Dr. Perper's head, Part II
Since our last post, The Brazosport News has been getting a lot of "hits" from readers who are submitting the following words, or variations thereof, to various "search engines" -- Joshua Perper head, Dr. Perper skull, Perper lump on head, and so forth.
On Google, a search of those words results in a list of sources that includes The Brazosport News as the #2 source in the whole damn Internets about Dr. Perper's head.
We can imagine the disappointment these searchers of knowledge experience when they open up The Brazosport News because all we've done so far is pose the question: What's the deal with the lump on Dr. Perper's skull?
Yesterday, we watched a great deal of the coverage CourtTV devoted to the probate proceedings in Florida regarding the disposition of the remains of Anna Nicole Smith and were thrilled to see Dr. Perper make an appearance.
He was nattily dressed and well-groomed and the lump on his head appeared to be about the same size as it has been in recent days.
Yet, astonishingly, none of the CourtTV reporters bothered to answer the question that is on the lips of the world, which we repeat, again, is ... What is the deal with the bump on Dr. Perper's head?
There probably is a simple, logical answer to the question, and we pose it not in a spirit of meanness but out of a genuine curiosity.
Perhaps today or tonight the media will get to the bottom of this.
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3 comments:
It could possibly be a shunt. we know a person that had spina bifida as a child and now he is grown and has a raised area on his head.
Broward medical examiner an unlikely star in Smith circus
By Brian Haas
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Posted February 16 2007
The star of the moment is a 74-year-old Romanian immigrant who is more comfortable among corpses than the media.
Except for a handful of cases -- chief among them, Anna Nicole Smith's Feb. 8 death -- Broward Medical Examiner Dr. Joshua Perper has achieved his goal of running a low-profile outfit, quietly performing thousands of autopsies and earning an esteemed reputation. All eyes are now on Perper to determine how Smith died.
LocalLinks
He was born in 1932 in Bacau, Romania, and moved to Jerusalem at the age of 18 to earn a medical and law degree. He worked at the Allegheny County, Pa., morgue from 1972 to 1994, when he became Broward's medical examiner.
He is regarded as someone with an "incredible depth of knowledge and experience," said prosecutor Brian Cavanagh, head of Broward County's homicide unit.
"He literally wrote the book ... on time of death, on how it's established," Cavanagh said. "Whenever Dr. Perper attests to something, it is the absolute truth."
Perper is a man of few words, especially in media interviews.
"I'm very much aware that every word I say, every sentence, has to stand on its own feet," he told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel on Thursday. That quiet style took center stage in three other Broward cases that drew national attention:
The 1995 death of 17-year-old model Krissy Taylor.
A 1999 traffic crash between former FBI agent David Farrall and two teens. Farrall was convicted of drunken and reckless driving.
Perper found that Baltimore Orioles pitching prospect Steve Bechler's death in 2003 was caused in part by the dietary supplement ephedra; his investigation led to a federal ban of the supplement.
But never has Perper been more popular than since Smith's death.
Despite a slew of interviews, no one -- not even his own staff -- has asked about the unique shape of Perper's head.
He responded with a sense of humor rarely seen in his public persona.
"I am definitely not a member of the television's Coneheads," he said with a chuckle. "I always used to say I have extra brains that I could not accommodate in my head."
The story is told in pure Perper style: just the facts. He was dropped accidentally on his head by his aunt when he was a small child and a blood clot thickened part of his skull.
He also let slip that he enjoys some of the media attention.
"At the beginning, like everybody else, you feel somewhat special when you're interviewed," he said. "But when you do it enough, it's like a surgeon. After you've done 200 operations, you do not feel excited about that."
Brian Haas can be reached at bhaas@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4597.
I have it on good authority that the lump on Dr. Perper's head is one of Anna Nicole Smith's boob implants that he accidentally installed on his noggin.
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