REPORTER JON WELLS: HAMILTON SPECTATOR;
In August, 1997, Dr Charles Smith travelled to India to help Hamilton Police Service homicide officers locate and exhume the bodies of two infant twins children believed to have been murdered by their father Sukhwinder Dhillon.
Smith was later canonized in a lengthy series of stories by Hamilton Spectator reporter Jon Wells who spent more than a year crafting this true crime story, researching and interviewing the people involved.
Wells' stories drew upon more than 70 interviews, direct observation, policewitness statements and other investigation documents, written and videotape court exhibits, and transcripts - and they focussed on Dr. Charles Smith's efforts to locate the bodies, exhume them, and return with them to Toronto, where he performed the autopsy.
These stories are just another example of the manner in which journalists treated Smith with great reverence and dramatized his actions - and they illustrate the manner in which he was idolized by police officers and officials in the Chief Coroner's office.
"Cops and forensic pathologists agree that autopsies may not be pleasant but they are part of the job," Wells wrote in one of the stories. "Yet for both, child autopsies are a different matter, often too hard for the heart and the soul."
"But child autopsies were what Charles Smith did for a living," he continued. "As a pediatric forensic pathologist he specialized in the deaths of those who get to barely experience life."
"On the emotional level, he felt the pain, the loss. If the child had a favourite teddy bear, Smith would place it gently next to the corpse as he performed the autopsy.
In a field where clinical, scientific detachment is required, Smith was a believing, practicing Christian.
When it comes to death almost everyone returns to their religious roots for comfort. Smith did so all the time. God, he believed, is a god of justice, and every wrong will be righted.
As he opened the bodies of children, that thought helped."
As I read this pasage, I thought of Christie Blatchford's impression of Dr. Smith in the context of the notorious Dooley case. (See earlier posting: Smith And The Media: Part One: Why the Media Must Share The Blame:)
"Dr. Smith is a gentle man, and a religious one," Blatchford wrote.
"God loves the little children," he whispered to me on the way out of court. "As a Christian, I wondered how did the love of God ever penetrate that bedroom."
I felt shivers crawling up my spine as I read Wells' comment that, "God, he (Smith) believed, is a God of Justice, and every wrong will be righted. As he opened the bodies of children that thought helped."
Smith, like any one else, was entitled to his religious views.
But when he performed an autopsy for the Chief Coroner's office, as Wells correctly pointed out, he was duty-bound to exercise clinical detachment.
Wrong was not to be presumed.
Vengeance was not to be exacted.
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Wells explains that when Dr. Jim Cairns, Deputy Chief Coroner of Ontario, he was asked by the police to recommend a forensic pathologist to assist them, “Cairns immediately thought of Dr. Charles Smith at the Hospital for Sick Children.
Smith, Ontario’s best known pediatric pathologist, was also perhaps Canada’s foremost hands-on expert in exhumations.
In fact, Smith had performed every exhumation of a child in the province since the mid- 1980’s.
Back in 1984, Smith had been asked to locate an unmarked grave in Bracebridge after a woman claimed a child she had lost thirty years earlier had been murdered.
Smith and his team not only found the infant in its coffin – with a clavicle suggesting possible infanticide – but five other babies in unmarked graves.
(No records or references are presented to backthis up. HL);
Smith would later travel to the Arctic with an international team of experts to exhume bodies in order to solve the mystery of the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed more than twenty million people worldwide. (This venture will be discussed in a future posting: "Smith And The Media" Part Three; HL);
When it came to studying the dead, Charles Smith was a star."
Wells then presents the dramatic scene where Detective (Warren) Korol asks Smith to sign on;
“Korol grinned.
He could sense the excitement in Smith’s voice, could tell he was engaged.
He knew Smith would take the job.
Smith did his duty, presenting every caveat he could imagine.
He agreed with Cairns that the entire project was a risk.
But then Charles Smith wanted the job.
Jim Cairns had tagged him.
He was the closest thing to a forensic pathology Star in Canada.
And he didn’t shy away from putting his reputation on the line.
Smith looked at the tall, square-shouldered detectives. “If you need my help,” he said at last. “I’ll go with you.”
Wells also presents another dramatic scene set in India where Smith insists on carrying onwithhis work even though the police have informed him that he could be attacked by terrorists while Smith is unloading a ground penetration radar machine from a van in the "blistering" heat.
“Two police guards armed with rifles stood nearby," Wells writes. "The Punjab police had sent them to protect the Canadians.
There was also a handsome Sikh man in uniform, four stars gleaming on his epaulettes.
He had studied at Cambridge, spoke English with a British accent. His expertise? Extremist movements in India.
“The newspapers are aware that you are here. You are at risk,” he told Smith.
Extremist Sikhs weren’t pleased that Indian authorities allowed the Canadians to chase Dhillon into his own back yard.
Smith wiped the seat from his forehead. Terrorist threat. The crowd. The clock ticking away. Unknown number of dead buried here. Rice paddies! Had he ever felt so much pressure?”
I also was fascinated by another passage in Well's series that demonstrates how brilliantly calculating Smith can be when he needs to get his way.
"More red tape. Tomorrow, tomorrow, " Wells writes. " Kevin) Dhinsa (a Hamilton detective) and Smith burned."
Charles Smith thought the Indian officials he encountered, obsessed as they were with social status, did not show respect to Dhinsa.
Smith started wearing a tie to look formal, introducing himselfas often as he could.
He was a physician, was tall and, perhaps most important, had white skin.
Smith had skimmed the newspapers.
The personal ads fascinated him. The big selling points: height and fairness of skin -- "wheaten" colour, boasted one.
He sensed the power, began using his face in an attempt to get things done.
"Yes, my name is Charles Smith,... Doctor Charles Smith, " he would announce, standing as tall as possible."
See other posts in the Smith and the Media series:
Part Five: Taking on Charles Smith: A second example of fearless journalism;
Part Four: Fifth Estate probe triggers plea to Premier Mike Harris for Inquiry into Smith cases;
Part Three: Smith of the North;
Part One: Why the media share some of the blame;
Harold Levy;
