Obit watch: October 14, 2022.

Robbie Coltrane. THR.

He wasn’t someone whose work I have a lot of familiarity with, though I’ve heard good things about “Cracker”. Other credits included some “Blackadder”s, “The Pope Must Diet”, Falstaff in “Henry V”, and “Frasier”.

Dr. Vincent DiMaio, forensic pathologist. He was the chief medical examiner of Bexar County (which covers San Antonio) from 1981 to 2006. In that capacity, he testified for the prosecution against Genene Jones, who was convicted of killing a 15-month-old baby, and may have killed up to 60 other children.

Dr. DiMaio, who had been a medical examiner in Dallas from 1972 to 1981, was later called on to look into allegations that President Kennedy’s assassin was not Lee Harvey Oswald but a look-alike whom Soviet officials had trained to assume his identify. Michael Eddowes, a British lawyer and restaurateur, had made the allegations in a 1975 book, “Khrushchev Killed Kennedy,” which he published himself.
After the author persuaded Oswald’s wife, Marina, to have his body exhumed in 1981, Dr. DiMaio was recruited to help examine the remains. But his team quickly debunked the theory, confirming through forensic dentistry that the physical characteristics of the man buried as Oswald matched those on Oswald’s passport and his Marine Corps records.

As a private consultant, he also worked with the authors Gregory White Smith and Steven Naifeh and came to the belief that Vincent van Gogh’s death was murder, not suicide. He also testified for the defense in the George Zimmerman trial.

He also wrote four books: Morgue: A Life in Death (with Ron Franscell) was nominated for a “Best Fact Crime” Edgar award. (The NYT says it won, but the Edgar Awards database says The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer by Kate Summerscale was that year’s winner.)

He could bring firsthand experience to his expertise in gunshot wounds: He himself had survived being shot four times by his second wife in a fit of anger. They divorced.

Bernard McGuirk, Don Imus’s producer.

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