Public Safety

A Career in Death: Medical Examiner’s Longest Tenured Pathologist to Retire

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In his 23 years with the County Medical Examiner’s Officer, Dr. Christopher Swalwell has done about 8,000 autopsies and probed every manner of death.

He’s investigated some of the region’s most notorious slayings, the Betty Broderick murders in the early ’90s, Chelsea King’s terrible death two years ago. For every high-profile killing, he sees dozens of other kinds of cases—suicides, traffic deaths, freak accidents, deaths resulting from years of alcoholism.

But the cases are coming to a close for Swalwell.

The County’s longest tenured forensic pathologist is retiring this week. His future plans encompass a lot of life, including as much travel as possible with his wife Yolanda, a retired microbiologist.  

But before he left the Kearny Mesa Medical Examiner’s building for good this week, Swalwell sat down for an interview to reflect on his career in death.  

“You have to have a certain personality, a certain constitution to do this work,” Swalwell said, acknowledging that few doctors, even those trained in pathology, would exchange their patients for lifeless ones. 

“For me, it never really bothered me, I don’t know why,” he said. “Maybe because I found it so interesting and because out of somebody’s horrible death and all the grief, you can do something positive by solving a crime or by helping families understand what happened.” 

The 59-year-old Swalwell speaks in a quiet voice and projects reason and sincerity. His presence and experience have been welcome constants in the busy Medical Examiner’s office, which investigates about 10,000 cases a year, said Dr. Jonathan Lucas, the County’s Deputy Chief Medical Examiner.

 “That sort of calming, level-headed and staying-centered sort of mind—we’re going to miss it,” Lucas said.

Swalwell may come across as sensible and cerebral, but it was forensic pathology’s link to dramatic mysteries, violent crime and absolute justice that first attracted him to the profession.

The first doctor in his family, Swalwell said he entered medical school at the University of New Mexico with the notion he “wanted to serve mankind and heal people.”

But a forensic pathologist’s lecture during Swalwell’s second year hooked him.

“He was talking about gunshot wounds and stab wounds, stuff that was completely different from anything else in medical school,” Swalwell said. “You could look at the wounds and interpret certain things about them and help construct a crime. The thing that attracted me was that combination of medicine, legal work and investigations—law enforcement.”

Cracking crimes at the Medical Examiner

Since joining the County in 1989, Swalwell has seen plenty of those cases that first attracted him to the field.  Only about 3 to 5 percent of the cases the Medical Examiner handles each year are homicides. But with a maximum of eight forensic pathologists on staff at any given time, the Medical Examiner’s doctors investigate numerous crimes in a career. 

In 1990, San Diego was terrorized by serial killer Cleophis Prince, who was convicted of killing six women in an eight month period.  He would break into homes where woman were alone, stab them and ransack the house.

Swalwell said he was able to connect a victim to Prince through a characteristic stab pattern around her heart, and a police investigation made the link definitive.  Prince was ultimately sentenced to death and remains on death row.

In a case that Swalwell is particularly proud of, he said he helped convince police that a traffic investigation actually need a homicide probe.

An elderly East County woman had apparently been ejected from her car as she drove to the Salton Sea, an area where she and her husband owned property.  

The victim’s family was suspicious because, out of character, she hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt or her bra when she died.  Swalwell thought another detail was very strange.

“In her pocket was one of those return address labels you put on an envelope, like someone wanted to make sure she was identified,” Swalwell recalled.

His autopsy showed head injuries had caused the victim’s death, and Swalwell noted traces of   black paint on her skull. The woman also had rib injuries she’d suffered after death.

 Swalwell examined the car from the crash and saw nothing that had caused the woman’s head injury or the paint transfer.  He convinced investigators to redirect their probe, which then found that the victim’s husband had taken out a million dollar life insurance policy on his wife before she died and had since moved to Alaska.

A search of the East County home revealed bloodstains on the bed’s headboard and crowbars that could have been the murder weapon. The husband was ultimately convicted of murder.

“It was justice for her kids, so that was very satisfying,” Swalwell said.  “It’s like one of those you see in the movies—the reality is those don’t happen very often.”

The emotional strain, the satisfaction

More often, Swalwell investigates the kinds of cases you never hear about. Under state law, the Medical Examiner has jurisdiction in all unexpected deaths of people who hadn’t been to the doctor in the 20 days before they passed away.  Natural deaths account for more than a third of the office’s cases.

Homeless people and indigent  people who have gone without health care or lived hard for years often end up at the Medical Examiner.

“Alcoholism is a big problem; I’ve always said if we didn’t have alcoholism, I’d be out of a job,” Swalwell said.

Some of these people die alone, and the Medical Examiner can’t find anyone who was close to them.

“Really, we are the only people interested in their death; often we’re the last ones to really care about them and try to figure out why they died,” Swalwell said.

Lonely deaths, suicides, murders—the Medical Examiner forensic pathologists and other staff members regularly confront some of the saddest narratives—and know all too well they’re real.

Swalwell says the job could crush a person emotionally, so forensic pathologists generally take an analytical approach.

“The key is, for the most part, not to get 100 percent emotionally involved,” Swalwell said. “If you looked at every death deeply and thought about the person, their families, and their grief, you wouldn’t be able to do your job.”

Distance is not always possible

“There are going to be cases that get to you,” Swalwell said. Child deaths are always upsetting. Chelsea King, who was close in age to his daughter, shook him deeply.   

But focusing on the good he does has helped him stay positive, Swalwell said. 

“The most satisfying thing to me is being able to talk to families and help them get a better understanding of death and help them through the grieving process,” Swalwell said.

Last year, when a 14-year-old San Marcos girl, Sabrina Keller, collapsed at her middle school dance, the desire to bring understanding and comfort to her family prompted Swalwell to pursue genetic testing after a physical examination and toxicology tests were inconclusive.  

The results showed the girl most likely died of an undiagnosed heart condition.

“At first her parents were upset with us, because there were reports out that she had smoked marijuana—they didn’t want us to release information, Swalwell said.

But finding the true cause of death quelled those reports, shed light on the tragedy and prompted media coverage of congenital heart defects and genetic testing.

“We turned it into something positive, and her parents were grateful we were able to do that,” Swalwell said.

Life after death

As meaningful as his work has been, Swalwell said he’s ready to slow down and embrace retirement. A history buff, his first trip will hit every California mission. When he’s not travelling, Swalwell said he’ll be reading and digitizing a family genealogy his father researched.

Does a heightened awareness of ever-looming mortality play into Swalwell’s zest for retirement?  No, he said; he doesn’t think that way, despite all he’s seen.

“One of the things this job has taught me is to take things as they come,” Swalwell said. “You can’t worry much about what might happen, or what could happen. You just take it day by day and do the best you can.”