Terror At The Morgue

This story originally aired on April 23, 2005.

Memphis, Tenn., is best known as the birthplace of blues. But it has long harbored a dark secret. It has one of the highest murder rates in the country.

Dr. O.C. Smith, who was the city's medical examiner, knows the secrets of these streets better than just about anyone else.

Smith, 52, was dedicated to a job most people would find too grim to handle, even on a good day. But he says he loves his profession: "I got a blue-collar background and was taught to work for a living, and my father always taught us to leave the wood pile a little higher than what you found it."

Crime scene cops like Maj. Mike Willis and Lt. Jerry Blum knew they could always count on Smith to uncover even the smallest of clues.

"He didn't care if it was in the middle of the night, he didn't care if it was on weekends," says Willis. "He didn't care if it was down in the mud or we were out in the field or if the body had been there a number of days, weeks"

After Smith helped solve a mystery, his job was to testify in court, often in high-profile cases. And the cameras were always there. "You might think it gives you a swelled head, but actually, it just makes you want to hide," says Smith.

So it was front-page news when Smith was brutally attacked by a phantom assailant as he was leaving work in June 2002. Now, as Correspondent Troy Roberts reports, the medical examiner is at the center of a bizarre mystery that would puzzle Memphis for years.

Smith's ordeal began as he was leaving the forensics center shortly after 10 p.m. on the night he was attacked. "He came out of my right front," says Smith. "I got a glimpse of a man, maybe 6 feet. I just saw something got up into my face, and it just burned. And I put my hands up in my eyes and I got a second splash."

After his assailant blinded him with lye, Smith says he was punched in his side, and then dragged down a flight of stairs and thrown to the ground: "I'm down, face down, belly down. And then he starts to tie me up with the barbed wire."

The assailant came armed with enough barbed wire to wrap Smith's ankles and wrists – and what looked like a crown of thorns around his head. "Once he had me wrapped up like that, then he told me to stand up and pushed me to the security grate on the window, and shackled me in a crucifixion position," says Smith.

After that, Smith says the assailant glued a homemade bomb to Smith's chest, and spoke for the first time: "He leans over and tells me, 'Push it, pull it, twist it, and you die. Welcome to death row.'"

Sometime after midnight, two hours later, a police officer on routine patrol discovered Smith in the stairwell. Veteran bomb squad members Willis and Blum were summoned to the scene.

"There wasn't any room for error," says Blum. "I was telling him that it's very important that you remain calm, that we're all in this together. We're gonna get through it but we have to act as a team."

"It's my job to grab a hold of the bomb," says Willis. "I grab a hold of this thing and I'm holding, trying not to move it."

The officers managed to extricate Smith from his shackles. The bomb was removed and neutralized, and Smith was then rushed by ambulance to the hospital.

In the emergency room, the barbed wire twisted around Smith's face was cut away. Amazingly, he had escaped serious injury. He was treated for cuts and burns and then released.

"His eyes were very red, and there were burns on his face," says Smith's wife, Marge.

Smith survived, but police believed there was a madman on the loose in Memphis who could strike again. A task force of federal, state and local authorities made it a top priority to find him, especially after they realized that Smith had been targeted before.

Three months earlier, in March 2002, a Molotov cocktail and a crude bomb were found outside the morgue, in the same stairwell where Smith would later be attacked. At the time, police didn't know whom the devices were meant for. But now, they were connecting the dots.

Who attacked him? "A disturbed individual," says Smith. "Somebody who's filled with anger."

After surviving the bizarre attack outside the Memphis Forensic Center, Smith worried that it was only a matter of time before his assailant would come after him again. He got a guard dog and began carrying a gun with him at all times.

Who was out to get the medical examiner? That question now haunted law enforcement. Was he targeted because it's his job and someone doesn't – didn't - like what he did?" asks Police Director Larry Godwin.

"Because you come out with unpopular decisions, somebody's not going to be happy with what you say," adds Smith.

Working on a theory that revenge was a motive for the attack, the multi-agency task force focused on one man in particular, Phillip Workman, a man Smith knew well.

In 1981, Workman was involved in an armed robbery at a fast-food restaurant. Lt. Ronald Oliver, one of the first officers to arrive at the scene, was killed in a struggle with Workman

Police found a gun that belonged to Workman, but never found the fatal bullet that killed Oliver.

Even so, a jury later convicted Workman of capital murder in 1982. Since that time he has remained on death row.

Workman spoke to 48 Hours from death row, behind a glass partition. "I believe, and see no way possible that I killed Lt. Oliver," says Workman. For more than 20 years, Workman has been trying to overturn his death sentence. He says that his newfound faith in God has strengthened his resolve.

"I definitely, in my sickened state of mind at the time, I definitely did the armed robbery and I've always admitted that. I'm innocent of murder."

Workman insists Lt. Oliver was killed by another police officer's gun – a case of friendly fire. Four years ago, the state of Tennessee's clemency board agreed to hear his claim.

But at the hearing, a surprise expert witness, Dr. Smith, appeared with new and damning evidence. Smith testified that when he'd examined the tissue from around Oliver's gunshot wound, he discovered traces of a bullet that could have only come from Workman's gun.

Workman says Smith's testimony totally sealed his fate: "He's a murderer. He was going to murder me with this false testimony."

Workman's bid for clemency was denied, and his attorney, Robert Hutton, took to the airwaves, and attacked Smith's testimony before the clemency board. Within weeks of going on air, in April 2001, strange things started happening.

Letters threatening the life of Smith suddenly cropped up in the mail. The letters were full of peculiar religious references, saying Smith's "evil actions on Earth must end," and that "God is calling upon us to act." The letters were sent to a Memphis district attorney, a local reporter, and Workman's attorney.

A similar letter was found alongside the Molotov cocktail discovered outside the morgue a year later, in March 2002. And the same religious themes were also etched into the crude bomb attached to Smith's neck the night of the attack three months later.

"On one side it said, 'Steel in the hands of the king of kings.' On the other side of the device were inscribed the letters JMJ," says Blum.

What does that mean?

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph," says Smith.

"Kind of makes it look like there's some fanatical nut supporter of mine, or perhaps I knew somebody, or had somebody do such a crazy thing or something like that," says Workman, who denies having any connection to Smith's attack.

But Workman had his own ideas about who could be behind Smith's barbed wire attack, the strange letters and the bombs: "I told them, you all need to be investigating Dr. Smith."

Paramedic Kelly Moore is still haunted by what she saw the night that Smith was attacked. "It was like Christ getting crucified; a surreal, bizarre sight," she says.

But it's what she didn't see that bothers her the most: "Even if a cat scratches you, you're gonna see something. There's gonna be some blood. There wasn't any that night."

There was no blood, and no serious injuries, even though Smith's wrists, ankles and head had been wrapped in barbed wire. "There would have to be some kind of injuries," says Moore. "It just doesn't add up."

And it wasn't adding up for U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins. Could Workman have orchestrated such a strange attack from behind bars on death row? "He was interviewed," says Cummins. "Investigators looked at any members of his family that might have had an interest in doing something like that."

But that trail eventually came up cold – and Workman was eliminated as a suspect. Cummins, however, was struck by something else when he walked through the crime scene with the investigators.

"This is a pretty complex crime," says Cummins. "This person is going to have to be standing out there in the middle of the night with all this stuff."

OC's assailant had to bring along a grocery list of items to carry out his crime: a bottle of lye, barbed wire, a bicycle cable, padlocks and a homemade bomb.

But after an exhaustive 15-month investigation, and more than 100 leads, authorities still hadn't come up with a suspect.

At the same time, Smith's story just wasn't making sense to investigators. Was it possible that Smith had lied about the attack? Had he actually staged the attack himself? They asked Smith to come in for one more interview.

Smith again told the agents he believed he was targeted for his testimony against Workman. But inconsistencies emerged with each recounting of the attack.

In two earlier written statements, Smith said his assailant first tied the barbed wire around his ankles, and then his wrists. But during his interrogation, Smith told agents that he thought his hands were tied first: "I'm blind. I got my hands underneath me. He's on top. I can't move. He owns me."

Agents didn't buy Smith's story of being so easily overwhelmed by his assailant, especially since Smith had once been a combat surgeon with the Navy Reserves, and had even served with the Marines in the Persian Gulf War.

So why didn't Smith fight back? "Machismo gets you killed," he says. "You have a choice. You can resist, anger him, suffer the consequences, or you can ride it."

For prosecutor Pat Harris, photos of Smith after the attack raised the greatest suspicions. She says Smith should have suffered injuries to his face, from the barbed wire and the acid, that were much worse than they appeared.

How does Smith explain why his face wasn't cut up more from the barbed wire? "What you're looking at is the fact that the barbed wire is old, it's rusty, it's dull, so it's gonna scratch, but it's not gonna tear skin," says Smith. He points to sections of his face that were hit with lye.

But Harris believes that Smith doused his own face with lye, carefully avoiding contact with his eyes.

Almost a year and a half after his attack, the investigation formally ends, with an outcome that no one could have predicted.

In February 2004, Smith was indicted for lying to agents, and illegal possession of a bomb. County Mayor A.C. Wharton reluctantly asked for Smith's resignation as medical examiner. "I just never dreamed it would end like this," says Smith, his hard-earned reputation in ruins.

Prosecutors offered Smith a plea deal: no jail time in exchange for a confession. But Smith rejected the offer, and hired prominent attorney Jerry Easter.

"I'm never going to quit, and I'm never going to surrender, and I'm never gonna sign that piece of paper," says Smith.

But things are about to get a lot worse as Smith's trial begins.

Memphis radio talk show host Mike Fleming has been following this story from the beginning. "It's the most unusual story that I've dealt with in my adult professional career," he says.

"Why in the world would anybody do this to themselves?" asks Easter. "How in the world would anybody do this to themselves."

As the trial begins, prosecutors admit they may not have a smoking gun, but they believe their evidence does add up. They say they know why and how Smith could have done this.

Pat Harris demonstrates how Smith could have caused the injuries to himself on a 48 Hours producer. Although it was not easy, the producer was finally able to do it.

But why would a respected medical profession stage his abduction? "He likes the attention," says Harris. "That's not enough to be insane or to be found not guilty by reason of a mental defect. But it explains why somebody would do something so bizarre."

To back up their theory for the jury, prosecutors turned to forensic psychiatrist Dr. Park Dietz. "Why he would stage this event is to have the benefits of producing this drama," says Dietz.

Faking an event for attention is a recognized mental condition called factitious disorder. The most common form is Munchausen's Syndrome – when a person actually makes himself sick.

"Some people have the psychological need for sympathy, attention, nurturance, that being a patient provides," says Dietz, who cites Tawana Brawley as a prominent example.

Brawley accused six white men in upstate New York of kidnapping, rape and racism. But after months of a massive investigation, a grand jury concluded that her accusations were a hoax – and that she faked her own attack.

"The benefits are psychological and usually are designed to solve some very unique individual secret problem," says Dietz.

Smith, however, denies that he suffers from factitious disorder. But prosecutors insist that Smith had a history of lying. "There was quite a pattern of telling stories for dramatic effect," says Dietz.

Although the defense refused to give Dietz permission to examine Smith, Dietz examined the prosecution's evidence. Dietz says that one story that Smith had told to a number of people - that he had been in Africa and that his family was massacred – was not true.

Prosecutors say if Smith can tell tall tales about his military missions, then it's not much of a leap to believe that he lied about the June 2002 attack.

The defense dismissed the factitious disorder theory as nonsense. But prosecutors say there's one other key issue: When they were interrogating Smith, he didn't act like an innocent man. To them, he was too calm.

For four hours, Smith was interrogated and talked to agents – even after he was read his rights. "He talked to them under the mistaken belief that, "They just don't understand. 'Let me explain it to you. Your science is wrong. Let me explain,'" says Easter. "What kind of attention did he get? He's in a room with two cops and a prosecutor. What kind of attention is that? There wasn't any news media there."

If convicted, Smith could face up to 20 years in prison. "I know the truth and I just believe that he will be found innocent," says Marge. "I believe that."

After three weeks of testimony, by nearly 60 witnesses, a jury deliberates on Smith's case. For the first time, Smith admits he's worried: "When I listened to the closing arguments of the prosecution, I'd have voted myself guilty."

Inside the jury room, a heated debate is raging. Reaching a unanimous verdict is not going to be easy because it was such a complex case.

As they wait on the jury's decision, the defense team hopes that they created enough reasonable doubt that Smith had injured himself.

Jurors are unable to agree on several issues, and just four hours after deliberations began, they are hopelessly deadlocked. The judge orders them to continue deliberating.

The jury tries for two more days. Finally, on that third day, the judge has no choice but to declare a mistrial, an unusual end to an unusual case. Smith is free, but still faces the possibility of a retrial.

Only three of the 12 jurors had voted guilty. "How did they know he wouldn't fight back," says one juror, Steve Matthews, who voted guilty. "There are too many coincidences that to me leads back to Dr. Smith."

The others felt they could not convict without a smoking gun, and they were even angry that the prosecution had presented a case without one.

And as for Smith's alleged motive, factitious disorder, and Dietz's testimony, Dietz says, "The benefits are psychological."

After the trial, prosecutors met with the jurors and got an earful of opinions. U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins realizes it will be just as tough to convince another jury. So he reluctantly drops all the charges against Dr. Smith. Though disappointed, Cummins says he has no regrets.

"Nothing that happened in trial did anything to undercut my belief or my satisfaction that he, in fact, did this to himself," says Cummins. "But we still have an obligation to prove that beyond a reasonable doubt to 12 citizens and we weren't able to do that."

While this trial is now behind him, it's clear that Smith faces another uphill battle. Does he think he'll ever get his reputation back? "Well, my reputation belongs in the minds of others," says Smith. "All I can do is live my life well and hope for the best on that."

Smith still believes that his assailant is out there. But Memphis police are no longer looking for the mystery man who attacked Smith. And the U.S. attorney says this case is closed.

There have been no threats against Doctor Smith since the incident in 2002 but he says he still fears for his life.