LITTLE ROCK — There's a remarkable development in the 1989 death of Janie Ward at a teen party in the woods near Marshall.
No, those who know the truth about the 16-year-old's death still haven't talked. But North Little Rock private investigator Dave Sheldon has identified an apparent separation of her spinal column from the photograph of a lateral x-ray made at the initial autopsy.
It's the same x-ray photo that I've written so much about over the years, the one with part of the spinal column oddly whited out, perhaps by Janie's shoulder.
By his use of a filter that clarified the uppermost visible portion of the spinal column, Sheldon has shown that the spine is separated high in the neck, where Dr. Fahmy Malak originally noted Janie's fatal injury. Strange how all these experts hired by our state for thousands of tax dollars never noted what now can be seen inthis x-ray photograph.
"The investigation has led to the discovery of new evidence that will [affect] the direction and outcome of this case in ways that will be rather dramatic," Sheldon told me recently. "The lateral photo of herx-ray that the [state] Crime Lab sent to the Wards years ago had always 'looked funny' to me. Most obviously, the x-ray didn't show all seven cervical vertebrae; the exposure was incorrect; the spine that was visible, presented at an odd angle . . . not the naturally gentle 'Lordotic curve.'
"The supposed 'shoulder' [a white mass] visible in the lateral view was too high up on the neck, thus hiding the lower part of the spine and, along with it, the perspective that would have revealed a shocking relational angle between the two separated sections of the spine. Had it not been for the spinal cord and the soft tissue of the neck, she would have been decapitated.
"The subject is not debatable. The 'cause' of Janie's death is a broken neck and the 'manner' of death is either an accident or a homicide. It turns out the Ward family has been right all along. I'd been working on the file and took a closer look at Janie's lateral x-ray. I enlarged the image, adjusted the exposure and the contrast, and what I saw was a completely separated spinal column. . . . The vertebrae were not only separated, at least one was twisted by about 90 degrees and the tips of the spinous process were chipped. Another vertebra appears to be twisted up behind the one described above.
"This raises some extremely troubling questions. Obviously, Dr. Malak looked at the original x-ray (without the shoulder-around-the-ears view) before he began the autopsy and saw the same shocking break I see. We know this because he told [Arkansas State Police] investigator Bill Beach (and others) about it. Beach even described what Malak told him in oneof his reports, found in the special prosecutor's investigative file.
"This obvious injury is not mentioned in Malak's autopsy report, yet he did mention another, much more subtle injury that he observed elsewhere on the spine. Either Malak voluntarily left this out of his report, or he was ordered to leave it out, or the report was edited after Malak's departure from the Crime Lab. There are no other possibilities."
Sheldon is a former deputy coroner in Pulaski County, and I've long known him as an objective investigator, never prone to exaggeration. A credible agency with no face to save in Janie's case needs to examine hisconclusions. In fact, I believe that the U.S. Department of Justice would be well served to take a hard look at this case.
The FBI has the resources and credibility to scientifically analyze the x-ray photograph and determine whether Sheldon's observations are accurate. The area where he sees the clear spinal separation is located where Malak reported finding her fatal upper spinal cord and neck injury from hyperextension.
"It's been shocking to see the injuries revealed by investigator Dave Sheldon in the cervical lateral x-ray of our daughter's neck compared with the many normal cervical neck x-rays we've examined," said Janie's father, Ron Ward. "Former Crime Lab Director James Clark showed us her original lateral x-ray in 1989. I remember saying then, 'Oh my God, Mr. Clark, her head was literally knocked off.' When we later received photographs of that x-ray, a white mass [shoulder] was covering the separation we'd seen. But thankfully, not enough to erase it completely.Dr. Malak told us her head flew so far back that it hit her second vertebra. You can still see her skull touching the vertebra in this x-ray photograph."
Everywhere I go, people invariably bring up this shameful case and the fact that they believe, as I do, that the truth remains buried with Janie. Like me, they haven't bought the official version where everything about Janie's death is always classified as "undetermined."
What would the FBI possibly have to lose in examining the x-ray photograph to see if Sheldon is correct? After all, this remains a highly visible, unresolved death that could have involved Buffalo National River property at Marshall.
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Mike Masterson is opinion editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's Northwest edition.
Editorial, Pages 19 on 09/26/2009