Dr. Michael M. Baden sees dead people. In fact, he sees a lot of dead people.
And many who are familiar with Baden would swear he has his own sixth sense by the way he seemingly "communicates" with the body he is examining to find out what happened.
Baden is co-director of the Medicolegal Investigations Unit for the New York State Police Department. He has conducted more than 20,000 autopsies in his career. From 1960 to 1985, Baden was with the New York City Medical Examiner's Office and served as director for a time.
During his more than 40 years of conducting autopsies, Baden has worked on or has been called to testify in some of the nation's highest profile cases. Those include the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the deaths of John Belushi, Nicole Brown Simpson and JonBenet Ramsey.
Baden also hosts the show "Autopsy" on HBO. The program profiles unique cases from across the United States and looks at the forensic sciences involved in solving them.
For its next show in February, two Utah cases will be highlighted.
"It's unusual we have two cases from the same location and same type of technology," Autopsy executive producer Gaby Monet said. "I think the cases are warranted. They are very interesting cases."
HBO doesn't want to reveal which Utah cases are being profiled until "Autopsy 9" premiers in February. Both of them, however, involve the use of laser light technology to collect forensic evidence that would otherwise be invisible to the naked eye.
Retired West Valley City Police Lt. Charles Illsley, who still explores the latest in alternate light and laser technologies as a hobby, played a big role in promoting the laser technology.
It was a phone call by Illsley to HBO that got Baden thinking about the Utah cases.
"We hadn't done any cases that dealt with lasers before," Monet said.
The portable ion forensic laser that was used, called a "Scene Sweeper," was developed by a West Jordan company.
Baden met up with Illsley in late November in Wendover, Nev., during a weeklong conference of death investigators. Representatives from the West Valley City Police Department and the Utah State Medical Examiner's Office attended the 6th annual Homicide School.
Dr. Mauren Frikke of the Utah State Medical Examiner's Office, who attended the conference, said Baden was impressive in his presentation of the general principles of forensic methodologies.
Baden told that group a crime scene needs to be evaluated before anything is changed or altered. Investigators need to be very meticulous in documenting evidence because they never know which piece of evidence may be the one to make or break a case.
The old adage of "haste makes waste" was pushed on the group, Frikke said.
Illsley said "Autopsy," originally intended as a one-time only documentary, "has probably done more for educating people on autopsies and what they do than any other person in the country."
Those who want to find out whether they have the stomach to do what Baden does can log on to his unique Web site found within HBO's home site www.hbo.com. The highlight of the page is an interactive autopsy game, a kind of "whodunit" exercise complete with actual autopsy photos from real cases.
E-mail: preavy@desnews.com