Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, June 10, 1995                   TAG: 9506120062
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JEAN PAGEL ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LUBBOCK, TEXAS                                LENGTH: Medium

BODIES RETURN TO HAUNT HIM

Nearly three years after the pathologist pleaded no contest to botching and faking a few autopsies, hundreds of other cases he handled over a decade across rural west Texas have been called into question amid suspicions he performed ``made-to-order'' autopsies for prosecutors.

Bodies have been exhumed, a dozen death-row inmates have appealed - and in March, one of those capital convictions was overturned.

``A disgrace,'' fumed Justice of the Peace Jim Hansen. ``He betrayed the public trust. And in my opinion what he did is the equivalent of treason.''

``It was worse than cutting corners - he just wasn't doing the work,'' said Lubbock lawyer Tommy Turner, who was appointed to conduct a two-year investigation of Erdmann that led to his 1992 resignation and no-contest plea on seven counts of falsifying autopsies.

Of 300 Erdmann autopsies studied, problems were found in at least one-third of them. Most of the shoddy work did not involve criminal cases but suicides, auto accidents and babies' deaths.

In one case that led to the charges against Erdmann, the professorial, crew-cut doctor known for taking his work home noted how he examined a dead man's spleen and gall bladder. Problem was, those organs had been removed several years before the man's death. In another case, Erdmann said he had examined a woman's brain, but no cut even had been made.

Odessa authorities say Erdmann did an autopsy in a murder case and somehow misplaced the head. Without the head - which contained a bullet wound - charges against a suspect had to be dropped.

And Plainview authorities still want to talk to Erdmann about the headless body of a woman they found in a ditch and sent him to examine. When he finally returned the bones eight years later, they included the head of a 14-year-old boy.

The uproar also led to several lawsuits, including one that Lubbock County settled last year for $15,000. The lawsuit was brought by a man who spent four months in jail charged in the death of his infant son. A second autopsy showed the baby drowned accidentally.

``In any case in which Ralph Erdmann was involved, we're either going to see his name on appeals or writs for the next 20 years,'' said Randall County District Attorney James Farren. ``The defense attorneys ... will suggest that if he lied in one case, he could have lied in theirs.''

Erdmann, 68, who was placed on 10 years' probation for his 1992 no-contest plea, has been jailed in Seattle on weapons charges since last month, when authorities found a 122-gun cache in his home that included a fully automatic M-16 assault rifle.

Erdmann has not responded to written and telephone requests for an interview. But he testified three years ago that he has never falsified anything.

``That I'm human and can do errors, yes,'' he said at a court hearing. ``But intentionally? Never.''