After 37 years cracking cold cases and catching killers, Dallas County's chief medical examiner retires
DALLAS – Dallas County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Jeffrey Barnard is retiring after 37 years with the county, 33 of those years at the helm of its Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences.
Barnard says as a young medical student, this isn't the career he imagined. An internship in the basement morgue of Houston's Ben Taub Hospital, though, piqued his interest.
"It was total chaos, but they let me do stuff I would never let a resident do," he said.
Figuring out how and why people died was like solving a mystery.
"It's a puzzle. You know, as a kid, I did a lot of jigsaw puzzles. And you know, you get little pieces of information and you put a picture together," he said.
When Barnard moved to Dallas County in 1987, he was one of just four medical examiners performing 2,000 autopsies a year on the old Parkland Hospital campus. Technology wasn't what it is today.
"Well, I mean, there was no DNA lab," Barnard said.
In the mid-1990s, the FBI launched CODIS, its database of DNA profiles, and Barnard decided to reopen sexual assault cases and run any available DNA through the system in search of a match.
"And we started hitting on them. Some of them were people that were in prison for other crimes, but at least it gave the family some resolution to the case," he said. "I got a call from one of the family members thanking me for never letting the case go. And, you know, that was very gratifying."
In 2001, Barnard went to Austin to ask lawmakers to abolish the statute of limitations on rape to allow police to pursue the cases he was cracking.
"I think it's very important that this bill pass," he told lawmakers at the time.
A cassette recording of the hearing captured his account of one case he faced.
"A gentleman was convicted based on identification… 15 years later, DNA evidence provided that he was innocent and he was released… The DNA evidence also showed who was guilty but because there's a statute THAT person cannot be prosecuted."
House Bill 656 later passed unanimously.
Barnard is also credited with helping eliminate Dallas County's backlog of rape kits.
"My staff started developing a more rapid screening method… And so we're averaging anywhere from 30 to 40 days from start to DNA profile out. It's been great because, yes, it's been able to attack the backlog, but it's also been able to connect serial rapists," he said.
Over the years, he tackled major cases. There were health crises, like Ebola and the COVID-19 pandemic. There were tragedies, like the bus fire that killed 24 nursing home residents fleeing Hurricane Rita and the fertilizer plant explosion in the town of West that killed 15 people.
He's investigated serial killers like Kenneth McDuff, who targeted prostitutes, and Charles Albright, who removed his victims' eyes.
"I did all the exhumations on the serial killer out of Montague County, the Angel of Death nurse who was poisoning patients in the hospital," Barnard said.
More recently, there was Billy Chemirmir, who got away with smothering elderly women for years.
"The number that were identified is the tip of the iceberg. I'm sure there are more."
Barnard helped solve the murder of Nancy Dillard Lyon, the daughter of a Dallas real estate tycoon.
"The family was convinced that the son-in-law had done something… And sure enough, it was an arsenic poisoning and it was a homicide," Barnard said.
Barnard has investigated massacres, too. The 1991 mass shooting at a Luby's in Killeen that killed 21 people was, at the time, the deadliest in U.S. history.
"Unfortunately, there've been a lot of mass shootings since then. But yeah, at that time it was," Barnard said.
There was also the 2005 shootout at a Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco that left nine bikers dead, and the 2016 ambush on Dallas police that claimed five officers' lives.
The evolution of guns transformed what Barnard has seen in the morgue.
"We see fewer stab wound homicides, fewer strangulation cases," he said. "Assault-style rifles have allowed killings on a mass scale. That's a political hot potato, but the reality is that those guns have been used in mass shootings more so than anything else."
Over time, Barnard has also seen a rise in skepticism. Everyone these days, he says, thinks they're an expert.
"You used to go to the grand jury testimony and, you know, it was a very pleasant experience because I could interact with them. But now you've got people who want to argue with you about things. Well, yes, you can test for this. Okay, this isn't television," he said.
After years of considering retirement, Barnard decided the time has finally come.
"I put off doing a lot of things to run the office," he said. "It gives you the perspective of you're not guaranteed any day… and it's time to go do some things to enjoy what we have right now."
In the end, it's the cases you'll never hear about that he walks away most proud of.
"If you can't do a high-profile case, you shouldn't be doing this. It's… how do you treat those people nobody else cares about? You know, how do you look at a case that you're dealing with the homeless? How do you look at a case of an alcoholic… That's where the merit of who you are is made."
