Episode 11: Elderly Woman With A Bloody Crime Scene
Kohroner Chronicles Podcast Spotlights the Hidden Truth Behind Gruesome Elderly Death
What first appeared to be a grisly homicide turned out to be a tragic accident, unraveled not by detectives, but by the keen eye of forensic pathologist Dr. Roland Kohr, host of the compelling true-crime podcast Kohroner Chronicles.
In his latest episode, Dr. Kohr walks listeners through a haunting case from his decades-long career in forensic medicine. The victim: an elderly woman in her 80s, found naked and bloodied on her bedroom floor with a phone receiver off the hook and blood smeared across its handle. With signs pointing to violence and blood in multiple rooms, law enforcement initially feared the worst. But as Dr. Kohr explains, “Not everything is what it first appears to be.”
“Only about five percent of coroner cases end up being homicides,” Kohr shares in the episode’s opening. “A lot of what we do involves uncovering natural or accidental deaths—often with very unusual features.”
This case was one of those. Dr. Kohr takes his listeners into the home, a time capsule from the 1950s, where the woman was found. Blood stained her bedroom, bathroom, and trailed into the kitchen. In the bathtub, investigators discovered several blood-soaked towels and a nightgown, raising concerns about possible foul play. Yet it was a tiny detail in the kitchen that caught Dr. Kohr’s attention: a spilled pill bottle and a sharp-edged metal trim on the counter.
“When I saw the Coumadin bottle and the pills on the floor, it all started to make sense,” Kohr said.
Coumadin, also known as warfarin, is a blood thinner often prescribed to prevent clotting in patients with heart conditions or other circulatory issues. “It’s life-saving when used properly,” Kohr explained. “But in high doses or in the wrong context, it can turn minor injuries into fatal events.”
Through careful reconstruction of the scene and a detailed autopsy, Dr. Kohr concluded that the woman had bent over to retrieve the dropped pills, then stood up too quickly and struck her scalp on the sharp edge of her 1950’s countertop. A small, quarter-inch laceration followed—a seemingly insignificant wound under normal circumstances. But for someone on anticoagulants, even such a minor cut can lead to life-threatening blood loss.
Believing the bleeding wasn’t severe, the woman tried to stop it herself. She moved to the bathroom, using towels and washcloths to stanch the flow. She eventually stripped off her bloody nightgown, and placed it and the soaked towels into the bathtub. But the bleeding didn’t stop. When she finally attempted to call for help, she collapsed beside the phone, just moments too late.
“It’s tragic,” said Dr. Kohr. “Had she called even 15 minutes earlier, she may have been saved.”
He emphasizes the importance of medical training in death investigations, noting that not all coroner jurisdictions in Indiana require medical backgrounds. “That’s a topic for a whole other episode,” he joked, before stressing how his training made the difference in reaching the correct conclusion.
The case, though tragic, exemplifies the mission behind Kohroner Chronicles: to peel back the layers of mystery that surround death, even when those mysteries defy first impressions. Each episode offers listeners a behind-the-scenes look at real-life forensic investigations, where science, medicine, and human behavior intersect in surprising ways.
For fans of forensic science, true crime, and the strange-but-true corners of medicine, Kohroner Chronicles continues to prove that the truth is often stranger, and more tragic, than fiction.