A German-born Jew, his parents shipped him off to Paris in 1933, the year that
Hitler became chancellor, to live with an aunt until they could get settled in
what was then Palestine. “My mother realized that we better get out of here
before it’s too late,” he says.
Both of his parents were doctors, and Spitz followed in their footsteps,
attending medical school in Geneva and then in Israel. His first introduction
to what would become his specialty began as a punishment. To keep Spitz away
from friends his father deemed “mischief-makers,” he was sent to shadow the
city hospital chief in Tel Aviv in the department of pathology every summer.
The examiner carried out autopsies for police investigations, and Spitz was
fascinated. “I went to watch autopsies, every single autopsy that occurred,” he
recalls.
In the seven years he worked in Israel after becoming a doctor himself,
however, he was tasked with examining only one murder. In a case that sounds
like a bizarre movie plot, the murderer and his victim were both bagel vendors
in a bus depot. When one vendor hiked up his prices, the other one stabbed him
to death. There wasn’t much to solve, as the crime had taken place in public,
and the perpetrator, motive, and means were all clear. Still, this case was a
turning point because it made Spitz want to go somewhere with more challenging
murders to study: He began to look for a way to the U.S. He doesn’t smile at
death, but he can’t help but chuckle at the fact that a change in bagel prices
would take him out of the Tel Aviv morgue and set him on a new path.
Meet Werner Spitz, the 95-Year-Old ‘Medical Detective’ | TIME
Stephen Pustilnik, M.D.Chief Medical ExaminerFort Bend County (the Great State
of) Texasstephen.pustilnik@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Tuesday, April 16, 2024 at 07:03:53 AM CDT, Erik Handberg
<erikhandbergmd@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2024/04/15/dr-werner-spitz-dies-forensic-pathologist/73330364007/
