Collection

When the ruling changed

Deaths first recorded as accidents or suicides, and the reviews that later called them something else.

A cause of death is an official finding — written down, signed, and filed. The cases here began with one such finding: an accidental fall, a drowning, a runaway. Each ended with another, after a family refused to accept it, a body was re-examined, or an investigation was reopened years on.

Bernice Novack's death was logged as an accidental fall until her son was murdered three months later. Don Henry and Kevin Ives were ruled to have fallen asleep on railway tracks before a second autopsy found otherwise. In each file, the revision is the story.

These are not conspiracy theories. They are records of how a first conclusion can harden, and of what it takes to reopen one.