Charles Wetli, Suffolk medical examiner on TWA Flight 800, dies

Dr. Charles Wetli, who as Suffolk County's chief medical examiner presided over the identification of more than 200 people who perished — their bodies ending up in ocean waters off Long Island — when TWA Flight 800 exploded in July 1996, died late last month.

Wetli died July 28 at a Manhattan hospital from lung cancer, said his daughter Kavita Dolan of Manhattan. He was 76 years old and lived in Alpine, New Jersey.

Wetli's wife, Dr. Geetha Natarajan-Wetli, a retired forensic pathologist herself, said of her husband: "He was an amazing person, a brilliant physician and forensic pathologist and I loved him. Our loss is just insurmountable."

"He was an extraordinary physician," his daughter said, noting her father's varied career. "He was a man of science. He was a mentor of many. Our family received an outpouring of condolences from forensic pathologists all over the world who informed us of the impact he had on their lives."

Dr. Sally Aiken, president of the National Association of Medical Examiners, said the "highly respected" Wetli "took an interest in young forensic pathologists and mentored many, providing excellent teaching and professional insights. "

Aiken said Wetli was "best known for his recognition of the role of cocaine in sudden deaths with agitation and psychosis, later termed excited delirium … and helped author several of NAME's position papers" on cocaine intoxication deaths as well as on tissue and organ donations.

Dolan said her father had been published in more than 126 medical journal articles, book chapters and text books. She said her father "was also instrumental in helping children receive heart valve transplants through his work with tissue banks."

Wetli was Suffolk County's chief medical examiner from 1995 to 2006, when he retired. His office had the huge task  of identifying the 230 victims of the crash of the Boeing 747 that was on its way from Kennedy Airport to Paris on July 17, 1996.

A Dec. 8, 1996 Newsday story noted that Wetli "faced withering attacks from both the families and politicians for an early decision to keep his staff on 12-hour shifts [instead of 24-hour shifts], turning down offers of more examiners or moving to a larger morgue," a move Wetli defended. 

He said in an interview that his office didn't have the dental records, photographs or other data needed to match names to bodies, so he saw no need to add staff then.

"So everybody is screaming that we don't have the identifications done," said Wetli, who later accepted state help. "Of course we don't have the identifications done. You can't identify them visually, and we have nothing to compare it to."

He added, "In some disasters where identifications are made rapidly, they have died of asphyxiation, there have not been mutilations, the faces were intact, they had wallets," which was not the case with Flight 800 victims. "As far as I'm concerned my staff did a phenomenal job."

Wetli himself noted relations between his office and some crash victims' families were "dismal." Many were upset he wouldn't allow them to see the remains of their loved ones.

"You might accuse me of playing God on this, but I think I'm playing physician," Wetli told Newsday in December 1997. "I think it's more important families remember their loved ones as they last saw them getting on the plane as opposed to the way I saw them."

Charles Victor Wetli was born in 1943 in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where he spent his early years until his parents moved the family to Long Island, settling in Manhasset. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1965, and earned his medical degree from St. Louis University in 1969. 

Wetli was a major in the U.S. Army Medical Laboratory Pacific in Japan, serving as the chief of pathology from 1973 to 1976. He received a certificate of appreciation from the Far East U.N. Command in 1975 and an Army Commendation Medal in 1976 for work in 1975 in determining that seven South Korean soldiers who died in a tunnel had expired due to carbon monoxide poisoning from fumes coming from cement used to build the tunnel, heading off a potential international incident with North Korea, his daughter said. 

Wetli came to Long Island after working for 18 years in Dade County, Florida, as chief deputy medical examiner. There, in 1994, he made local headlines when he handled the autopsy of an Elmont teen who died after drinking too much on a Caribbean cruise ship.

Besides his wife and daughter, survivors include his other children, Cletus of Huntsville, Alabama; Carla of Marietta, Georgia; Vikram of Westport, Connecticut; and seven grandchildren.

Wetli was cremated.

By Olivia Winslow

olivia.winslow@newsday.com@newsollie