Meet the the LA coroner who shot to stardom after inventing the celebrity death

It was June 6th, 1968, and Robert F.Kennedy, the leading contender to become the Democratic presidential nominee, had just been assassinated in Los Angeles.

Dr.Thomas Noguchi, the city’s chief medical examiner and coroner, stood over RFK’s body and said just two words to the senator’s grieving widow: “Trust me.”He knew how much was on the line.

Whether Noguchi would get the green light to perform the autopsy was far from a given.But if he let the Secret Service intervene and take control, there was a chance the killer could walk free.His findings “would be needed to bring Sirhan Sirhan, who was apprehended at the scene, to justice,” writes Anne Soon Choi in her new book “L.A.

Coroner: Thomas Noguchi and Death in Hollywood” (Third State Books), out now. Noguchi didn’t want a repeat of the 1963 assassination of President John F.Kennedy, which had turned into a power struggle between the local medical examiner and the Secret Service.

It became “a playbook for what not to do,” writes Choi. It wasn’t Noguchi’s first high-profile autopsy, and it would be far from his last.The man dubbed by the press as “coroner to the stars” would go on to perform autopsies on famous names like Natalie Wood, John Belushi and Sharon Tate (murdered by the Manson Family).He wasn’t just a pioneer in forensic medicine.

Noguchi helped change the way the American public thinks about celebrity deaths.Today, it’s not enough to know just how a celebrity died; the public wants a play-by-play account of their final days.Noguchi was at the forefront of this cultural shift.

He was a trailblazer in coroners “moving beyond the mere physical examination” into the public sphere, writes Choi.“Forensic experts began to offer opinions about celebrity deaths, worked as expert witnesses in court cases, and provided commentary to newspapers, radio, and television.” This new prominence also expanded “the power and visibility of the Chief Coroner,” writes C...