Death Certificate

The death of a 90-year-old Columbia woman, which has raised the issue of assisted suicide, was caused by someone putting a plastic bag over her head after she took high levels of drugs, according to the state medical examiner's office.A death certificate obtained yesterday shows that Helen V. Fishback died Sept. 7 because of a "plastic bag secured over [her] head by another person."That death certificate also states that "drug intoxication" contributed to her death. It doesn't specify what drugs.

Anne Arundel County police and state officials are investigating how two county officers checking on an elderly woman assumed she was dead when, in fact, she was not. "The initial facts in this case are deeply disturbing. I take this matter extremely serious and have ordered a thorough investigation of this incident," Anne Arundel County Police Chief James Teare Sr. said in a statement. Earlier this month, a Severna Park woman had called 911 because she hadn't seen her neighbor, Ruth Shillinglaw Johnson, 89, in five days.

Dee Farmer has cycled through the criminal justice system for years, dressing as a woman and wearing makeup in all-male federal prisons, and landing at the center of a sweeping U.S. Supreme Court case. Released last year from prison in failing health to die at home, Farmer said yesterday: "I've been surviving. ... Things are so-so." And then the police came to the door. Dee Deirdre Farmer, a transgendered convicted thief who also goes by the names Douglas C. Farmer and Larry G. Prescott, said she knew nothing of charges filed Wednesday in Baltimore City, where investigators have accused her of trying to falsify a man's death certificate to avoid being prosecuted on federal charges filed this year.

She liked cropped jackets and skinny jeans. Her favorite hair color was fire-engine red. On the streets of lower Charles Village, the 24-year-old who dropped out of school at the age of 14 went by the name April Green, or "Miss Dee," or simply "Dee." But on her death certificate, she is Darren Neal Green Jr. a man who had convincingly dressed as a woman since her early teens. And like some of city's transgendered, Green was drawn to an insular, alienated and misunderstood community where she joined others walking the streets exchanging sex for money.

The report of Robert Jeffrey Reedinger's passing into the sweet bye-and-bye was, indeed, greatly exaggerated.In fact, police say, the Dundalk native probably wrote his own obituary and death certificate -- part of an elaborate plan to avoid theft charges in Maryland and Delaware.But the obituary that appeared in a small Maryland newspaper eventually led police to a North Carolina town, where he was arrested this weekend and charged as a fugitive with stealing paintings from a four-star hotel and jewelry from a neighbor.

A medical malpractice case stemming from the death of an elderly immigrant carpenter whose intestine was inadvertently sewn shut at University Hospital has been settled out of court for "a very substantial sum of money," the lawyer for the patient's family said yesterday.The error in the 1984 operation was discovered during an autopsy at the hospital, but the surgeons involved -- including Dr. H. Harlan Stone, then chief of general surgery at University -- failed to cite it on the death certificate or inform the family of the cause of death.

A 41-year-old transgendered Baltimore woman who was at the center of a landmark Supreme Court case more than a decade ago has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for trying to falsify a death certificate to avoid being prosecuted for identity theft. Dee Deirdre Farmer, a convicted thief who also goes by the names Douglas C. Farmer and Larry G. Prescott, pleaded guilty last month to obstruction of justice and misuse of a death certificate. She had been released from prison in February 2005 on a Baltimore County case by a judge who was sympathetic to the prisoner's failing health.

A 41-year-old Baltimore woman was convicted yesterday on charges she forged documents to avoid charges in two other criminal cases, prosecutors said. Dee Deirdre Farmer, a transgendered person who was born Douglas C. Farmer and now lives as a woman, pleaded guilty in Baltimore City Circuit Court to obstruction of justice and misuse of a birth certificate, according to the office of the Maryland attorney general. Farmer, of the 3800 block of Elmley Ave., presented the state Division of Vital Records this year with a forged court order to change the death certificate of a man named Charles Smith, who died June 6, to reflect that Dee Farmer had died that day instead.

Law enforcement officials wanted a Freeland man with nine lives dead or alive. Yesterday, they got him.Peter C. Gentry, an international financial planner and a recovering alcoholic who lives on a farm on Slab Bridge Road, apparently faked his own death -- twice -- to get out of drunken driving charges. But the 38-year-old, who is very much alive, was brought to justice yesterday with an 18-month jail sentence.His brush with "death" began in November 1991 in Warrenton, Va., where he was stopped on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol.

Nearly eight years after Nancy Lee Riggins disappeared and three years after a jury held her husband responsible for her disappearance and presumed death, a Howard County judge has declared the Elkridge woman legally dead. Howard Circuit Judge Raymond J. Kane Jr.'s order dates Riggins' death to the date of her disappearance, July 1, 1996, and would provide her family with the death certificate that has eluded them for years. Family members said the certificate would allow Riggins' daughter, Amanda, now 13, to collect death-related financial benefits.

New York -- Get ready for CSI: Houdini. A team of forensic experts will pore over the exhumed remains of renowned escape artist Harry Houdini to determine whether he was killed 81 years ago, the head of the investigative team said last week. "Everything will be thoroughly analyzed," promised James Starrs, dean of the disinterment dream team of pathologists, anthropologists, toxicologists and radiologists. "We'll examine his hairs, his fingernails, any bone fractures." Legal paperwork necessary to dig up Houdini's body from a New York City cemetery will be filed tomorrow to get the process started, said Joseph Tacopina, an attorney representing Houdini's family.

A 41-year-old transgendered Baltimore woman who was at the center of a landmark Supreme Court case more than a decade ago has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for trying to falsify a death certificate to avoid being prosecuted for identity theft. Dee Deirdre Farmer, a convicted thief who also goes by the names Douglas C. Farmer and Larry G. Prescott, pleaded guilty last month to obstruction of justice and misuse of a death certificate. She had been released from prison in February 2005 on a Baltimore County case by a judge who was sympathetic to the prisoner's failing health.

A 41-year-old Baltimore woman was convicted yesterday on charges she forged documents to avoid charges in two other criminal cases, prosecutors said. Dee Deirdre Farmer, a transgendered person who was born Douglas C. Farmer and now lives as a woman, pleaded guilty in Baltimore City Circuit Court to obstruction of justice and misuse of a birth certificate, according to the office of the Maryland attorney general. Farmer, of the 3800 block of Elmley Ave., presented the state Division of Vital Records this year with a forged court order to change the death certificate of a man named Charles Smith, who died June 6, to reflect that Dee Farmer had died that day instead.

In the fall of 2004, just before the U.S. elections, a survey by epidemiologists under the direction of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health found that about 100,000 more Iraqis had died in the 15 months following the American invasion than would normally have been expected. When their report was published in the respected British medical journal The Lancet, it was met with incredulity. The number of deaths was way higher than any other estimate. Even critics of the war were wary of citing the report, in case its results were later shown to be fundamentally flawed.

Dee Farmer has cycled through the criminal justice system for years, dressing as a woman and wearing makeup in all-male federal prisons, and landing at the center of a sweeping U.S. Supreme Court case. Released last year from prison in failing health to die at home, Farmer said yesterday: "I've been surviving. ... Things are so-so." And then the police came to the door. Dee Deirdre Farmer, a transgendered convicted thief who also goes by the names Douglas C. Farmer and Larry G. Prescott, said she knew nothing of charges filed Wednesday in Baltimore City, where investigators have accused her of trying to falsify a man's death certificate to avoid being prosecuted on federal charges filed this year.

A transgendered convicted thief who was released from prison last year to die of AIDS at home rather than in a prison hospital was charged yesterday with attempting to falsify a death certificate to avoid being prosecuted on new identity theft charges. Dee Deirdre Farmer, 41, who also goes by the names of Douglas C. Farmer and Larry Gilbert Prescott, was accused of forging a Baltimore Circuit Court order to change the death certificate of a man named Charles Smith to reflect that Farmer was the person who had died.

Nearly eight years after Nancy Lee Riggins disappeared and three years after a jury held her husband responsible for her disappearance and presumed death, a Howard County judge has declared the Elkridge woman legally dead. Howard Circuit Judge Raymond J. Kane Jr.'s order dates Riggins' death to the date of her disappearance, July 1, 1996, and would provide her family with the death certificate that has eluded them for years. Family members said the certificate would allow Riggins' daughter, Amanda, now 13, to collect death-related financial benefits.

This column appeared originally Sara Engram's book "Mortal Matters: When A Loved One Dies."Q: Where are death certificates obtained, and how many does one need? I know they are needed for insurance purposes, but that is all I know. Is there a charge for them?What about Social Security and veterans benefits? How does one go about securing the forms?A: The death certificate is the official legal document you will need in order to settle an estate or establish claims for benefits. It is issued by the office of vital statistics in your city or town.

BAGHDAD -- At least 50,000 Iraqis have died violently since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, according to statistics from the Baghdad morgue, the Iraqi Health Ministry and other agencies - a toll 20,000 higher than previously acknowledged by the Bush administration. Many more Iraqis are believed to have been killed but have not been counted because of serious lapses in recording the number of deaths in the chaotic first year after the invasion, when there was no functioning Iraqi government, and because of continued spotty reporting nationwide.

Receipts, old photos, marriage licenses, an autopsy report, a death certificate -- files and files of documents dominate the bookshelf in a corner of Nadine Cohodas' Washington office. And more stuffed folders are neatly stacked on the floor. "This, all this is Dinah," the author says, gesturing to the shelf. She's talking about the subject of her latest book, a 559-page project that took a "shade under four years" to complete. Queen: The Life and Music of Dinah Washington, Cohodas' fourth book, hit stores Tuesday.