Fran­cis Joseph

Foren­sic pathol­o­gist, Dr Hughvon des Vi­gnes, could not say how US cit­i­zen, Bal­ram "Ba­lo" Ma­haraj died. Ma­haraj, 62, was kid­napped at the Samaan Tree Bar in Aranguez, San Juan, on April 6, 2005. His re­mains were re­cov­ered from two con­tain­ers in the San­ta Cruz for­est on Jan­u­ary 8, 2006.

Des Vi­gnes was one of the per­sons present when Ma­haraj's re­mains were un­earthed. Des Vi­gnes, an anatomist and foren­sic pathol­o­gist, tes­ti­fied be­fore Judge John Bates in the Wash­ing­ton Fed­er­al Court on Ju­ly 2 in the tri­al of sev­en Trinida­di­ans who were charged with tak­ing Ma­haraj hostage. They were found guilty on Ju­ly 31, and will be sen­tenced on Feb­ru­ary 12.

Des Vi­gnes de­scribed him­self as a con­sult­ing pathol­o­gist, in pri­vate since March. Be­fore that, he was chief foren­sic pathol­o­gist at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre. Des Vi­gnes, 51, has con­duct­ed more than 11,000 au­top­sies, and has been an ex­pert wit­ness in Trinidad, To­ba­go, Grena­da, St Kitts, Al­ber­ta, Cana­da, and Wash­ing­ton, DC. Des Vi­gnes said he re­mem­bered Jan­u­ary 8, 2006. Around 8 am, he at­tend­ed a meet­ing of lo­cal po­lice of­fi­cers and a FBI re­cov­ery team at a po­lice sta­tion. They then drove to the San­ta Cruz foothills and had an­oth­er meet­ing. He said an ad­vanced par­ty went up the hill through the bush­es. Des Vi­gnes was then sum­moned to the camp­site lo­ca­tion. He said the ter­rain was rough, dif­fi­cult to ne­go­ti­ate, and slip­pery.

"When I got there, I was able to see the tops of two buried con­tain­ers. They were lat­er ex­tract­ed from the ground. The con­tain­ers were opened and we were look­ing for a head. "We could not see it, I was see­ing a por­tion of a hu­man thigh, and we had to re­move that to be able to look at any­thing else in the bar­rel." He said the bar­rels were then re­moved to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre. To­geth­er with FBI den­tist, Scott Hahn, they opened the con­tain­ers and re­moved the con­tents. But Des Vi­gnes was not able to per­form a rou­tine au­top­sy ex­am­i­na­tion on the con­tents. Why? "The limbs and parts of the body, the fleshy part of them, were in an ad­vanced state of de­com­po­si­tion. "In cool sur­round­ings, this de­com­po­si­tion takes the form of the tis­sue break­ing down in­to a soft put­ty-like ma­te­r­i­al that doesn't have any dis­tinct form, and it un­der­goes a process called adipocere, that makes it like a soapy, sticky ma­te­r­i­al with­out form.

"I was not able to dis­cern, and so could not ex­am­ine any in­di­vid­ual or­gans of the body. I could not ex­tract any sam­ple for test­ing." Des Vi­gnes pre­pared a post-mortem re­port. The re­mains, he said, were iden­ti­fied as that of Bal­ram Ma­haraj. When he per­formed the au­top­sy, he did not have the med­ical records of the de­ceased. He was not able to give an opin­ion as to the cause of death. He was able to lo­cate the skull and low­er jaw in the blue bar­rel con­tain­er. He al­so found two ver­te­brae, the one that sep­a­rates small bones that make up the back­bone, and an­oth­er held to­geth­er by a metal­lic de­vice. He had nev­er seen a de­vice like that be­fore. Even­tu­al­ly, des Vi­gnes saw the med­ical records from Ma­haraj's physi­cian, Muhammed Naaem, and psy­chi­a­trist, Dr Mahin­der­jit Singh.

Des Vi­gnes learnt that Ma­haraj was tak­ing med­ica­tion for high blood pres­sure, di­a­betes, and cho­les­terol. As des Vi­gnes was about to ex­press an opin­ion as to a hy­po­thet­i­cal cause of death, the de­fence ob­ject­ed. Judge Bates said the doc­tor opined that the man died, and he didn't say be­cause of the di­a­bet­ic co­ma. He said that would have been the na­ture and prob­a­ble con­se­quence of be­ing de­prived of these med­ica­tions, and that's all he can say. Judge Bates did not al­low the ques­tion. In re­sponse to a ques­tion by Steven Kiersh, at­tor­ney for ac­cused An­der­son Strak­er, des Vi­gnes said two years be­fore in an­oth­er mat­ter, he told the ju­ry that Ma­haraj died of a di­a­bet­ic co­ma. He point­ed out that there were dif­fer­ent ways to die: sui­cide, ac­ci­dent, homi­cide, and un­de­ter­mined. In this case, it was un­de­ter­mined.

Des Vi­gnes said if some­one drank three, four, five beers a day, it could raise his blood pres­sure, and that could kill that per­son by way of a heart at­tack, or a stroke. In re­sponse to a ques­tion by Re­i­ta Pendry, at­tor­ney for ac­cused Kevon De­merieux, des Vi­gnes said he took an X-ray of Ma­haraj's skull in Jan­u­ary, 2006. The X-ray, he said, showed there was no dam­age to the skull. An X-ray would have re­vealed a hair­line frac­ture, he added. The pathol­o­gist said there was no ev­i­dence of dam­age when he ex­am­ined the cleaned-up skull with the naked eye and a hand lens. Des Vi­gnes said when he per­formed the post-mortem on Ma­haraj, he did not know his med­ical his­to­ry. He knew noth­ing about the med­ica­tion he was tak­ing. "When I did the post-mortem, all I had was that Ma­haraj had done sig­nif­i­cant den­tal work. That was unique. There was in­for­ma­tion he had done sig­nif­i­cant back surgery with unique pros­thet­ic de­vices."