Chip

It is a hard experience to describe now, looking back.

I will preface this story by saying it is not pretty. It is certainly not normal. Definitely not the kind of story you tell kids at night.

But, first an admission.

As a Private Investigator, the often gory and gruesome scenes and images I am exposed to... and expose myself to...in the course of my training and work often bring food images to my mind.
I do not know why that is.

I suspect years of exposure to life's ugly things... maggot-covered heads; bloated, liquefied, charred, human bodies; decomposition and decapitation -- I am the first to admit it has warped my mind. Hand me a plate of rice and I won't touch it until I am sure it is not moving.

This admission leads now to the subject of this post, Chip, who I first met while training I had at the Criminal Justice Institute many years ago.

It was a specialized three- day intensive on death investigations. I’d been working death cases, encountered a few homicides staged as suicides and felt the education would be a great assist.
I was one of the few private investigators there. One of even fewer women
Mostly, my fellow students were male and macho police officers, homicide investigators from across the country meeting in a facility across the street from Seattle’s airport.

Part of the program was the presentation by various state coroners and medical examiners that were invited to bring their most unusual and challenging cases for us to learn from. Entertainment value, I suspected, played a part in the coroners' choice of case studies.

I recall one case in particular that is forever imprinted on the frontal lobe of my brain.

It was presented by a coroner from the biggest city east of the Cascade Mountains that divide Western Washington from Eastern Washington.

I live in Western Washington, among the big cities of Seattle, Tacoma, Bellevue, Aberdeen, Bellingham and Vancouver.

Eastern Washington is a drier, sunny, more desert-like-expanse of small towns and few cities like Wenatchee, Moses Lake and Spokane. It’s a warm, vast, remote environment spotted with lakes, mountains and sunshine.
There’s a heavy population of farmers in Eastern Washington, … so coroners there deal with more rural populations.

The coroner from Eastern Washington was a country type guy with a dry sense of humor, born of the land he worked in.

His story was about a guy named Chip.
Chip was not his real name, rather a moniker earned by the circumstances I am about to share with you.

Chip, was originally a bunch of shredded skin, gristle, bones particles, muscle, sinew, hair and other wet things found in a bucket and a wood chipper.
It was just like Fargo, the movie, only for real.
Yet unlike the Fargo victim, all of Chip was chipped, no leg hanging out. Nothing.

In Fargo, you know who's in the Chipper.
Not so, in this case.
This coroner’s job was to put Chip back together and help the police figure out who he was.
And then, find out who killed him and how. Hopefully he was killed quickly before he was sent into the chipper.

The coroner's presentation was just before our lunch.
Evidently, the coroner he knew the value of a lead-in and a commercial break.
After he was introduced, he put just one slide on the screen.
And said just one thing.
The picture was a pile of red gooey stuff heaped on the autopsy table. Human pasta sauce.
Then he said, "I'd like to introduce you all to Chip. He'll be the subject of my presentation after lunch. So don't be late."
The buffet lunch that day was spaghetti with meat sauce.
I passed.

Not a soul was late.
We returned to the Coroner and what was left of Chip who was still in the screen, still heaped in his gory mess on the table.
When we were all seated, the story began.

Transfixed, I and the other students followed the amazing but true slide show and story.
We saw the chipper from distance… to establish environment and location.
Then a series of various shots of the chipper: long, medium, close-up, and the bucket next to it.
Inside the chipper were pieces of a shredded person. The bucket held the same and liquid.
The police did a great job with scene and evidence photos.

After the scene photos, the slide show moved to the coroner's office.
First shot -- a longer shot of the autopsy environment putting the pile of Chip’s chips in perspective.
Next, the sorting process is documented.
Flesh from bones, sinew from muscle.
Then... in what I consider I consider a moment of pure brilliance, perseverance and dedication ... the coroner and his teams identified a tiny pile of pieces of flesh that they believed belonged to the face.
Meticulously, working countless hours, the tiny pile of face pieces is assembled into a jigsaw puzzle.
The coroner clicks to the next slide.
To our complete collective amazement, a face emerged.
It looked like a face made of puzzle pieces with ragged connecting parts. But it was clearly a face.
It was man.
It was Chip.
Lunch that day… I kid you not… included Creamed Chip Beef.
I passed on that too.

Looking back now, I do not recall if the picture of Chip was ever posted in the papers or merely sent to Law Enforcement.
I do know Chip was ultimately identified.
He was someone's husband done in by a wife and lover who didn't want him but did want his heft insurance policy.

The not-so-dynamic duo was caught because, despite paying for the wood chipper with cash, (which they thought was untraceable) they didn't realize the serial number of the chipper they bought was traceable.

The chipper was traced to the store that sold it. And the store that sold it had a video camera recording the purchase of the chipper by the man’s wife. The camera shows her pulling the money of her wallet while her paramour stands by. They also had records of the cash purchase.

In the end, justice was served. But not on a silver platter. It came in ugly bits and pieces of a small puzzle assembled back into what was once a human life.

The last photo the coroner showed us was the picture of Chip’s family's last Christmas photos.

Chip was good looking farming guy. His wife was attractive and appeared happy. Their two kids were all dressed up and smiling into the camera.

The coroner told us he wanted to leave us with an image of who Chip was…. and not what he had become after death.

And yes, the coroner said, Chip did die before they started stuffing him in the Chipper. Though that is not always the case, he said.
However, the coroners found two bullets among Chip's remains. The chipper was an afterthought, not a means.

I hadn't intended to blog about Chip today.
In fact, it now occurs to me I never even learned Chip’s real name.
I had another case, a shooting victim, in mind.
However as I sat down to blog today, I heard the familiar disturbing sound in the woods not far from me and went to explore.
It was neighbor, with a wood chipper.
I watched him from afar with my binoculars from behind a tree until I was certain it was really branches he was stuffing in the chipper.
On my walk back home, I thought about my over-the-top paranoia and the basis of it.
Then I thought long and hard about Chip.
I figured maybe the whole thing was a sign.
Maybe, it was Chip’s turn for the telling.