Longtime Allegheny County chief medical examiner Karl Williams to retire after 17 years

Karl Williams, Allegheny County’s longtime chief medical examiner, who toiled largely in obscurity while overseeing some of the region’s most grisly death investigations, is stepping down.

A doctor by training, Williams, 75, is retiring Friday after 17 years as the county’s top forensic pathologist.

He leaves behind a $238,000 salary, 101 employees and a $12 million office that handles roughly 1,500 death investigations a year and functions as a key cog in the county’s criminal justice machine.

County Executive Sara Innamorato, busy filling out her cabinet, is left to find a replacement for the understated Dr. Williams and his trademark mustache and bow tie.

A national search is underway.

Williams took over after Cyril Wecht, the prominent and sometimes controversial coroner, who briefly became the county’s appointed medical examiner in January 2006 after voters authorized a change from an elected coroner system.

Wecht resigned later that month before his term expired after being indicted on public corruption charges, which were eventually dropped. Another pathologist served the rest of Wecht’s term, and Williams took over in January 2007 after a national search.

In an interview Thursday with TribLive at the county morgue in the Strip District, Williams said that over the decades his office has handled “extraordinary” cases, including the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, the cyanide poisoning case of UPMC neurologist Autumn Klein by her husband, University of Pittsburgh medical researcher Robert Ferrante, and the shooting death of FBI agent Samuel Hicks.

But Williams said that what stands out most was one of the first cases he worked in 1983 during a two-year stint in the county coroner’s office: a teenage boy who died after being stuck in a heating duct inside Grandview School in Pittsburgh’s Allentown neighborhood.

The body of Michael Fingal was found inside the duct in November 1983 after being missing for nearly five years. He was last seen alive on New Year’s Eve 1978, according to the Pittsburgh Press.

Williams said it was difficult to identify the body and what actually led to his death.

“We had to do a range of meteorologic studies and ask people in the community to figure the whole case out,” said Williams.

He said Fingal entered the heating duct wearing a plaid jacket on one of the warmest New Year’s Eves in Pittsburgh history, and so the heat only kicked on early in the morning when the temperature finally dropped.

“Then he had just a matter of minutes before carbon monoxide poisoning would have occurred,” Williams said.

Since the body went undiscovered for so long, identifying Fingal was difficult, and Williams said breakthroughs in the case happened only after several interviews with Fingal’s brother.

He said the brother initially said it was unlikely Fingal would enter the ducts. But in a later interview, the brother told Williams that Fingal’s dental records would likely be in juvenile detention records and indicated Fingal had a history of breaking into Grandview School, albeit by kicking in the door, not breaking into the heating ducts.

“The brother said ‘if Michael wanted to get into that school, he would just kick the door in, like he did last time,’” he said. “I had heard enough.”

Williams, who got his medical degree from the University of Pittsburgh, said that case was symbolic of his work as a forensic pathologist. A medical examiner, he said, needs to take in all the information relating to a case to reach the best conclusion about the cause and manner of someone’s death.

“A pathologist covers everything that goes on surrounding a case,” he said. “It is really the root science of medicine.”

Williams has lived in the Pittsburgh area almost his entire life. He graduated from South Hills High School, studied at Oberlin College in Ohio before going to medical school. After working in the Allegheny County coroner’s office, he worked in Lawrence County as a forensic pathologist before returning home when he was appointed medical examiner by then-county Chief Executive Dan Onorato.

Williams said that he has had a “blessed” life and that each step in his career — including the decision to retire — has felt right.

Although he has largely maintained a low profile despite his office’s often high-profile decisions about whether whether deaths are homicides, suicides, accidents or due to natural causes, Williams acknowledged that he has held some controversial opinions.

He has questioned the diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome throughout his career, for instance. In 2015, during the trial of a man charged with causing a young child’s head injuries, Williams disagreed with the testimony of four doctors who blamed the toddler’s paralysis on shaken baby syndrome. Prosecutors said the child’s injuries could not have been caused merely from a fall, as the defense was claiming. But Williams became the defense’s key witness and said a fall alone could cause such injuries to an infant.

Williams called shaken baby syndrome the “worst dogma in forensic science.”

Despite Williams’ testimony, the man pleaded guilty to aggravated assault.

Williams said he is proud of the office he is leaving behind. He said that he expects Deputy Medical Examiner Ariel Goldschmidt to become acting medical examiner following his departure.

Williams touted Allegheny County’s successes, including being consulted by the Costa Rican government when they were creating their own forensic laboratory.

He said his plans for retirement involve spending more time in the Connecticut River Valley in New England and sailing his boat off the coast up and down the Atlantic Coast.