About that X-ray
Mike Masterson
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette;
Jan 29, 2008
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This column will be different from most, since it requires your interactive participation. I
promise that if you’ll play along with this little exercise, it will enlighten you to the same
legitimate questions I’ve had about the role of our state Crime Lab in the epic disgrace
known as the Janie Ward case.
First, you’ll need to hop onto a computer. Head for lyncho.com and click on Pictures.
Once there, you can either print out the images of two X-ray photographs or just remain at
the screen as you continue reading.
Remember, these are the two stategenerated photographs purported to represent the
original 1989 X-rays that were reported missing inside the lab.
I don’t have big problems with the frontal view. It appears to be of a normal X-ray,
complete with the medical examiner’s case number embedded into the right corner of the
film. Insetting the case number is routine in medical examiner Xrays. It prevents the
possibility of altering such crucial evidence.
It’s the second distorted lateral (side) view that makes my head hurt. The original
lateral X-ray shown to the Wards and a reporter by former Crime Lab Director James T.
Clark revealed a clear separation of Janie’s upper neck vertebrae, according to the Wards.
Ron Ward, Janie’s father, says he even exclaimed when he saw the X-ray that it was
apparent that her neck had snapped in two.
After viewing the X-rays at the lab in November 1989, the Wards requested copies of
them. What’s posted on lyncho. com is what the Crime Lab forwarded to them—purportedly
photographs of originals that had become unavailable by May 1992. When Ward contacted
Clark to complain about the bizarre nature of this lateral photograph, he said, Clark told him
that he had received all that Clark had to give him.
Ward says a Crime Lab administrative assistant told him in 1992 that the original X-
rays had been discarded because of a lack of storage space.
Let’s look closer, shall we? First, I see that the lateral view doesn’t contain the official
case number that you easily can see inside in the lower right of the frontal view. Why wouldn’
t it contain identification if this was a copy of the actual X-ray shown to the Wards? It was
offered by the state as the companion film to the frontal view. Why would any X-ray created
by our state’s Crime Lab be missing this routine identification tag?
Next, I can see in the lateral view that the neck is blanked out from the point where the
first veterbra attaches to the skull. In fact, it’s impossible to view anything about the fatal
upper spinal cord and neck injury that Dr. Fahmy Malak, then the state’s chief medical
examiner, described and documented in his autopsy.
The one X-ray that shows Janie’s fatal neck injury in a forensic lab devoted to solving
crime has just the neck erased? Then the original X-ray goes missing? Come on now,
people, really.
It gets worse. Unlike the clear frontal view, what can be seen in the lateral photograph
is blurred and distorted. Drs. Michael Graham and Marc Krouse, two out-of-state forensic
pathologists who tried making heads or tails of it with their 1992 review of Janie’s case, told
the Wards afterward that what they saw depicted resembled a male’s skull, specifically the
skull of a black male, rather than that of a teen-age girl.
It may be germane to note that the Wards said that the state provided these two X-ray
photographs to them and to Graham and Krouse in lieu of the originals shortly before the
pathologists conducted their review.
You can see that the hand-scrawled case number centered atop the frontal X-ray reads
MEA 439-89, the official medical examiner’s case number. Notice that the numbers and
letters are written, especially the fatter and darker number “3,” in the sequence 439. These
numbers are part of a separate, narrow film strip that appears to be disconnected from the
actual X-ray.
I can see an empty white rectangle at the upper right of the frontal view, yet not the
lateral. This only lengthens my list of questions. I wonder why that rectangle even exists and
what information it originally might have contained. Why wouldn’t the Wards simply receive
a photocopy of the lateral view that looks like the frontal? Why doesn’t this purported 1992
remake remotely resemble the original X-ray the Wards say Clark showed them in 1989? It
seems to me that, unless those identical hand-scrawled case numbers were attached to the
floating film strips atop the X-rays photos, the bizarre lateral view would be missing official
identification altogether.
In a meticulous CSI world, where evidence is crucial and tiny details matter a great
deal, these official X-ray photos and the originals should have been at the very least uniform
in appearance. They are a far cry from that. The only uniformity I can detect here is in the
identical, handwritten case number in the strips floated atop each photo.
Call me illogical, even insane if you must, but these X-rays tell their own story that
should raise red flags for every citizen and investigator worth his or her salt. It is enough to
leave the good people of Arkansas muttering about how such nonsense can be. How about
you, valued readers? Would you have been satisfied with this bizarre lateral photo of your
child’s X-ray under similar conditions? Me, neither. Thanks for playing.
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•–––––—Staff columnist Mike Masterson is the former editor of three Arkansas daily
newspapers.
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