraphernalia was found,” said Adams, of Glen Burnie. “I know someone was with her.”
The medical examiner’s office in Baltimore has posted consistently higher numbers of undetermined deaths than other states or large cities. In 2004, for instance, 341 deaths were ruled undetermined in Baltimore, and 807 in Maryland. The same year, Washington, D.C., had 76 undetermined deaths.
In 2005, the Maryland medical examiner’s office reported 814 undetermined deaths statewide. The office has not provided statistics for undetermined deaths from 2006 or 2007.
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