LACOMBE, La. — Every day for the last 12 years, Donna Wittner relives the nightmare of losing her 14-year-old son, Brett.
He was at an unplanned sleepover with five girls and two other boys in rural Washington Parish on the morning of Feb. 25, 2012, when another boy walked in on Brett kissing one of the girls, according to witness testimony. Witnesses said Brett and the other boy grabbed guns – a long-barrel rifle and a shotgun – that had been left behind the kitchen door and pointed them at each other.
Medical records show the muzzle of the rifle ended up against Brett’s head, above and behind his right ear, when it fired. A .22 hollow-point bullet shot through his brain, from back right to front left, on a slightly upward trajectory.
The forensic pathologist who performed Brett’s autopsy determined he could have shot himself in the back of the head with a long-barrel rifle. But Donna never believed that was possible at the angle and trajectory shown in photos, X-rays and brain image scans.
She’s struggled for years to get law enforcement to look at those medical records again, or to reconsider discrepancies in witness testimony and investigative reports. The police report, for example, said the bullet went front to back, the opposite of what the autopsy photos showed and what Donna saw with her own eyes when she was by her dying son’s side.
'I begged him to test my son'
The police report said gunshot residue tests were “negative” on the other boy who witnesses said had pointed a gun at Brett. A document from the St. Tammany Parish crime lab said otherwise: the results were actually “indeterminate.”
No fingerprint evidence was reported. And police also reported the pathologist told them it would be “useless” to test Brett’s hands for gunshot residue because he went to three hospitals and had probably been cleaned.
“I begged them to test my son,” Donna Wittner said. “If he shot himself, then test his hands. But I was told that he had been to too many facilities, that they had probably wiped any gunshot residue off. I believe that was bull.”
Donna said she takes breaks from “investigating the investigators” from time to time, to stay calm and preserve her sanity. But her anger has intensified lately, ever since the pathologist who handled Brett’s autopsy emerged from relative obscurity.
Last month, that pathologist, Dr. Christopher Tape, became the controversial new coroner of St. Tammany Parish, where the Wittners have lived for the last 30 years.
Before he was elected coroner without opposition last fall – and before an exclusive WWL investigation in February exposed decades-old child sexual assault charges against him – Tape was working at a private autopsy firm near Lafayette. Washington Parish Coroner Roger Casama sent Brett to be autopsied by that company, Louisiana Forensic Center in Youngsville.
Tape signed Brett’s autopsy report and determined the fatal gunshot “wound could be self-inflicted” and the shooting was likely accidental.
“His medical opinion on how my son died of a self-inflicted rifle shot to the back of his head is what's keeping me from getting any farther on the steps of the courthouse,” Donna Wittner said. “And now he’s my coroner and he won by default.”
Autopsy report questioned...
Tape often touts his experience conducting more than 4,000 autopsies and testifying in more than 140 cases as an expert witness. It’s a rarity for elected coroners in Louisiana to be qualified to conduct their own autopsies.
But sources who reviewed Tape’s work while he was employed as a forensic pathologist under former St. Tammany Coroner Charles Preston told WWL they question his findings on dozens of autopsy reports, including critical decisions about the manner of death and basic descriptions of a decedent’s injuries.
Preston fired Tape in October. Preston’s chief deputy, emergency room physician Robert Sigillito, challenged Tape’s expertise in a court hearing leading up to a murder trial in Lafayette in October. Sigillito cited two of Tape’s cases he disagreed with, according to a court transcript. The details of Sigillito’s testimony remain under seal, but the judge stated in open court that Sigillito failed to offer evidence to support his claim and found he lacked Tape’s expertise as a forensic pathologist.
WWL asked pathologists and radiologists from around the country to review hundreds of Brett Wittner’s autopsy photos and CT scans of Brett’s brain, provided to the station by Donna Wittner. Several pathologists, including those in distant corners of the US, said they didn’t want to touch any of Tape’s cases now because of the controversy surrounding him.
But Dr. Jon Spar, a retired neuroradiologist in Albuquerque, N.M, said he did not know Tape and questioned his findings in the Wittner case.
“When I learned that it was a rifle used, I became quite convinced that this couldn't have been self-inflicted,” Spar said.
Last week, WWL sat down with Tape and asked him about his autopsy of Brett Wittner. He refused to look at the report or answer any questions about it.
“I'm not saying I'm perfect,” he said. “I would love to review the case if it's offered to me, but it has to be offered to me through the Washington Parish Coroner's Office because that's where the case came through.”
Tape acknowledged Donna Wittner had approached him “multiple times” about the case, but he told her he wouldn’t review it without a formal request from law enforcement.
“Oh, he owes me more than a review,” she said. “He owes me doing the right thing.”
WWL asked Casama, the longtime Washington Parish coroner, if he would reconsider the case. So did Donna Wittner. Casama issued this statement Wednesday:
“At the request of Ms. Wittner, Washington Parish Coroner's Office is currently conducting a review of the available case information, in order to determine if further action, or an independent review, is warranted."
Records show that former District Attorney Warren Montgomery declined to reopen the case in 2019. Collin Sims, Montgomery’s former assistant who was just elected to replace him after Montgomery’s death, said in a statement Wednesday his office “is committed to reviewing any new and/or additional information brought forward regarding any case, whether open, closed or otherwise, and will take appropriate action when warranted.
“We will make no comment on the current coroner (Tape) at this time,” Sims added.
Controversy fallout...
Tape took office as St. Tammany coroner on March 25, six weeks after WWL first reported that he had been charged in 2002 in Albuquerque, N.M., with six counts of child sexual assault of a 7-year-old girl. A New Mexico court threw out the indictment before trial, ruling prosecutors had taken too long to charge Tape following his arrest and plea negotiations.
Tape also settled a sexual harassment claim in 2022 made by a female employee of his at Louisiana Forensic Center.
The WWL report sparked outrage and calls for Tape to step down. Instead, his first act as coroner was to eliminate the sexual assault examination program from his office, laying off specially trained forensic exam nurses on his first day and turning the five-parish regional SANE program over to hospitals.
Coroners from neighboring parishes have sued him to force him to follow the regional sexual assault response plan adopted by the Louisiana Department of Health, to be run by the St. Tammany coroner.
Most elected officials in St. Tammany have called for Tape’s removal from office and a recall effort has been announced. Tape has refused to resign and denies wrongdoing. He admits whipping and rubbing the bare bottom of the 7-year-old but denies her allegations that he had her pose suggestively and says he was disciplining his girlfriend’s child.
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