KINGSTON, R.I. — April 24, 2019 — Former New York City coroner and forensic pathologist Michael Baden will be the featured speaker as the University of Rhode Island’s 13-week Spring Forensic Science Partnership Seminar Series comes to a close this Friday, April 26. The series, free and open to the public, takes place in the Beaupre Center for Chemical and Forensic Sciences, room 100, from 3:30 to 5 p.m.
Baden will discuss “What the Dead Have to Tell,” based on forensic evidence found during autopsies. Baden’s experience as a board-certified forensic pathologist and expert includes work on a number of high-profile cases, including the O. J. Simpson trial, the Phil Spector murder trial, and the death of New England Patriots football player Aaron Hernandez. Baden was chairman of the House Select Committee on Assassinations’ Forensic Pathology Panel, which reinvestigated the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1970s.
The former chief medical examiner of New York City, Baden is past co-director of the New York State Police Medico-Legal Investigations Unit. He received a bachelor of science degree from the City College of New York and a medical degree from the New York University School of Medicine. He has been a medical examiner for 45 years and has performed more than 20,000 autopsies. He also has served as a consultant to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Veterans Administration, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Drug Enforcement Agency and the U.S. Department of Justice.
Baden was a member of a team of U.S. forensic scientists asked by the Russian government to examine the newly found remains of Tsar Nicholas II, Alexandra and the Romanov family in Siberia in the 1990s. He has also provided expert testimony in multiple Iraq-related court martials in the U.S. and Camp Liberty, Baghdad, and has investigated deaths across the globe on behalf of human-rights groups and private attorneys.
Baden served as president of the Society of Medical Jurisprudence and vice president of the American Academy of Forensic Science. For 13 years, he was the host of HBO’s “Autopsy” series, which demonstrated how the various forensic sciences assist in solving crimes. He has also consulted for television.
He has authored or co-authored more than 80 professional articles and books on aspects of forensic medicine and two popular non-fiction books, “Unnatural Death: Confessions of a Medical Examiner” and “Dead Reckoning: The New Science of Catching Killers.” He is also the author, with his wife, attorney Linda Kenney Baden, of two recent forensic thrillers, “Remains Silent” and “Skeleton Justice.” He is the forensic science contributor for FOX News Channel and is a reviewer for the New England Journal of Medicine.