Second Exhumation Delayed In New Investigation Into 1989 Death
Last updated Friday, June 15, 2007 5:58 PM CDT in News
By Jon Gambrell
The Associated Press
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LITTLE ROCK -- Lawyers agreed Thursday to delay unearthing the casket of a 16-year-old who died in 1989 from what investigators then described as a fall from a 9-inch-high porch, as a new investigation into her death continues.
Investigators planned to exhume the body of Olivia "Janie" Ward on Friday from her hilltop plot at Canaan Cemetery in rural Searcy County. However, Janie's father said the family only learned about investigators' plans for a third autopsy last week, without being offered the chance to have their own representative there.
"That's not unreasonable for us to ask," Ron Ward said. "We don't even think the autopsy was necessary."
Circuit Judge Charles Clawson Jr. signed an order to unearth Ward's body and allow an autopsy to take place the day after the exhumation. Clawson said Thursday's agreement would indefinitely delay the autopsy requested by Special Prosecutor Tim Williamson, but the judge hopes "it's going to happen in the very near future."
Clawson said that, as the ongoing investigation into Wards's death is considered a criminal matter, the exhumation order and all other court filings are sealed from public view.
Deputies found Ward's body in the back of a pickup surrounded by teens parked in Marshall's town square on Sept. 9, 1989. Investigators later said Ward fell backward off a rural cabin's porch while attending a party. However, only a few of the party's 40 attendees said they saw Ward fall.
The original 1989 autopsy by Dr. Fahmy Malak, the state's chief medical examiner, noted that Janie's neck snapped forward, consistent with falling on the back of her neck. By 1991, Malak quit after allegations arose that he had botched autopsies. Two state-hired independent medical examiners wrote that "the autopsy findings, as presented, do not establish a neck injury as the cause of death of Janie Ward."
By 2004, Ward's parents petitioned the court to allow them to exhume their daughter's body. An independent medical examiner based in San Diego said he found a toothlike bone pushed into Janie's spinal column, an injury known as "hangman's neck." The examiner said it comes when tremendous force snaps the head backward -- not forward as Malak claimed.
Williamson reopened the case after being appointed as special prosecutor shortly after the second autopsy. In the time since, Williamson has said his investigators have been conducting "very painstaking" work in the case. He could not be reached for comment Thursday.
Ward's father said the delay will give the family time to have their independent medical examiner or another person watch a third autopsy of their daughter. However, it remains unclear how much a third autopsy could yield as more time has passed and Malak removed portions of her spine in the first autopsy.
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