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“I was having my breakfast in the 26th mess when a soldier came to me and said I was needed right away in the Dispensary.”
“That would be Sergeant Brownlee, the sergeant of the guard?”
“No, sir. It was some PFC. I didn’t get his name.”
“And then?”
“So I went to the Dispensary. Stauffer was on the table—”
“You knew who he was?”
“Yes, sir. I strip-searched him when he came to the prison.”
“So you’re fairly certain he didn’t have a cyanide capsule concealed in a body cavity when he entered the prison?”
“I examined him thoroughly, sir.”
“Go on, please.”
“He was dead when I got there, and from the froth at his mouth, I suspected cyanide poisoning.”
“What did you do then?”
“I had the body moved to the 385th Station Hospital, which has the necessary facilities to conduct an autopsy.”
“You did this on your own?”
“He was there,” the doctor said, indicating Ziegler. “He thought that was the thing to do.”
“Did he say why?”
“The phrase he used, sir, was that ‘the shit’s really going to hit the fan about this—they’ll want an autopsy first thing.’”
“From the time you found Stauffer on the Dispensary table, was the body ever out of your sight, your control, until you performed the autopsy? I’m presuming you performed the autopsy.”
“Mr. Ziegler and I rode in the ambulance with the body from the Tribunal Compound to the hospital, and when we got there, two men were waiting for us. Mr. Ziegler told them they were not to let the body out of their sight, and to let no one but me and people with me near it.”
“Who were these men?”
“DCI agents, Mr. Justice,” Ziegler said.
“And then you performed the autopsy? And what did you determine?”
“Death by cyanide poisoning.”
“Anything else?”
“The contents of the stomach showed that he had had scrambled eggs, sausage, and cherry cobbler for breakfast. I also found the remains of a gelatin-like capsule, which showed teeth marks and held traces of a concentrated solution of potassium cyanide.”
“You’re suggesting he waited until he had finished his breakfast before he took his own life?”
“I think when he took a bite of one of the cherries in his cobbler, he got
the cyanide capsule,” Ziegler said.
“Now that’s interesting,” Cronley said. “Lay that out for us, Augie.”
“My scenario is that the capsule—probably capsules—were smuggled into the kitchen mess, loaded into the cherry cobbler, and then when Stauffer went down the chow line, he got that piece of cherry cobbler.”
