A Florida forensic pathologist who worked for OJ Simpson’s defense in 1994 will be testifying at a hearing next month to determine whether an Idaho judge will strike the death penalty for Bryan Kohberger, who is accused of stabbing four University of Idaho students to death in 2022.
Dr. Barbara C. Wolf is the medical examiner for Florida’s 5th and 24th Districts, serving Hernando, Lake, Marion. Seminole, and Sumter Counties. Her name surfaced in motions filed earlier this month asking that she be allowed to testify remotely for the November 7 hearing.
Prosecutors objected to Wolf’s testimony at all, saying that her testimony would not “help the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue” on the matter of whether to allow the state to seek the death penalty. The state did not object to her remote testimony, however, once the judge decided to allow her to testify.
It’s not clear how Wolf’s testimony will pertain to the defense’s attempts to strike the death penalty. It’s also not clear what role she played in the OJ Simpson case, only that she “joined the highly regarded team of experts” working the case, according to her biography on the Districts 5 and 24 Medical Examiner web page.
According to the Associated Press, she was on a panel of experts that included Connecticut state criminologist Henry Lee and New York State Police forensic pathologist Michael Baden to review mountains of evidence collected at the scene of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman’s murders. Wolf was the director of anatomic pathology at Albany Medical College, where the testing took place.
The Florida web page says she was involved in the 1991 exhumation of civil rights leader Medgar Evers, who was shot to death in Mississippi in 1963, and also worked with forensic scientists in Croatia and Bosnia to identify remains found in mass graves uncovered there.
She also chairs the National Association of Medical Examiners Inspection and Accreditation Committee and the Florida Medical Examiners Commission.
Kohberger is charged with killing Xana Kernodle, Ethan Chapin, Madison Mogen, and Kaylee Goncalves at their off-campus rental home on November 13, 2022, as CrimeOnline reported. He was arrested more than a month later at his parents home in Pennsylvania. He has pleaded not guilty.
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[Featured image: Bryan Kohberger/Ada County Sheriff’s Office and Barbara C. Wolf/Districts 5 and 24 Medical Examiner]
