Thomas Noguchi: the “coroner to the stars” who investigated Hollywood’s most famous deaths
Many of Hollywood’s rich and famous have passed through Thomas Noguchi’s autopsy table.
Such a glittering cavalcade of post-mortem big names has earned the retired forensic pathologist the unique title “coroner to the stars”. Appointed Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner for the County of Los Angeles from 1967 to 1982, after several years as a junior, Noguchi developed his own weird, celebrity stature due to the litany of high-profile deaths he was tasked with determining cause.
And it was everybody. John Belushi, Janis Joplin, Robert F Kennedy, Divine, Natalie Wood, Marilyn Monroe, and Sharon Tate are just some of the town’s casualties sent Noguchi’s way. Such attachment to the lives lost in Hollywood’s murky lore brought with it ruptures to his career, including suspicions of basking in the limelight just a little too much, as well as inviting controversy when offering a verdict that rubbed fans who harboured their own version of events the wrong way.
According to his 1983 Coroner memoir, an interest in autopsy first sparked at 13 years old while growing up in Japan’s Yokosuka city. An unusual practice at the time of the country’s imperial era in 1940, an accusation of medical malpractice aimed at his father, resulted in a dissection to ascertain whether the bereaved family member’s complaint that he’d left a cotton swab in the deceased’s throat was true. The autopsy proved otherwise, and his father was exonerated.
Graduating from Tokyo’s Nippon Medical School and spending some intern time at the University of Tokyo School of Medicine Hospital, an emigration to the States brought a career right up to one of the premier positions in Los Angeles County. It was here that Noguchi’s methods began to clash with the public or cause headaches for authorities.
Reportedly, when first unveiling the white sheet over Monroe’s body in 1962 under the mentorship of chief coroner Theodore Curphey, a determination of “probable suicide” was at odds with the conspiratorial air emerging in the Hollywood star’s wake. Six years later, the conclusion that the fatal bullet that passed through RFK’s head was three inches from the gun fuelled theories that the assassin Sirhan Sirhan wasn’t the lone gunman, as he was further away when taking his shot.
Such conclusions would come to a head in 1982 when assessing the death of Wood. The acting star’s body had been discovered on a dinghy with bruises and abrasions after accounts of an argument with her husband, Noguchi controversially ruling the death as “accidental drowning and hypothermia.”
Such a conclusion triggered shock among friends and family, Frank Sinatra writing to the county supervisor: “His inappropriate statements have, in my opinion, cast unjustified aspersions on the memories of well-known individuals, violated privacy of aggrieved families and caused undue sensationalism, for no purpose other than to put himself in the public limelight.”
Accusations of anti-Japanese feeling were suggested by defenders of Noguchi, while detractors insisted on a mismanagement of public office and unprofessional engagement with the press. Noguchi’s strange career survived such tribulations; however, awarded various honours by the time of his retirement and even bestowed the Order of the Sacred Treasure decoration by the Emperor of Japan. Now 99, Noguchi has lived long enough to see his life adapted for the 2024 Dead Outlaw musical, “I myself am not the dancing type,” he told The New York Times, But I have to say, the musical is nice.”
