“Well, congratulations,” Brignac said.

“You should go to Hoover and apply for my job,” the woman suggested. She knew Brignac was the perfect fit.

That was 1985. Brignac didn’t think twice about it and took the bait.

“The next thing I know,” Brignac told me later, a mixture of humility and shock in her voice, “I’m being sworn in, given a badge and a gun and . . . I’m like, ‘Wait a minute!’”

Brignac was fortunate in the sense that when she started on the job, she went to work for a progressive chief who just so happened to be in need of an investigator with some experience working with kids and families.

“So I am probably the only [detective] in the country who was never a patrol officer first,” Brignac added. “He just put me right into investigations and the criminal unit.”

Back in Georgia, inside the Division of Forensic Science morgue at Bureau headquarters in Atlanta, forensic pathologist Dr. Krzysztof Podjaski got to work on the autopsies. There was a lot riding on these examinations; the results of which could possibly provide several important answers to questions that would eventually help solve this case quickly, sparing the families a load of additional heartache and anguish.

A native of Poland, Podjaski had been in the United States for about fifteen years. He spoke English fairly well, having learned the language back home. Podjaski was well schooled in trauma surgery and orthopedics. He finished his two-year residency in Hartford, Connecticut, at Hartford Hospital. From there it was on to Atlanta, where he spent a year in forensic pathology and then joined the Bureau.

Some have a misunderstanding of the word “pathologist,” bringing to it a certain Hollywood flare and connotation that we see today on crime television, vis-à-vis shows like CSI, Law & Order and Bones. Watching the television version of forensic pathology, a viewer might be inclined to think that pathologists are crime-solving wizards, or crime scene–inspecting sleuths—that one hair fiber or tooth mark can solve a case. Some think they run around town interviewing suspects and tracking down leads. But when you get inside the morgue and see what goes on, the reality is quite different: it’s more tedious study and medical panache than Star Trek–like technology and ah-hah moments. Scientifically speaking, pathology is the actual study of, as Dr. Podjaski put it in court so perfectly, “bad things that happen to the human body that are of interest to law.”

A careful dissemination of the facts (or clues) a dead body might reveal. The cause of death. The reason someone died.

It was so simple on the surface.

On the day Alan and Terra’s severely charred (“burned to a significant degree”) remains were brought in for the doctor to have a look at, he had been with the Bureau for a little over two years. Podjaski’s focus was on the cause of death. All investigations began with a cause. The effect was gleaned from there. And so on.

Both bodies, zipped up inside black body bags, were brought in by deputy coroner Susan Simmons. By this point dental records had indeed confirmed just about 100 percent who the victims were. No surprises there: Alan and Terra Bates. The backstory, however, one that pathologists try not to get involved with, was substantially different. Alan and Terra were a happily married couple in the prime of their lives. There was no reason for them to be dead.

And that’s where a pathologist came into the situation. To unearth the why behind the tragedy.

The first thing Podjaski did was examine the outside of the bodies, or what was left, actually. He conducted what he deemed an “external examination.” Multiple photographs were snapped before the doctor even put a finger on either of the victims. As needed, X-rays, especially when there was a possibility that the victim (s) had been stabbed or shot, were taken.

Podjaski wrote in his report that Alan’s body exhibited extensive charring, from head to toe, and has a pugilistic attitude with the right arm flexed at the elbow and the left hand at the wrist.

Pugilistic attitude—or, as it is more frequently called, “pugilistic posture”—is a common occurrence found in victims of a fatal fire. What happens is that the body, as it heats up, is exhausted of most of its fluids. This loss of bodily fluids, mainly water, causes a restriction in the muscle tissue, which curls the tips of the fingers, the tips of the toes, ankles, elbows and any other place in the body where there is a moveable joint. Some say the body, when it is presented in this way, takes on a “boxer’s position.” The reasoning behind this observation is that the hands, wrists, elbows and knees are flexed and curled inward, due to the shrinkage of tissue. In homicide investigation this posture the body holds is sometimes mistaken for what is a “predeath attempt to shield oneself from an attacker.”

Podjaski noted that Alan’s right forearm was burned away approximately 5 inches distal to the elbow. The lower extremities are contracted at the knees and ankles, with almost complete disarticulation at the knee and ankle joints.

To look at a body that has been burned grotesquely in a fire is a ghastly reminder that the body is made up mostly of fat and muscle tissue, which burns fast and ferocious when subjected to an intense flame—much like the bristle on a steak flaring up on the grill.

“The charring of the soft tissues,” the doctor said later, referring once again to Alan’s body, “is most severe on the anterior portion of the face and the right side of the head.”

Any exposed section of Alan’s face, in other words, had been burned almost completely off.

One of Terra’s extremities (arms) was partially burned, the other totally, completely burned away, the doctor wrote. Her skin is completely burned away with some charred muscles and soft tissues.

The doctor opened both bodies and removed the organs, one by one. Whenever he came across what he believed to be a wound of some sort, he used metal rods, or “probes,” to figure out the trajectory any possible projectiles could have taken, pointing out a possible cause and direction for the wounds. Because the bodies were so badly burned, however, it was difficult for the doctor to figure out if he was looking at exit or entrance wounds. To find this out would take further examination.

With Terra, the doctor was certain the wounds on her back were “consistent with exit as opposed to entrance [wounds],” he said.

There was a second bullet wound, a “little bit closer to what we describe as axilla,” or the armpit, directly underneath the position in the body where the arm connects to the shoulder socket.

Terra was shot, it appeared, as she lifted up her arm, probably as she instinctively defended herself. This was likely the first shot. A victim cannot necessarily put up her hands to shield herself if she has been shot anywhere else.

A third wound the doctor found was located in Terra’s chest. A fourth in the “flank,” or near the belly area on the side near the hip.

From the evidence available and the way in which the probes projected various trajectory patterns, it appeared to the doctor that Terra was shot four times, each hitting a different area of her body as she instinctively protected herself and fell to the ground. Terra’s killer approached her with a weapon, began firing and didn’t stop.

The poor woman never had a chance.

But then something odd stood out to the doctor—something quite significant. On both bodies there was an irregular, elongated area of the back side detailing a particular region of “dark discoloration.” In the doctor’s humble opinion, this subtle wound marking meant that the body was likely “pressed against something” when the bullet exited the body.