Dr. Tracey Corey: I try not to think about the actual tragedy of the event. Of course, as a human, you're always going to eventually think of that.

(911 tape)
Dispatcher: Nelson County dispatch.
Caller: Yes, there is a fire across from our house ... the people are still in the house. Nobody -- I mean they're screaming.

Tuesday, Feb. 6: Fire scene
Shortly before 4 a.m., an unstoppable fire raged through a small, one-story house southeast of Louisville, quickly trapping 10 people inside an inferno.

By the time emergency workers arrive, all 10 are dead.

Lizzy Maddox: I couldn't get in the front door.
Victoria Corderi: Because it was burning? Because it was on fire?
Lizzy Maddox: So I ran around the house to some windows and tried to break some windows and tried to see if we could get in. But it seemed that every time you break a window flames come flying out.

Lizzy Maddox was frantic to save her family.

Victoria Corderi: Were you hearing anything?
Lizzy Maddox: People messing with doorknobs trying to get out.
Victoria Corderi: So you were hearing your family screaming to try to get out.
Lizzy Maddox: Yes.

She lived in the house and had left to drive a friend home. She returned to find her world literally going up in flames.

Victoria Corderi: Your daughter was inside?
Lizzy Maddox: Seventeen-month-old daughter burned up in that fire.
Victoria Corderi: And who else did you lose?
Lizzy Maddox: I lost my mother, my father, my two sisters, my nieces, and my nephew, and my daughter.

Among the victims were six children. It was the deadliest fire in Kentucky in 30 years. Coroners from surrounding counties converge on the scene to help retrieve bodies.

Coroner on scene (talking to other coroners): If you don't know what's happened, you've got to treat it like a crime scene. There's no question about that.

Dr. Corey: Get information from him as far as the ages.

The scope of the tragedy is so great that it brings chief medical examiner Tracey Corey out of the autopsy room and into the field. Although it's rare for her to go to death scenes, this emergency requires extra help and her medical expertise.

She will help to uncover what exactly happened in those terrifying final minutes in that house.

First, the victims are sketched and photographed to show their position and location. Then they're removed from the house.

While she's working, Dr. Corey notices a distraught man hurrying toward the charred remains of the house. He just learned that his two-year-old twins died in the fire. Dr. Corey moves to stop him, to convince him to stay away.

Dr. Corey: My goal, at that point, was to get in between him and the house because I didn't want him to see his loved one there, in the house. That wouldn't do him any good, it wouldn't do the investigators any good, and it would only, probably, increase his shock and grief at that point.

After Dr. Corey's assurances, he agrees to back away.

Dr. Tracey Corey: I promised him that I would take good care of them. That I was a mother myself.

It's the toughest, most unscientific part of her job -- dealing with families.

Dr. Tracey Corey: I think that I have a greater appreciation, a greater empathy for the parents in that-- in those-- situations, being a parent myself.
Victoria Corderi: It's hard not to look at a child--
Dr. Tracey Corey: Oh, it is.
Victoria Corderi: --and think of your own children.
Dr. Tracey Corey: We all make personal associations, all of us do, whether we want to or not.

Her career spans years of seeing the consequences of painful death, but she says some cases haunt her like no others

Dr. Tracey Corey: One of the toughest cases in the long run, for me, was the case of the-- the Camm children, who were killed in southern Indiana.

It was a notorious case. In 2000, a former Indiana state trooper named David Camm shot to death his wife and two children.

Dr. Tracey Corey: Uhmm, it was ahh. Can I stop for a minute? It was tougher than it-- (cries) that came out of nowhere.
Victoria Corderi: No, no, no, no. I, I, I. Yeah. Listen, it has to go somewhere. Because I see you as a mother as, you know, a wife...

It's a rare crack in her professional veneer. Dr. Corey tries to regain control, but then needs to take a break to compose her self.

What was especially disturbing for Dr. Corey in that case was that the killer left one of his children to die a long, excruciating death.

Dr. Tracey Corey: The little boy's wounds were not immediately lethal or would not result in immediate unconsciousness. And I knew that … I had two little boys of my own at the time, and so, there was a personal connection.

Tuesday, Feb. 6: Autopsy room
By the afternoon, the 10 fire victims are in the medical examiner's office ready for autopsy. Dr. Corey sees beyond the charred remains.

Victoria Corderi: Why do autopsies? Clearly, there was a house fire and people died in the fire.
Dr. Tracey Corey: Until you do the autopsy, you don't know. Many times, people who kill other people may try to cover up that crime, by starting a fire.

While the body of the man dug up that morning, Roy Jeffries, is being readied for autopsy, Dr. Corey works with calm dispatch on the fire victims, focusing on identifying the bodies through family records.

Dr. Corey: Any history of any dentist whatsoever. Ask them if they've ever had sinus films, bad sinus infection.

Her goal is to complete the 10 fire autopsies and that of Roy Jeffries that same day, no matter how long it takes, so they can release the bodies to the families for funerals.

In the Jeffries case, the key forensic finding would be whether or not Roy was buried alive.

Victoria Corderi: And what physical evidence would there be that somebody was buried alive?
Dr. Tracey Corey: Depending on the soil, the nature of the substance they were buried in, you would find that substance, perhaps inhaled and/or swallowed.

But with Dr. Corey absorbed in her work on the fire victims, medical examiner Donna Hunsaker will handle Jeffries' autopsy.

The two autopsy tables are filled, doctors working on cases simultaneously.

Dr. Corey: And here's where you want to write it...

Dr. Corey reaches a conclusion first. She finds soot in the airways of the fire victims, which means there was no foul play...they all were alive when the fire broke out. Later, a fire investigation determines the official cause: a cigarette left burning near a couch.

But the family says no one was smoking.

By working efficiently, Dr. Corey and her team accomplish their goal of finishing all the fire autopsies before evening, enabling the families to get back the bodies of their loved ones quickly.

Meanwhile, the room is still crowded with people waiting for the result of Roy Jeffries' autopsy: two detectives photographing, observing and gathering evidence, and coroner Bill Lee, who will report the findings to the family.

Donna Hunsaker: Oh, there it is. I bet you that's it right there.

Each minute, they come closer to finding out if the killer told the truth about the shooting and burial.

Donna Hunsaker: A circular penetrating gunshot wound of entrance measure 0.1 inches in diameter. Period.

First, she finds one wound from only one bullet. So that part of confessed killer Clayton Kerr's story checks out.

She determines that the bullet entered above his right ear, seemingly supporting Kerr's claim that he was walking behind Jeffries when, he says, he looked away and fired the gun.

The investigators in the room are watching the autopsy play out like an episode of "CSI."

Building up to the climax, the answer to the all-important forensic question: was Jeffries buried alive? When it comes, there's no swelling television music, no dramatic declaration. Only a steady stream of diagnostic jargon.

Donna Hunsaker: Areas of livor mortis. Next. No foreign debris in the upper or lower airways.

No foreign debris. Translation: he did not inhale or swallow any dirt, so Jeffries was not buried alive.

Coroner Bill Lee calls the victim's parents right away.

Bill Lee (on phone): Looks like the cause of death will be that single gunshot wound to the head. And I'd say it was pretty much instantaneous.

The family finds a measure of comfort in the news.

Margaret Brown: We were so grateful to hear that he wasn't buried alive.

But their real comfort, they say, is their faith.

Margaret Brown: I think it's unfair. But maybe god thought he'd needed him more than I did. I don't know.

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