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   On the heels of two less than successful murder prosecutions in one month, Elko District Attorney Gary Woodbury said he was instituting a new policy between his office and various law enforcement agencies regarding suspicious deaths.
    “I have always been reluctant to get involved at the crime scene primarily because I did not want any of my assistants to become potential witnesses in a future trial,” Woodbury explained. “But given what happened in the last two cases, I think it would be prudent if police agencies contact us the moment a suspicious death is reported.”
    Woodbury was referring to the acquittal of West Wendover Assistant Fire Chief Jeremy Loncar in February and the conviction of Ernest Kent Simkins of the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter but not of the first degree murder charge Woodbury sought.
    In both cases the prosecution was hampered by a dearth of physical evidence, that may or may not have been present at the time of the deaths but not gathered by police.
    In the Loncar case, responding officers did not secure the dead woman’s room as a crime scene apart from a cursory search at the time of her death in January 2006, no forensic evidence was ever collected in AnneMarie Loncar’s bedroom.
    During Loncar’s February trial, Woodbury time and time again questioned officers and first responders about various items seen in the room and tried to imply that there may have been
    While police did a search of Simkins room at the Peppermill Casino the room was cleaned the same day the body was discovered and presumably let out to rent, Woodbury said.
    The immediate notification and involvement of the District Attorney’s office would also eliminate weeks and in many cases month of lag time between a death and its reception at the prosecutors office.
    In the Simkins case it was at least three months before the District Attorney’s office was asked to review the police investigation. while in the Loncar case it was a year.

    AnneMarie Loncar was found dead in her West Wendover home in January 2006, West Wendover closed the case within a month after the autopsy report ruled the cause of death was asphyxiation apparently caused by an asthma condition.
    While that satisfied West Wendover police, Anne Marie parents Monica and Michael Lemon of Layton, Utah who reportedly lobbied first the local police and then Elko county District Attorney Gary Woodbury to reopen the case.
    The District Attorney formally reopened the investigation this January, one year after  AnneMarie Loncar died. By late May a coroner’s inquest was convened and ruled that Jeremy Loncar had caused the death of his wife.
    However the case against Loncar relied mostly on motive with of dearth of physical evidence.
    In fact the only evidence Woodbury produced during the inquest was the testimony of Katherine Raven, a Washoe County pathologist who has performed more than 3,000 autopsies testified that she could not rule the possibility that AnneMarie had been murdered.
    However the pathologist may not have been looking for evidence of murder when the autopsy was performed. Woodbury certainly implied that at the trial and was vigorously contradicted by Dr. Raven.
    Autopsies are performed as a matter of course for almost any death in the United States and they very rarely are done to the degree portrayed in media such as CSI.
      “In general, the most difficult cause of death to determine -- from a medical examiner’s point of view -- are deaths from strangulation or suffocation. That’s because these causes may not leave marks on the outside of the body. In shootings, stabbings, baseball bat injuries, deaths from automobile accidents, etc., there are clues on the outside of the body.” According to the website run by pathologist Dr. Michael Baden of  HBO and Fox News “But with asphyxia, i.e., a lack of oxygen getting to the body - and with poisonings as well -- there may be no clues on the outside of the body indicating that this may be an unnatural death, let alone a homicide. So those are the cases that require the most careful dissections, particularly of the neck organs. It’s very important to look under the skin of the neck for small signs of trauma -- usually hemorrhage, sometimes fractures -- because they can easily be missed. There has to be a high index of suspicion when there’s a suffocation death, when a person couldn’t breathe, but there are no marks are left on the body.
    It is not known whether West Wendover police suggested that such extra-examination be given to AnneMarie body. The testimony given by Raven as well as the non-sealing of AnneMarie bedroom suggests that it was not.
    The lack of evidence was seized upon by Loncar’s attorney even before his client was charged and Loncar was eventually found not guilty.
    The new policy, Woodbury hopes, will eliminate or reduce at least the time lag between time of death and the prosecutors awareness of the case however it may increase tension between the DA and rank and file police.
    While Woodbury said he enjoyed a good working relationship with all local law enforcement chiefs, his reputation among street officers is not good in some corners.
    The depth of that reported animosity was seen at the Loncar trial when several police officers were openly supportive of Loncar in and out of the courtroom.
    “There were one or two officers like that,” Woodbury admitted. “They simply did not know the case.”