
OCME
Life in America's Top Forensic Medical Center
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Narrated by:
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Adam Barr
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By:
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Bruce Goldfarb
About this listen
Bruce Goldfarb spent ten years with Maryland's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, where every sudden or unattended death in the state is scrutinized.
Touching on numerous scandals, including Derek Chauvin's trial for the murder of George Floyd and the tragic killing in police custody of Freddie Gray, Goldfarb pulls back the curtain on a pioneer institution in crisis.
Medical examiners and the investigators and technicians who support them play vital roles in the justice and public health systems of every American community. During Goldfarb's time with the Maryland OCME, opioid-related deaths contributed to a significant increase in their workload. Faced with a chronic shortage of qualified experts and inadequate funding, their important and fascinating work has become more challenging than most people could ever imagine.
The public gets a skewed view of the relationship between police and medical examiners from procedural crime dramas, Bruce Goldfarb writes of his work inside one of America's most storied forensic centers. We aren't on the same team . . . We aren't on any team. The medical examiner's sole duty is to the deceased person. We speak for the dead.
©2023 Bruce Goldfarb (P)2023 HighBridge, a division of Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Performance
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Factually inaccurate
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Simply Brilliant
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Performance
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Story
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Great listen
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All the Living and the Dead
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Fueled by a childhood fascination with death, journalist Hayley Campbell searches for answers in the people who make a living by working with the dead. Along the way, she encounters mass fatality investigators, embalmers, and a former executioner who is responsible for ending sixty-two lives. She meets gravediggers who have already dug their own graves, visits a cryonics facility in Michigan, goes for late-night Chinese with a homicide detective, and questions a man whose job it is to make crime scenes disappear.
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Excellent
- By Noelle on 09-01-22
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What listeners say about OCME
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Clay S Adam
- 11-05-24
OCME in Crisis
Excellent account of the history of the OCME in Maryland! A sad state of affairs of recent years.
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- LovingMother
- 05-31-23
Great information.
Thank you for giving us a look behind the curtain. The service of the OCME is essential to lives.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Sarah Archibald
- 02-27-23
Amazing and intriguing
I loved listening to this book and binged over the course of 2 days. Interesting, funny and infuriating, Goldfarb brings to life what it was like at the peak of the OCME and it’s decline. Bringing together the history of the OCME and of Baltimore, this book weaves together a story to explain the current state of the medical examiners office and its intersection with current events and high profile cases. Highly recommend!
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- Bridgett Rusen
- 02-26-23
Love squared
Full transparency: the author of this book, Bruce Goldfarb, is my husband. I loved this book! I remained engaged snd empathetic throughout. Fast-paced and enriching.
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- Kate Williams
- 01-31-24
PR for OCME
I've read several medical examiner/medicolegal death investigator books, but this one is more the story of like a PR person for the OCME office. It was alright. I lost interest in it after chapter 6, which is unfortunate because I had high hopes for this audio book.
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