Coroners: Examining the Examiner

The locale for the story was certainly a plausible one: Los Angeles, that well-known suburb of Hollywood. The leading character was Thomas T. Noguchi, 42, who graduated in 1951 from Nippon Medical School in Tokyo, migrated to California, and was licensed to practice there in 1955. For seven years he worked as an assistant to the Los Angeles county coroner, and in late 1967 was named coroner himself. Six months later, he per formed the autopsy on Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

Last spring, wild charges began to fly, so wild that Noguchi was summa rily suspended from duty by the...

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