L.A. Coroner

Thomas Noguchi and Death in Hollywood

Author: Anne Soon Choi

Hardcover

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Description

L.A. Coroner is a gripping true crime biography of Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the controversial "Coroner to the Stars," who performed the autopsies of Marilyn Monroe, Robert F. Kennedy, Natalie Wood, and hundreds of other notable personalities. Choi, an award-winning historian and professor, deftly blends Los Angeles history, death investigation and forensic science, and Asian American history in a feat of exquisite storytelling.

L.A. Coroner is the first-ever biography of Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the Chief Medical ExaminerCoroner of Los Angeles County from 1967 to 1982. Throughout his illustrious career, Dr. Noguchi conducted the official autopsies of some of the most high-profile figures of his time. His elaborate press conferences, which often generated more controversy than they did answers, catapulted him into the public eye.

Noguchi was also the inspiration for the popular 1970s80s television drama Quincy, M.E., starring Jack Klugman. Featuring never-before-published details about Noguchi's most controversial cases, L.A. Coroner is a meticulously researched biography of a complex man, set against the backdrop of the social and racial politics of the 1960s and 1970s and Hollywood celebrity culture.

Critic Reviews

Praise for L.A. Coroner:

“There was no one like Thomas Noguchi”
—Dr. Cyril Wecht, former president, American Academy of Forensic Sciences

“One of the greats of modern forensic pathology.”
—Barry A. J. Fisher, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (ret.)

“Gruesome Details From RFK Autopsy Finally Revealed His Family Never Wanted You to Read”
—Radar Online

About the Author

Anne Soon Choi, Ph.D., is a historian and professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills. Her essay “The Japanese American Citizens League, Los Angeles Politics, and the Thomas Noguchi Case,” on which this book is based, won the 2021 prize for best essay from the Historical Society of Southern California. Choi has previously served on the faculty of Swarthmore College and the University of Kansas and is an Andrew Mellon Fellow and an American Council of Learned Societies Digital Ethnic Studies Fellow. She lives in Los Angeles, California.