(WWJ) Well-known Metro Detroit medical examiner Dr. Werner Spitz has died at age 97, according to Spitz's family.
Known for his inimitable accent, endless energy, deep forensic knowledge and expert skills that had him testifying at more than one 'trial of the century,' Spitz was most recently a professor at Wayne State University.
Spitz stayed in the public eye even as he approached 100 years old, most notably when he was featured in a CBS show "The Case of: JonBenet Ramsey" in 2016 where he identified the child's killer as her brother Burke.
Spitz was sued by Ramsey's older brother after naming him, and settled a defamation suit brought by the family before it went to trial.
His family says Spitz was in good health until his 97th year. His son told WWJ's Jonathan Carlson he fell ill a few weeks ago, and passed peacefully Sunday surrounded by his family.
Spitz emigrated to the United States in 1959 from Stargard, Poland, and rose so quickly that by 1975 he was asked to investigate newly released information about JFK's assassination. Congress invited Spitz to the National Archives in Washington, D.C. to examine hundreds of newly released autopsy photos.
"I was in a room and they had the autopsy photos projected on the wall," Dr. Spitz explained. "A cold bead of sweat ran down my back, seeing the president like that."
Of the 60,000 plus cases he took on in his lifetime, Spitz said that was the case that haunted him. "It's hard to relive it," Dr. Spitz said about JFK's murder in a 2017 interview. He stood firmly in the camp of the single bullet analysis with Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone.
Spitz called the initial autopsy 'botched' and tried to set the record straight. He did the same in the case of Martin Luther King Jr.'s killing, proving he was killed from a long-range shot.
"While some of these findings might seem logical with hindsight, they were far from obvious at the time," TIME Magazine wrote about Spitz. "Forensics in the U.S. was often junk science ... Prior to this period, forced confessions or witness testimony were frequently all that murder investigations had to go on."
Spitz attended medical school in Geneva and Israel after his parents, both doctors, shipped him away from home to keep him safe amid rising antisemitism in Europe in the 1930s. He's survived by children and 10 grandchildren.