Victoria Corderi Correspondent • Profile

Louisville, Ky. - Tracey Corey effortlessly straddles several worlds in her very busy life, from equestrian competitions and suburban motherhood -- to the daily science of death.

Tracey Corey: It makes me very, very aware of how precious every single day is, how precious every single hour that you have on this planet is. And that's why I fill them all up as much as I can.

She is Doctor Tracey Corey, chief medical examiner for the state of Kentucky.

Tracey Corey: Humans can be quite creative in the ways they can think to hurt each other and in the ways they can actually end up causing the death of someone else … My job is to let the victim tell me what they can tell me through the physical evidence.

She's the star of a real-life drama that plays out in a room in an old converted hospital in downtown Louisville. Like the characters in such stylized forensic shows as "CSI" and "Crossing Jordan," Dr. Corey faces death in its many guises: the tragic accidents, the suicides, and the murders.

Victoria Corderi [Dateline correspondent]: What's rewarding about this?
Dr. Tracey Corey: Every single case presents its own mysteries. When you can figure out a particular case and put the whole picture together, that's very rewarding.
Victoria Corderi: It's sort of detective work, mixed with medical work.
Dr. Tracey Corey: Right. That's exactly what it is. I think the other thing that I find personally rewarding is when I can help families find the answers that they are seeking.

For one extraordinary week in February, Dr. Corey gave Dateline unprecedented access to her bustling autopsy room. We follow along as she tries to unlock the secrets of the bodies that speak only to her, giving clues that might unravel the biggest mysteries of all: how and why they got here in the first place.

During our week, we also received rare permission to cross police lines, to shadow cases that, ultimately, ended up at the medical examiner's office for autopsy.

That's where, on our watch, Dr. Corey attempted to find answers for the families in several high-profile cases:

The mysterious death of two young lovers found in the front seat of a car.

A bizarre shooting involving jealousy, a secret burial and an unexpected tipster.

And Kentucky's deadliest house fire in 30 years, which took the lives of 10 people.

Dr. Tracey Corey: We are there to serve the public. People a lot of times say, "Oh, you just work with dead people." Well, there's nothing that could be farther from the truth.

On our first morning with her, Tracey Corey says good-bye to her husband, a Louisville police captain, and the younger of her two sons.

Dr. Tracey Corey: My 12-year-old vacillates between, "You have the worst job in the world," and then, "You have the coolest job in the world."

By the time she reaches the office, she already knows what awaits her in the autopsy room. Today's autopsies are yesterday's breaking news.

(WAVE-TV report)
We have some breaking news out of south Louisville. Police say two bodies have been found in a car in the 900 block of Beecher Street.

Friday, Feb. 2: An alley in Louisville
Two young adults -- a man and a woman -– are found slumped in the front seat of the car, apparently shot to death.

Ordinarily, Dr. Corey, the state medical examiner, does not go to death scenes. In Kentucky, that's what county coroners do, which is why Ron Holmes, Louisville's chief coroner, is among the first to arrive in the alley.

He'll be making observations about the deaths that he'll pass on to Dr. Corey for review.

Ron Holmes: As best as we can tell right now without opening the car up, there's one person who's shot in the side of the head, and the other person we can't tell yet because of the positioning.

In Kentucky, coroners like Holmes are elected law-enforcement officers. They go to death scenes, take charge of the bodies, help to identify them, and then deal with the victims' families.

Holmes: The crime scene belongs to the police. The body belong to us.

Holmes was a longtime criminology professor and an author who once interviewed Ted Bundy for a book on serial murders. It doesn't take him long to form a theory about what happened to the couple in the car.

Holmes: First thought was murder-suicide. Absolutely. He shoots her and he shoots himself.

Hours later, it's a scene you don't normally see on television. Police are literally moving the crime scene: the car with the victims still inside. They transport it to a police garage, where investigators will have warmer temperatures and better light to do their work.

Now, upon closer examination, Holmes sees things that make him back off the murder-suicide theory.

Holmes: Somebody else could have shot both of them.

Victoria Corderi: What do you see when you look in the car?
Dr. Ron Holmes: I see a personal vendetta here. The wounds are very personal … now I think it's a homicide.

A crime-scene investigator finds a bullet casing in the well of the back seat, indicating a shooting from behind.

After the bodies have been removed carefully from the car, crime-scene technicians place paper bags on their hands to preserve possible evidence that will be gathered by Dr. Corey at autopsy.

So far, there are plenty of clues but no answer to the question at the heart of it the investigation: who killed the young couple and why?

Overnight, the bodies are brought to the morgue. The coroner has handed off the case to the medical examiner.

Now it's Dr. Corey's job to assist the criminal investigation and perhaps to discover evidence that will help trace the killers. The autopsies will be her one-and-only chance to make a comprehensive analysis of the bodies.

Dr. Tracey Corey: I basically have one bite of the apple. I have to think of answers to questions that haven't even been asked yet because I have only one opportunity basically to collect all of the physical evidence.

Dr Corey says the autopsy is the victim's last chance to tell her what happened.

She's about to start listening...

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