Soon after he started in Marion County, another coroner's office employee found him passed out drunk in a loading dock after the end of a shift, Gill acknowledged in written answers during preparation for a 2001 trial.
On March 31, 1994, Gill arrived at a law office for a deposition in a homicide case. The prosecutor and court reporter later stated they smelled alcohol on his breath. Gill denied being drunk, but his sworn testimony on the shooting death of Cheryl Angleton repeatedly contradicted his autopsy findings. At one point, Gill speculated that his conclusion — that Angleton had been murdered — might have been wrong and that Angleton could have committed suicide.
"Whatever credibility he may have had no longer exists," the prosecutor wrote in a report [5] afterward, calling Gill's testimony "inaccurate, contradictory and absurd."
Although an internal investigation officially cleared him of testifying drunk, Gill was told in July 1994 that his contract would end after just 19 months.
"Your well documented inability to provide services at a reasonably necessary level has prevented you from establishing and maintaining credibility with the law enforcement community," Marion County Coroner Karl Manders wrote in his termination letter [6].
Gill was given 30 days' notice but was unable to complete his final month. He was arrested on the charge of drunken driving on his way to the morgue one morning and barred from further work. He was convicted of the charge and Indiana's medical board suspended his license until he received substance abuse treatment.
Fresh Start in California
Gill moved to California and spent months undergoing treatment for alcohol abuse.
Then, in early 1995, he landed a dream job: a one-year fellowship with the Los Angeles County Coroner, an ideal place to hone his training in forensic autopsies and death investigation.
Gill did not disclose on his resume or application that he had been fired in Indianapolis. Los Angeles officials first caught wind of his troubles when a reporter from The Indianapolis Star called.
"We were not knowledgeable, nor was this information voluntarily given to us," a coroner's office personnel administrator told the newspaper regarding Gill's mistakes in Marion County.
Gill kept his post, even after his omissions were exposed, but struggled to meet the program's requirements. Nine months into his training, personnel records show, the coroner's office deemed his work deficient, cut his pay in half and demoted him to the equivalent of a medical student.
In a written evaluation [7], Gill's superiors wrote "there are significant technical problems in some of your autopsies resulting in the need for continued supervision."
Gill also was unable to complete the number of cases needed to finish the fellowship in a year, said Dr. James Ribe, a Los Angeles County deputy coroner and one of Gill's supervisors. The coroner's office gave Gill an additional six months to catch up.
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