Tarrant medical examiner missed a bullet in an autopsy, putting murder case in question.

Nichole Manna
·5 min read

The body of a homicide victim was exhumed and a Tarrant County medical examiner was suspended from doing autopsies in homicide cases after several inconsistencies were found in at least two of the medical examiner’s reports, according to court documents.

Dr. Marc Krouse, Tarrant County’s chief deputy medical examiner, was suspended from doing autopsies in homicide cases in November. He still does autopsies on non-homicide cases. A state disclosure that details why Krouse was suspended was filed in at least 40 homicide cases that the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office is prosecuting from 2019 to 2020, according to a search by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

The state disclosure means that Krouse either performed the autopsy or signed off on an autopsy that was performed by another medical examiner, according to an email from DA spokeswoman Anna Tinsley Williams.

“A disclosure alerts the defense of potential evidence so that the attorney can ask the judge to allow questioning on the topic at trial,” she wrote.

According to documents from the medical examiner’s office, compared to those from the DA’s office, Krouse performed the autopsies on at least six of the 40 cases in which the disclosure was filed.

The medical examiner’s office released a statement that said no other issues have been found, but the statement did not say how many of Krouse’s autopsies have been reviewed. Krouse has been a deputy medical examiner since 1981, the office said.

The medical examiner’s office didn’t answer questions regarding how long Krouse is suspended from conducting autopsies in homicide cases. He could not be reached for comment through the medical examiner’s office. A representative from the Texas Forensic Science Commission said it does not have jurisdiction over autopsies performed by licensed physicians and is not investigating Krouse.

Mike Ware, a Fort Worth defense attorney, said the disclosure doesn’t mean those 40 cases can’t be tried or that there will be errors found in those cases.

“It does mean that the mistake or mistakes found are serious enough that the implications go beyond the case or cases where the mistakes were discovered,” he said. “The prosecution is ethically and legally responsible for notifying the defense.”

Defense attorneys in those cases can now question Krouse’s expertise, including in front of a jury, Ware said.

Exhumation

The body of Alfredo Olivares, a 19-year-old homicide victim, was exhumed in December because Krouse missed a bullet when he performed the autopsy on Sept. 20, according to court documents.

Ware said he couldn’t think of any cases he’s been involved in that involved a body being exhumed, though it has been done before in rare circumstances.

Exhuming a body would only be done in extraordinary situations where either the body contains significant evidence that was missed, or if the cause of death could be different than what was originally determined, Ware said.

In this case, Krouse missed a bullet.

Olivares was shot on Sept. 19 as he stood in the front yard of a home in the 4100 block of Valentine Street in Fort Worth. He died in the operating room at Harris Methodist Hospital, according to the state disclosure.

Four days later, Peter Cardona, 23, of Benbrook, was charged with murder.

In the autopsy report, Krouse noted that Olivares had one gunshot wound on his left lower back with injuries to a rib and left kidney. The cause of death was listed as a “gunshot wound to the abdomen.”

However, when another medical examiner reviewed Krouse’s finalized report a month later, he noted several inconsistencies, including that images from the hospital showed two bullets in the body. The second had not been removed, and Krouse reported the wound as a “surgical stab,” although hospital and police records reported it as a gunshot wound. Krouse didn’t look at the radiology report, which would have shown both bullets, according to the document.

At least four other discrepancies in the autopsy were found, including that Krouse said no personal belongings were found on Olivares but photos show there was a leg monitor on him. Krouse also indicated that Olivares was clothed, but police had taken all of his clothes.

The exhumation was requested to retrieve evidence that was missed by Krouse, including the second bullet, the disclosure document says.

Regarding the autopsy issues, Cardona’s defense attorney, Emily Lachance, said, “We do believe that the discrepancies will be a critical issue in our case, and we believe our client is innocent.”

Ware said missing bullet fragments — in general — could be relevant to identifying the weapon used in the crime, which could identify or clear a suspect. Or, it could lead to a new determination on the cause or manner of death, if it’s called into question.

None of the other six cases tied to Krouse have resulted in the exhumation of a body.

Second case

Because of the discrepancies found in Olivares’ autopsy report, another medical examiner collected a random sampling of Krouse’s reports to review going back to January 2020.

The doctor found four failures by Krouse in a February 2020 autopsy in which a man had chronic urinary tract infections and was a paraplegic due to being injured in a 1990 shooting. The family said the bullet had never been removed from the man’s body, according to the court document.

The review found that Krouse never made an attempt to find it.

Krouse took only an X-ray of the man’s chest, which didn’t show the bullet but he didn’t take any other X-rays, the report says. It was found that Krouse failed to review hospital records given to him two months earlier before completing his report, that he failed to review the police report given to him and that he made no attempt to find the bullet.

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