Was Cop's Wife's Mysterious Death Murder?

Aug. 23, 2003 -- In the early hours of March 31, 2001, Jim Andros returned to his Pleasantville, N.J., home after a night out at an area bar. Andros said his wife, Ellen, was seated in front of her computer. But he quickly discovered something was wrong.

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"I just remember touching her shoulders, and there was none of the normal resistance there would be in a living person," Andros said.

Ellen wasn't breathing, and Jim, a 12-year veteran with the Atlantic City Police Department, said he was unable to revive her. He called 911 for an ambulance, but when the emergency team arrived, there was nothing to be done.

Andros' wife was dead at the age of 31, and he was a widower with two young daughters.

Under the Suspicion of Family and Friends

Andros called Ellen's parents with the tragic news. Distraught and in shock, Andros received another blow when his mother-in-law arrived at the house. According to the police report, Ellen's mother immediately confronted him in front of officers, saying, "What did you do to her? Did you kill her?"

"It almost knocked me down," Andros said. "I couldn't believe that she could say something like that to me."

But she did, and before long police on the scene were peppering Andros with questions of their own.

When the medical examiner arrived on the scene shortly after 9 a.m., he noticed small red marks on Ellen's face. They are called "petechial hemorrhages" and they're caused by a lack of oxygen — often seen when someone has been strangled or suffocated. Soon, Andros found himself hauled in for questioning.

Andros cooperated, and didn't even wait until he retained a lawyer before answering their questions. "I knew there was no homicide," he said. "And more importantly, I know that I certainly didn't hurt my wife."

While Andros was questioned by detectives, the medical examiner, Dr. Elliot Gross, was conducting the autopsy. His findings: Ellen Andros' death was a "homicide." The cause, according to Gross, was "suffocation."

According to Andros, police talked to him as if they were convinced of his guilt. Andros said a sergeant told him, "I should realize that I had been out at a bar and I had some drinks and I blacked out and killed my wife, and they had already proven this, and to make it easier on myself, [I should] just confess to it. I could shave some time off my sentence."

Jim Andros was the only suspect in his wife's death. And it wasn't just the cops who suspected him. Mary and Charles Bokagiannis, once close friends of Andros, also suspected that he had killed his wife.

"My first reaction was at that time was, 'Oh my God, Jim did it,' " said Mary Bokagiannis.

Over the years, the couple's friendship with Andros had eroded, in large part, they say, because of how he treated Ellen.

Julie Goldberg, Ellen's best friend, says Ellen "suffered" in her marriage to Andros. Ellen's friends say when Andros and Ellen were dating, they were the picture of the loving couple; but after they were married, she says, that changed. Later, she and other friends told authorities that Ellen suspected her husband of infidelity.

Jim Andros denies he cheated on his wife, but Ellen's friends acknowledge she was having an extramarital affair — and Goldberg says that just two weeks before her death, Ellen asked her to help her find a divorce lawyer.

Andros denies that his marriage to Ellen was troubled. "We had a great marriage," he said, "Nobody has a perfect marriage, but I told those people right from the start that there's never been any kind of physical violence or mental cruelty."

After Ellen died, her parents went to court to take the kids away from Jim. To make their case, Ellen's family and some of her friends submitted sworn statements about Jim. They said he was "abusive and neglectful" … that he was "violent and belligerent when drunk." And that Ellen said he once "pointed" a "loaded gun in her face …."

Andros disputes the accusations of Ellen's family and friends. "The things they say are just disgusting," he said. "And they're untrue."

Not only were Ellen's parents given temporary custody of their grandchildren, Meagan and Elizabeth, they also went to court and were also granted total control over their daughter's funeral. In fact, they didn't even tell Jim when Ellen would be buried. He says he found that out by reading it in the newspaper.

When he went to pay his last respects, Andros said, "I had people standing in line calling me a murderer."

But hurt feelings were the least of his problems.

Over the course of the homicide investigation, the staff of Jeffrey Blitz, the chief prosecutor in Atlantic County, N.J., interviewed Ellen's family and friends and learned about her affair. Coupled with the fact that there was no forced entry into the Andros home on the night of Ellen's death, prosecutors viewed Jim Andros as having both a motive and the opportunity to kill his wife.

"He was the only person that had access to his wife from 1:30, when we knew she was alive, until 4:30 when we knew she was dead. And he was there when rescue arrived," Blitz said.

Less than a month after his wife's death, Andros was charged with her murder. He lost custody of his two daughters, was suspended from his job, and was taken to the same County Jail where, as a cop, he had taken suspects. Now, Andros faced the very real possibility that, if convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.

But Jim Andros' family refused to believe he had murdered his wife. They immediately hired a retired veteran homicide detective named Bill Taggart to investigate Ellen's death. His first stop was the Andros home and right away, he says, some things just didn't add up.

Taggart said there didn't appear to be any real evidence showing that Ellen had struggled with an attacker.

He took photos of Jim Andros to document that there were no significant marks or bruises on him. He also looked at the coroner's report which, he says, showed no signs of a struggle on Ellen's body.

To Blitz, the fact there were no signs of struggle did not release Andros from suspicion.

"Jim Andros was a 200-pound, physically fit police officer. His wife is 110 pounds. The absence of evidence of a struggle was a consideration for us, but still, in light of the opinion of the medical examiner, we commenced this as a homicide," he said.

Building a Defense

Matt Portella and John Bjorklund, Andros' defense attorneys, felt that the medical examiner had prematurely jumped to a homicide conclusion before considering the possibility of natural causes.

"We decided early on, that not only were we going to have to disprove the state's theory of the case, but we were probably going to have to be able to demonstrate to a jury what was the cause of death," Bjorklund said.

The first line of defense: Andros' alibi. He was with his father, who is also an Atlantic City cop. They met at a Brigantine, N.J., hangout called the Beach Bar.

Police investigators interviewed the bar owner, Joe Takach, and they talked to several customers who were there that night. They confirmed that Jim Andros was at the bar from around 9 p.m. to about 4 a.m.

The prosecution didn't dispute Andros' whereabouts. According to the prosecution theory, Andros murdered his wife sometime between 4 and 4:30 a.m.

"The medical examiner was not able to give us a precise time of death," Blitz said.

If Andros' lawyers could prove Ellen died before 4 a.m., Jim would be in the clear. So they hired renowned forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden to try to determine the time of Ellen Andros' death and also, if possible, the cause.

"When I first read all the reports, there was something that didn't make sense about the timing of the death," Baden said.

When the rescue squad arrived at the Andros home at 4:31 a.m., emergency medical personnel noted that Ellen's "extremities were cold and there were signs of lividity," which means blood already had settled in the lower portion of her body.

To Baden, that bolstered Andros' case. "The pooling of blood would tell you she was dead for at least an hour or two," he said.

And there was another bit of forensic evidence that led Baden to conclude the time of Ellen's death was actually hours before her husband had come home.

"Her mother had said they'd eaten the night before, finished around 10 o'clock. When the autopsy was done, the autopsy showed a lot of undigested food in the stomach," Baden said.

He said the stomach contents can help determine the time of death.

"God doesn't play dice with digestion," Baden said. "When we eat something, in normal people who are healthy, it goes in our stomach and within two, three, four hours most of it is digested. So when we find somebody who's dead with a lot of undigested food in the stomach, that means they had to die within a few hours after eating the material."

Prosecutor Blitz was unswayed by that claim. "Stomach contents is also not a precise science in trying to figure out time of death," he said.

But Baden felt this forensic evidence proved Andros could not have killed his wife. "My opinion would be that the death occurred — whatever the reason for the death — the death occurred close to about 2 a.m."

Ellen, who was found dead at her computer desk, had sent an e-mail at 1:48 a.m. Baden believed that Ellen had died shortly after sending that last e-mail.

If Andros was at the Beach Bar until 4 a.m., he couldn't have killed Ellen.

Crucial Clue Uncovered Under Microscope

But if Jim Andros didn't kill Ellen, how did she die?

Just two months before Andros' trial was to start, Baden figured it out. He was allowed to visit the morgue to examine some of Ellen's remains. Suddenly, one small piece of tissue caught his attention. It turned out be the most important piece of the forensic puzzle, and it completely changed the case.

"I found the coronary artery sharply, severely narrowed by blood," Baden said.

He said he thought this could be a natural cause for Ellen Andros' death.

When Baden looked at the artery under a microscope, he knew for sure. Ellen Andros had died of a rare heart condition called spontaneous coronary artery dissection.

"This is a condition that happens suddenly and naturally and unpredictably. Suddenly, there could be a hemorrhage in the coronary artery and a person can die," Baden said. "So this is a form of a heart attack — not a homicide."

But what about those little red petechial hemorrhages on Ellen's face, which the coroner said were signs of suffocation?

Baden said those hemorrhages can suggest the possibility of asphyxiation, or suffocation, or strangulation — that those are causes that could be considered when you do the autopsy. "But if you find nothing else," Baden said, "then you can't make a diagnosis of homicide."

In other words, the medical examiner made a huge mistake during the autopsy.

And so, a year and a half after Jim Andros was indicted for the murder of his wife, prosecutors dismissed all charges against him.

"Now we get to do what we should have been able to do from day one — and just properly mourn the passing of my wife and move on as a family," Andros said.

Andros' case presents a frightening example of how a single mistake can lead to a man facing charges, not only for a crime he didn't commit, but for a crime that never occurred.

"Clearly, if the mistake of the medical examiner was not discovered, this defendant could have been convicted," Blitz said.

Putting a Life Back Together

With the murder charges dismissed, Jim Andros began reassembling his life. He got his job back with the Atlantic City Police Department, with back pay. And he got his kids back, too. And some of Ellen's friends, who once believed Jim was a murderer, are now willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

If Jim Andros is angry about what's happened, certainly that would be understandable; but he doesn't seem to dwell on it.

"I am hurt. I'm very hurt. I can't pretend not to be. But it's my job now to just be the best person I can be," he said. "If I can't be the best person I can be, then I can't be the best father I can be."

Gross, the medical examiner who handled Ellen Andros' autopsy, declined to be interviewed for this story. But he released a statement in which he acknowledged that he missed the rare heart condition that is "now recognized with having caused Ellen Andros' death."

He also states, in part: "My oversight … has evoked justifiable criticism. The error contributed to the indictment and aborted criminal proceeding and I will regret it for many years to come."

As a result of this case, Gross has been banned from conducting autopsies in New Jersey, a decision he is appealing.

As for Jim Andros, he has filed a civil suit seeking damages against Gross, Blitz, and other parties connected with the prosecution against him.