"As the capital murder trial against 62-year-old Mark
Norwood continues, the court heard key testimony from the man who
performed her autopsy 30 years ago. Dr. Roberto Bayardo described the gruesome details of the death of the young northwest Austin mother, beaten in her own bed. The former Travis County chief medical examiner could provide crucial
testimony in proving Norwood’s guilt and giving a grieving family
closure, but in a
KXAN Investigation last month,
Bayardo admitted to KXAN’s Josh Hinkle he is forgetting key details of
some high profile cases and must now rely solely on the autopsy report
in trials. Wednesday, we saw prosecutors are still using this longtime medical
examiner to build their cases, even after KXAN informed the Travis
County DA’s office about Bayardo’s admission. “Through those injuries, I could feel that the skull had been
crushed,” Dr. Bayardo said in testimony Wednesday. The former Medical
Examiner is now 80 years old. Decades have passed since he examined the body of Debra Baker, including details, he admitted to us a year ago, could be fading. “I have no recollection. I’m getting too old. My memory has faded a
lot. I have no recollection of all my cases,” Dr. Bayardo told KXAN in a
previous interview. In Wednesday’s testimony, details about Baker’s death didn’t seem to be a problem.........Brad Urrutia, one of Mark Norwood’s attorneys told us, “In this
particular instance we weren’t going to argue with manner or means of
death, so any other Medical Examiner would’ve looked at it and agreed
with it. Should he have talked about time of death or speculation, then
we would’ve had an issue with it.” Dr. Bayardo is expected to testify again in the coming days."
http://kxan.com/2016/09/14/medical-examiner-who-admits-to-memory-issues-testifies-at-norwood-