A real forensic pathologist is specially trained and accredited by board certification in the field of forensic pathology. The American Board of Pathology is usually the agency that examines and certifies a candidate to call himself a forensic pathologist; if a forensic pathologist acts as a Medical Examiner (ME), he will usually also be a member of the National Association of Medical Examiners (NAME).

For more information, see the University of New Mexico, Office of the Medical Examiner, ⇒What is a forensic pathologist?⇐ page, which provides excellent information on the topic.

Fraud in the Autopsy Room?

The Albany County Coroners Office and Bernard T. Ng may be perpetrating the biggest fraud in recent Albany County history. Bernard T. Ng, MD, of Schenectady, NY, a pathologist at Ellis Hospital in Schenectady, and the owner of Schenectady Pathology Associates, PC, also in Schenectady, is accepting autopsy cases from the Albany County Coroners Office but Ng is not a board-certified forensic pathologist, and is not qualified to perform forensic autopsies in the context of medicolegal death investigations! Not only is the Albany County Coroners Office complict in this fraud and deception, and even worse still, is obstructing the public health mission of death investigation and forensic autopsy practice.

Who’s to blame? Bernard Ng or the Albany County Coroners?

The Albany County Coroners Office, law enforcement, and privacy laws have aided and abetted this fraud, while the ignorance and political cronyism in Albany County has fostered and fed this ghoulish deception of the public.

This is not only a scandalous violation of the law and the purpose of medicolegal death investigation, placing an unqualified pathologist in the position to take a lead in death investigations, together with the lack of any real scientific qualifications of the Albany County Coroners, who are all funeral directors, except for Antonio Sturges, who runs a diabetic supply business, misleads law enforcement, screws up death and public health statistics big time, and generally harms overall healthcare, safety, and well-being in the living population!

Our investigation into Bernard T. Ng began in late 2018 when we were asked by next-of-kin of 19-year old Riley Kern, who died under suspicious circumstances when his motorcycle collided with a pickup truck driven by Travis Hagen, a prominent Coeymans resident, while Hagen was leaving the Sycamore Country Club in Coeymans. The accident was investigated by the Coeymans Police Department, which meant that there were multiple defects and deficiencies in the investigation. The young man died under medically suspect circumstances at Albany Medical Center. Albany County Coroner John Keegan was involved and ordered a medicolegal autopsy, which was performed at Ellis Hospital in Schenectady, by our friend Bernard Ng. Bernard Ng had no business conducting a medicolegal autopsy. The Riley Kern case is now in the courts.

Our second investigation into the practices of the Albany County Coroners Office and their relationship with Bernard T. Ng started when we were requested to assist the family of Joshua Abood, the 22-year-old man who was found at Peebles Park, face down in the Mohawk River, on June 10, 2020. The man’s family saw our coverage of the Riley Kern case, the 19-year-old who was killed in Coeymans in July 2018 , and contacted us after they lost confidence in the New York State Police investigation led by NYSP Investigator Thomas L. Burns, of NYSP Troop G in Latham, NY.

The family sent us Joshua’s death certificate certified by Antonio Sturges, part-time coroner appointed in 2019 to finish Benjamin Sturges’ term, and the Autopsy Report prepared and signed by Bernard T. Ng MD, of Ellis Hospital, in Schenectady. We have also been provided with copy of a letter dated August 6, 2020, from the man’s mother to Bernard Ng, in which Joshua’s mother illustrates some of the defects and deficiencies that would be conspicuous and glaring even to the uninformed reader.

Joshua’s Theme was
Never give up!

In her letter, the mother refers to the Death Certificate only, which would indicate that she luckily did not yet have a copy of the autopsy report, which, if read together with the Death Certificate prepared by part-time Albany County Coroner Antonio Sturges, would have really given her a migraine!

We are at an advantage because we have both the Death Certificate (signed June 10, 2020, Antonio Sturges and June 11, 2020, Bernard Ng) and the Autopsy Report (signed July 29, 2020, Bernard T. Ng MD). Neither document compares favorably with the other. For example: Ng does not clearly state a “cause of death” that makes any sense whatsoever. His autopsy report simply states, “Immediate cause of death is consistent with drowning with laryngeal spasm secondary to alcohol intoxication.” Gobbeldygook!

First of all, drowning death is a process, not a single cause. Second, “laryngeal spasm” is a reflex that occurs in a living person, not in a man dead more than 24 hours! The alcohol intoxication may be considered relevant, but how? The report makes no statement on that.

Antonio Sturges’ Death Certification is even more stupid! He states that the immediate cause of death as “Cardiopulmonary arrest;” in other words, heart attack! According to Sturges, the heart attack was the “consequence of drowning,” and the drowning was due to “fall into water [and] intoxication.” WTF!?! And no one has picked up on this rubbish? Unbelievable. You can’t make this stuff up!!!

Unfortunately, Joshua’s mother knows about as much about the Albany County Coroner’s role in the investigation as Bernard Ng knows about forensic autopsy: ZILCH!

But she’s right about one thing: Not only are the circumstances of Joshua’s death “suspicious,” the entire medicolegal death investigation is becoming more and more suspicious as we uncover more information!

Michelle, Joshua’s mother, appears to be a more competent coroner than Antonio Sturges, and a better forensic pathologist than Bernard Ng, when she asks:

“Furthermore, some questions and concerns regarding the findings and information on Joshua’s certificate of death are;
“● Was Joshua’s temperature taken when his body was recovered and compared to the temperature of the water that he “drowned” in and his body traveled in? I ask this because you did not include a time of death. This information is crucial to this case as investigators have questioned details down to a very small time frame.
“● How was my son Joshua’s body able to float all the way from where the “incident” happened to where they discovered his body if the ruling is accurate? Was there enough air in his lungs to make that possible?
“● On Joshua’s death certificate you indicated that he was not hospitalized in the past 2 months prior to his death. This is incredibly inaccurate. My best guess is that whoever recorded this, simply assumed it to be true without any valid search. Joshua was
hospitalized and spent a week in the ICU just weeks before he died.”

Michelle’s questions are all well placed and, even if she weren’t exposed to the moronic autopsy report, they do reflect valid questions that arise from the bungled Death Certificate! Ng should have been provided with all of the facts and information relating to the coroner’s information and the information collected by law enforcement at the scene, and Ng should have reviewed all of that information prior to doing any autopsy. But, given the fact that Antonio Sturges did the coroner’s investigation at the scene before having the body transported to Ellis Hospital might explain Ng’s autopsy report; Sturges’ inaccurate and incomplete documentation could have misled Ng. The fault for the mother’s confusion might lie 90% with the Albany County Coroners Office, specifically with Antonio Sturges.

We also investigated the Riley Kern case in detail and we can say that the Albany County Coroner investigating that death was John Keegan, a funeral director with Magin & Keegan Funeral Home, and his statements are just as ignorant as anything we’ve heard about Sturges. Ng also did Riley’s autopsy.

Michelle closes her letter with a very profound statement:

“Taking into consideration my concerns and questions, including lack of accuracy and what appears to be an inaccurate ruling. Because of this, I fear that my son Joshua’s investigation isn’t and hasn’t been given the precedence and attention to detail that it needs and deserves.
“As Joshua’s mother and next of kin I am respectfully requesting that you take the time to look into all of these facts, questions and concerns that I have addressed to you and PLEASE at the very least, consider changing your ruling to suspicious. Please give this your time and much needed attention. I know that you may see things like this every day, however, this is MY SON and deserves more than assumptions and invalid data.”

As we mentioned above, Michelle’s letter was written on August 6, 2020, way before we got involved, and she certainly hits the nail on the head.

We should also note that Ng makes no mention whatsoever about important postmortem changes in Joshua’s body that any real forensic autopsy would have taken into consideration hands down!

We reviewed both documents and found them to be incomplete, inaccurate, amateurish, contradictory, and generally substandard. It’s documents like these that defeat the purpose of public health and vital statistics efforts from the bottom up. They make death investigation expensive and a total waste of taxpayer money, while giving loved ones and the bereaved no comfort or relief.

Based on information we received regarding the performance of the New York State Police investigators, they weren’t much better; the Cohoes Police Department, who were also involved, were complete losers, even when asked to investigate the removal of flyers posted seeking information about the case and offering a reward.

Riley’s case almost identical!
Demands Justice!

Back to Bernard T. Ng and the Albany County Coroners Office ⇒⇒⇒⇒

Ng works with the Coroners Office as an independent contractor, as a coroner’s pathologist, and the Albany County coroners send coroner case bodies to Schenectady for autopsy by Ng. Problem is, the coroner is the county official charged with the duty to investigate medicolegal cases, and to do that they need a pathologist specially trained in forensic pathology, who is qualified to perform the very detailed and sensitive forensic autopsy procedure. Ng does not have that qualification, and is not certified by the American Pathology Board to do forensic autopsies/

Editor’s Note: You might be asking why Albany County Coroners are sending cases to Bernard Ng in Schenectady. Well, the problem is based on money and greed. Surprised?

Ng knows this but Ng still takes on the cases.

The Albany County Coroners Office knows or should know this but still sends Ng bodies for autopsy in the context of medicolegal death investigations.

The Albany County District Attorney, P. David Soares knows or should know this but as usual, has slept on his duty to the people of Albany County, and to the victims of crime and suspicious deaths!

Now we know this and we are going public with it and demanding accountability. Does it take a high-visibility class-action lawsuit to get their attention?

Do attorneys and the courts have to get involved to get elected officials and public servants to do what’s right?

As we mentioned above, we received Joshua Abood’s Death Certificate and his Autopsy Report, and proceeded to review both and to scrutinize them as if we were trial consultants. It didn’t take us long to determine that both documents were practically useless, if not outright misleading and contradticotry.

In the context of the Joshua A.T. Abood case, we have applied the Forensic Autopsy Performance Standards^[1]  as promulgated by the National Association of Medical Examiners (NAME) to Bernard T. Ng, MD, and the Office of the Albany County Coroner as the hiring authority and requesting authority for autopsies to be performed by Ng.

This raises some very serious questions: (1) Are the autopsies requested by the Albany County Coroner being called forensic autopsies as they should be called, according to applicable statutes, rules, and regulations? (2) Is the Albany County Coroners Office aware that Ng is not a board-certified forensic pathologist qualified and authorized to perform forensic autopsies? (3) Is Bernart T.Ng accepting these cases for forensic autopsy knowingly, and aware that he is not a certified forensic pathologist, and therefore not qualified or authorized to perform forensic autopsies in the context of a medicolegal death investigation. In other words, the Albany County Coroners should not be sending bodies to Ng for autopsy in the context of a medicolegal death investigation, and Ng should not be accepting the cases, because (1) he knows they are medicolegal death investigations, (2) such investigations require a specially trained forensic pathologist, (3) he, Ng, is not a specially trained forensic pathologist by any standard!

We think this is not only a scandal, we think it is the subject of legal action that should be taken against the County of Albany, the Albany County Coroners, and against Bernard T. Ng MD!

Ellis Hospital in Schenectady, where Bernard T Ng is a member of the Pathology Department, is equally at fault for allowing Ng to perpetrate his misconduct on Ellis Hospital property! Time for the Schenectady County DA Robert Carney to get off his butt and get involved!

The damage is done once the investigation is closed, too often closed without an arrest, because the incompetent autopsy doesn’t tell the whole story. An important indication or sign gets missed, or an important test doesn’t get done, and the case either gets closed or goes cold. The body is cremated or buried, and the family never knows or gets closure.

What’s even worse is that the very purpose of the forensic autopsy from the public health view point is missed.

In the forensic autopsy, the primary goal is usually to determine the cause and manner of death. In the chapter on ‘The forensic postmortem examination and the medicolegal autopsy’ from his classic 1970s text ‘The Pathology of Homicide,’ Lester Adelson wrote that when the pathologist performs an autopsy investigated under medicolegal auspices, the efforts must be directed to find the answers to six questions. The ‘question-and-answer exercise,’ or dialog with the dead, is the pathologist’s interrogation of the cadaver, asking specifically (1) Who are you? (2) When did you die? (3) Where did you die? (4) Why did you die? (5) What happened? and if it is a homicide (6) Who did it?

Traditionally, the emphasis of work done by medical examiners, coroners, and the death investigation community has been viewed as serving the criminal justice system. During the last several decades, however, an important role for these 3 groups has emerged within public health.

It is the duty of coroners, medical examiners, and forensic pathologists to provide important background information on death investigation systems, to assist in the evolution of programs of public health entities that rely on information gathered by medical examiners and coroners, and we must not overlook the the role of medical examiners and coroners in providing the raw data on deaths for epidemiologic research, health surveillance, and existing public health programs and activities. When a link in this chain fails, as it has in Albany County, the adverse impact is felt far and wide, right up to the CDC’s vital statistics a databases.

Editor’s Note: Dr. Randy Hanzlick, MD, a forensic pathology specialist with more than 44 years of experience in the medicolegal field, has written numerous articles on forensic pathology and public health. In an article dealing specifically with medical examiners, coroners, and publich health, Dr Hanzlick writes:

“The essential services of public health have been enumerated as follows: monitor health status, inform and empower people, develop policies and plans, link people to health services, evaluate quality, diagnose health problems, mobilize community partnerships, enforce laws and regulations, assure a competent workforce, and research for new insights.12 The work or participation of forensic pathologists, medical examiners, and coroners fits well into many aspects of these essential public health services.”

[Editor’s Note: Request the entire article from your community library by citing: Medical examiners, coroners, and public health: a review and update. Hanzlick R. “Medical Examiners, Coroners,and Public Health.” Arch Pathol Lab Med. 2006 Sep;130(9):1274-82. doi: 10.1043/1543-2165(2006)130[1274:MECAPH]2.0.CO;2. MID: 16948511.]

One of the reasons the Albany County Coroners are sending their cases to an unqualified pathologist in Schenectady, Bernard T. Ng, is because of the greed and amorality of the accountants running Albany Medical Center (AMC), just up the street from the County Coroners offices!

If a loved one has to go through this, shouldn’t it be done right?

In a recent report in the Post Star (Glens Falls) article, AMC cites the retirement of one of their forensic pathologists for their attempt to back off from providing autopsies for surrounding counties, but even that didn’t stop them from doubling the cost of autopsies, which doesn’t include the pathologist’s, support staff, or other fees! What we find very disturbing is that we cannot find any report of this in the local media! Politics at work?

“Instead, the hospital notified coroners during a conference call on Thursday that it plans to more than double the price it charges to have autopsies performed at its facilities, from”$924 to $2,000 per post-mortem examination. And that fee does not include the charges from physicians who are involved.

In that article, the specific fact of the region’s largest medical school and medical center will not have a qualified forensic pathologist to do the autopsies, which supports the points we make in this article. According to the Albany Medical Center spokesperson, Tania Allard,  “… the morgue will remain open with a new fee schedule, and confirmed that forensic toxicology will no longer be offered as the hospital will “no longer have the expertise to provide forensic toxicology services.” But forensic toxicology services can be outsourced, of course. But why double the cost of the autopsy itself? [Source: Don Lehman. “Albany Med threatens to halt autopsies, then hikes prices.” Post Star (October 25, 2018)]

AMC CEO James Barba

So, when AMC doubles the price of an autopsy required by medicolegal death investigators for the benefit of the public, YOU, who do you think is going to have to foot the bill? AMC is big business, and is a non-profit/education institution; they pay no taxes but rake in big bucks from donations, gifts, fees, grants, and state and federal funding!

Compare that to their executives’ salaries: Albany Business Review lists the highest-paid executives in the Capital Region area and notes that seventh on the list is Albany Med CEO James Barba, with a base salary of $944,00 and total compensation of $1.845-million and 21st on the list is St. Peter’s Health Partners CEO Vincent Verdile with base of $620,465 and total compensation of $1.059-million. If that isn’t obscene we’d like to know what is! [Source: Hospital finances improve, Chronical (Glens Falls), Mark Frost, Chronicle Editor.)

SHAME! DISGRACE! ALBANY, NY, BUSINESS AS USUAL! AMC has to come up with the CEOs salary before they can even think of providing healthcare!

If Bernard T. Ng, MD, is not a board-certified forensic pathologist qualified to perform forensic autopsies in the context of medicolegal death investigation then he is in serious violation of professional ethics and the law. If the Albany County Coroners Office is referring cases to Bernart T. Ng, MD, for forensic autopsy, for which Ng is apparently not qualified, the Coroners of the Albany County Coroners Office are accessories, and should be subject to discipline or prosecution for their violations of the public interest.

Since Bernard T. Ng, MD, is not a board-certified forensic pathologist, he should not be receiving cases for medicolegal death investigation or for forensic autopsy from the Albany County Coroner’s Office or anyone else. That is, in our experienced opinion, tantamount to fraudulent misrepresentation and criminal fraud on the part of Ng, and perhaps conspiracy and abuse of office, as well as complicity in Ng’s scams on the part of the Albany County Coroners.

Our questions are: Where is County Executive Daniel McCoy (Dem), County DA David Soares (Dem

), and the Albany County Legislature while all of this is going on?

No professional board would advocate that a pathologist who is not a board certified forensic patholo

gist perform forensic or autopsies or autopsies in the context of a medicolegal death investigation, nor would any professional board condone such practices. So why does Ng continue the misconduct? Why does the Albany County Coroner continue this practice? Why does law enforcement, particularly the New York State Police Criminal Investigation and its Investigators turn a blind eye to this scandalous state of affairs, which degrades their work product, contaminates death investigations, and slaps the public in the face, while shortchanging survivors and the bereaved?

Notes:

[1] Peterson, Garry F, and Steven C. Clark. Forensic Autopsy Performance Standards., National Association of Medical Examiners (NAME). Walnut Shade, MO (2015). Print.

We are back to the Joshua Abood case, and will provide more specifics and detail on the investigation and the weirdos investigating and making decisions in the case. Stay tuned for the upcoming segment that will deal with New York State Police Investigator Thomas Burns, Albany County Coroner Antonio Sturges and the Albany County Legislature and the Albany County Coroners Office, Ellis Hospital (Schenectady) pathologist Bernard Ng, and New York State Assemblyman John T. McDonald III.

Some Related Smalbany Articles

Politics, Power, Patronage and Conflicts of Interest: The Albany County Coroners Office
A Response to Lorin Marra. re: Office of the Albany County Coroners
The Cover-up Continues… A Mother’s Despair
Riley’s Mom Responds: A Mother’s Perspective

WTF?!?
You can’t make this sh*t up!
This is the Twilight Zone!
( NYS Assemblyman John T. McDonald III )

ALBANY COUNTY, NEW YORK.