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“This Is Not How It’s Done”: Dr. Kohr on Missteps, Misinformation, and a Crime Scene Gone Wrong

By the time Dr. Roland Kohr, forensic pathologist and former Vigo County coroner, found himself in conflict with the Terre Haute Police Department, he had already been involved with more homicides than most local detectives had even seen.

“I found out I was the bad guy,” he recalls. “I heard through the grapevine: ‘Who the heck does Dr. Kohr think he is telling us how to run police work? He’s never been a cop.’”

What they overlooked, however, was that Kohr had examined far more homicides than the entire detective division combined. Many of whom, at that point, had only handled two.

“That set the tone for the next four years,” he says, “and it was a great tragedy.”