Hope and justice go hand-in-hand, and Dr. Michael Baden delivered both to some families who, at one point, had neither.
The renowned forensic pathologist also saved an innocent man from a life behind bars.
How he did it is the subject of the latest Fox Nation series, “The Baden Files.”
“In my lifetime, I performed more than 20,000 autopsies. I’ve been asked by Congress to investigate the deaths of very famous people like President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., but more than 99% of my work has been on lesser-known cases,” Baden told viewers.
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Bringing in Baden helped reawaken some cases that had appeared to go cold with time, including one that unfolded in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
After apparent murder victim Ilene Gowan’s family vowed to seek justice for her, they brought in Baden to look deeper into her case.
“One particular case brought me out to the Midwest, to an investigation that was more like a puzzle – a stolen safe, a body in a ditch, a missing cell phone…” Baden narrated.
But none of those explained what had happened to Gowan. The piece that did help? An ordinary zipper.
The first episode of “The Baden Files” focuses on that unconventional piece of evidence, and how it helped unravel a devastating truth – Gowan had been strangled, and her “undetermined” cause of death shifted to “homicide.”
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“This tells me what happened. Not who done it – that’s up to the police,” Baden said, holding up a photo of the marking.
But the investigation had quickly narrowed two suspects to one that offered a damning piece of information.
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Baden also assisted with the case of Ellen Andros, a wife and mother whose death led the community to cast suspicion on her husband, an Atlantic City cop who came home from a night of drinking and discovered her dead.
As a healthy 31-year-old woman, evidence – particularly small red markings on her face – pointed to homicide. But things weren’t exactly as they seemed.
“Forensic pathology provides a way to speak to the dead from beyond the grave,” Baden said. “And, in this case, Ellen Andros had a lot to say to me.”
The series also follows Dr. Baden’s involvement in the investigation of the “West Memphis Three,” a case surrounding three teen boys arrested for the murder of three eight-year-old Cub Scouts in West Memphis, Arkansas in 1993.
Years later, Dr. Baden was brought into the picture, and he arrived at a conclusion that spun the original forensic analysis on its head.
“The answers are there. You just have to know what to look for.”
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