Longtime coroner for Allegheny County, Holocaust survivor
“The truth is like a lion; you don’t have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself,” is a quote often attributed to Augustine of Hippo, a second century philosopher and theologian who later became St. Augustine.
It could just as easily have come from Dr. Joshua Perper, a Holocaust survivor, masterful storyteller and scientist who gave voice to the dead, even when the truths he revealed were inconvenient.
A longtime coroner and medical examiner in Allegheny County and later in Broward County, Fla., Dr. Perper conducted autopsies in several high-profile deaths — most famously that of Anna Nicole Smith in 2007.
His English diction was always perfect and spoken with authority — along with his distinctive Romanian lilt.
Dr. Perper, 88, of Boca Raton, Fla., died Monday of what was suspected to be complications of diabetes and possibly heart disease, said his son, Edward Perper, a retired cardiologist.
Dr. Perper was born in the town of Bacau, Romania, but his Jewish family moved to Bucharest, where his father, an accountant, was driven into forced labor by the Nazis.
He never knew his only sibling, an older brother who died at the age of 2 as a result of what Dr. Perper termed “a therapeutic misadventure,” in other words, a physician’s error, before Dr. Perper was born.
“So I was raised as a single
child, with all the advantages and disadvantages of a single child. That’s why, when I grew up, I wanted to have more than one child,” he told a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter in 1991.
When he was 18, Dr. Perper immigrated to Israel and after a stint in the Israeli Army, entered Hebrew University, where he earned his medical degree in 1961.
As he was completing his post-graduate work and residency in pathology, Dr. Perper went to law school at night and earned his law degree in 1966.
“I thought law was interesting, I thought medicine wasinteresting, and forensic pathology combined elements of both,” Dr. Perper said in the 1991 PG interview.
At university, he met fellow Romanian Sheila Markovich, who was training to become a histologist.
“I thought that was really cool — they were sort of a medical match made in heaven,” his son said.
The couple married in 1956. Mrs. Perper died in 2005.
The young family relocated to Baltimore, where Dr. Perper continued his post-graduate training in forensic pathology at Johns Hopkins University and served as an associate medical examiner and senior research fellow for the office of the chief medical examiner in Baltimore.
He met a former Allegheny County coroner, Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, at a medical convention, and in 1972 was hired as chief forensic pathologist for Allegheny County.
He and Dr. Wecht formed a close business and professional relationship during the next several years, and in 1980, Dr. Perper said, “fate determined that I become a temporary politician,” when he was appointed acting coroner after Dr. Wecht was elected county commissioner.
A few months later, his relationship with the former coroner was abruptly severed during a preliminary hearing for Dr. Wecht, who had been charged — and later acquitted — with using the public morgue for private gain.
During questioning, Dr. Wecht’s chief defense lawyer accused Dr. Perper of perjury and Dr. Perper blasted his former boss. Their relationship was never mended.
Dr. Wecht this week declined to comment on the passing of his former protege.
In February 1981, the state Senate confirmed then-Gov. Dick Thornburgh’s nominee to fill Dr. Wecht’s unexpired term, Republican Sanford Edberg.
But when Mr. Edberg attempted to enter the coroner’s office after being sworn in, he and Dr. Perper engaged in a pushing and shoving match that was captured on television and became known in the media as the “Battle of the Morgue.”
Dr. Perper got the last laugh, though, defeating the late Mr. Edberg in the general election in November 1981 and again in 1985.
He ran unopposed in 1989, won re-election in 1993, and was extremely proud of his record with the voters, although Dr. Perper was a longtime advocate for appointed — not elected — medical examiners.
In 2005, Allegheny County became one of only three Pennsylvania counties to appoint its medical examiner.
Over the years, Dr. Perper survived the political feud with Dr. Wecht and the fallout from the much-publicized fracas with Dr. Edberg.
He emerged with a national reputation as a professional and talented forensic pathologist who could handle media scrutiny while shielding his department from Grant Street politics — so much so that by 1991, Dr. Perper received an offer to head the country’s second largest — and surely its most glamorous — coroner’s office.
But, Dr. Perper backed out three weeks after being hired as chief medical examiner of the Los Angeles County Coroner’s office — a job that inspired the television show “Quincy, M.E.” — when Mrs. Perper, a real estate agent, realized the couple would have to spend more than $1 million to purchase a home comparableto the property they owned inO’Hara.
The L.A. job came with an annual salary of $150,000 — more than double what he was making in Allegheny
County — but the economic and personal considerations, including leaving friends and family, outweighed the benefits, a circumspect Dr. Perper said.
“I suppose it’s easier to transplant a young sapling than a grown-up tree,” he told the Pittsburgh Press in March 1991.
His reputation as an intellectual who could hold any jury’s rapt attention preceded him in 1994, when he accepted an offer to become chief medical examiner for Broward County. He continued in that role for 17 years, until he retired in 2011.
Officials there appreciated his attention to detail and respect for the dead — including the loved ones they left behind, especially in high-profile cases, such as Ms. Smith’s death.
Dr. Perper concluded that Ms. Smith, who had collapsed in her room at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel in Hollywood, Fla., in February 2007, died of an accidental overdose of the sedative chloral hydrate and other medications.
“He’s a treasure,” Angelo Castillo, Broward County director of human resources, told the Miami Herald in 1998. “People think he’s in the business of the deceased, but Dr. Perper is very much in the business of the living. He’s in the business of preventing death.”
A teacher of medical students, pathology residents and police officers — and author of 11 books and more than 100 other publications — Dr. Perper fielded dozens of cable television news interviews over the years and was a favorite of legal commentator Nancy Grace, who stayed in touch with him.
“A great light has dimmed today. I join all our viewers in sadness at his passing,” wrote Ms. Grace in an online condolence to Dr. Perper’s family. “A great man, a great father, a great doctor, a great friend … goodnight dear Dr. Perper.”
Dr. Perper was also a gifted poet, said his daughter, Blanca Perper, of Boca Raton.
“He was a hopeless romantic,” she said.
Despite what could sometimes be thorny political consequences, the truths that Dr. Perper uncovered, discovered and brought into the light saved untold lives.
From the dangers of undiagnosed asthma, such as in the 1995 death of otherwise healthy teen model Krissy Taylor, to the scores of legal cases related to black-lung disease that he consulted for in the years after his retirement, his work mattered.
“He saw himself as an educator,” his son said. “He was not one of those experts who uses a lot of jargon; he was not at all interested in convincing people that he was smart. My father helped the families of coal miners get their just compensation benefits by telling the truth about his analysis of the autopsy and his testimony. He was very proud of that.”
Along with his son and daughter, Dr. Perper is survived by another son, Dr. Harry Perper, of Boca Raton, and seven grandchildren.
His funeral was Wednesday.