The Last Post-Mortem // County Medical Examiner Wraps It Up After 17 Years

If the fates were just, the last autopsy by Dr. Robert J. Steinwould have been a big, Page One, top-of-the-evening-news case, likethe ones that distinguished his 17-year career as Cook County medicalexaminer.

Something like the John Wayne Gacy murders in 1978. Or acomplicated whodunit, like the Tylenol slayings in 1982.

But Stein's last post-mortem, Medical Examiners Case 613, was a50-something-year-old man who was found in a chair two days after hisdeath. Stein could tell the death was due to natural causes beforehe made his first incision.

For Stein, 80, it was still a milestone.

"Needless to say, I'm doing this with really mixed emotions,"said Stein, strapping on a pair of rubber gloves. "But if there'ssomething up above or down below, depending on where I'm going when Idie, I'll see many familiar faces. Not too soon, I hope."

Since October, 1976, Stein faced a never-ending line ofdecomposing bodies and victims of horrific crimes and accidents.From Chicago alone since the day he took office until the day heretired, there were 12,959 murder victims. Stein's job was to wielda scalpel and saw and find out how they died.

He was the county's first medical examiner, chosen after a 1972referendum abolished the old patronage-rife coroner's office. Underthat system, a jury empaneled by the coroner would determine thecause of a death.

Stein has investigated some of the biggest crimes and accidentsof the century. He squatted in the crawl space of Gacy's home asinvestigators found the bodies of 29 young men and boys.

"As soon as I walked into the house, there was a smell," Steinsaid. "It was just like the smell in (this autopsy room). It wasjust the smell of death. The next day they started digging, then itwas one body, two bodies, five, eight, 15. . . ."

Stein oversaw efforts to identify 273 victims of the AmericanAirlines DC-10 crash at O'Hare Airport a year later. He was inBoulder, Colo., when the accident occurred.

"I got a phone call and was told it was a cargo plane thatcrashed with four dead," he said. "Then the instant I hung up, I gotanother call."

Stein said he does not keep track of the number of autopsies hehas performed as medical examiner. However, he said he has done morethan 20,000 in his career.

Not bad for the Bronx, N.Y., native who said he was scared whena family physician took him to an autopsy room when he was a16-year-old.

Stein said his work is a sanctuary from what he really fears.

"I'm afraid of living people," he said. "I can't conceivesometimes of the brutality and the sadism people do."

The subject of Stein's final autopsy was wheeled in by Stein'sright-hand man of 25 years, Chief Autopsy Technician DouglasChildress. The two have been friends since Stein was a part-timepathologist in the old coroner's office.

"A friend of his (at the morgue) hired me in 1968," Childresssaid. "And the doctor and I have been together since."

During the autopsy, Stein jabbered details about the victim intoa handheld tape recorder, noting the man's clothes, physicalcondition and that his flesh was peeling.

Then Stein made a quick incision from shoulder to shoulderacross the chest then down the center to the belt line, and theautopsy began.

"My wife attributes my (stamina) to my taking two fingers of gineach day," he said. Then, gesturing with an index finger and littlefinger: "These two fingers."