Frank Minyard and Anna Pou

Frank Minyard and Anna Pou were connected through Minyard’s investigation of deaths at Memorial Medical Center during Hurricane Katrina, but their encounter was not simply that of an official questioning a suspect. Minyard met Pou over coffee in his office, where shared New Orleans connections and memories of her father quickly made the visit personal. He was charmed by her account of trying to relieve suffering, yet privately remained troubled by the deaths and by what he believed might have been done for some patients. The relationship thus placed personal sympathy alongside the coroner’s responsibility to assess evidence he had not yet fully gathered.

An official inquiry shaped by personal judgment

Minyard had served for decades as the elected coroner of Orleans Parish. He understood his office not only as a place for determining causes and manners of death, but as a public institution whose rulings could affect the community. He did not regard scientific expertise as the only guide in difficult cases; he believed an elected coroner also had to consider a ruling’s human and civic consequences. That conception of the role helps explain why he sought to meet Pou himself rather than treat the case as a purely technical review.

The public atmosphere surrounding the investigation was already charged. After Pou appeared on 60 Minutes, people called Minyard to ask why he was investigating her and why the attorney general was pursuing the case against a physician they regarded as good. Minyard had also watched his close friend John Kokemor defend Pou and the hospital in the media. The calls and public defense formed part of the setting for the meeting, though the available account does not establish that they determined Minyard’s eventual assessment.

A meeting made familiar

Minyard invited Pou to his office through her lawyer. The lawyer attended, and Minyard avoided putting Pou on the spot with direct questions about what she had done. Instead, the conversation moved through familiar New Orleans connections. A Bible sat on Minyard’s desk and a crucifix hung on the wall; photographs of the city surrounded them. They found mutual acquaintances and talked about members of Pou’s large Catholic family, several of whom Minyard knew. They also remembered Pou’s late father, a family doctor who had treated Minyard kindly and referred patients to him when Minyard began his obstetrics and gynecology practice.

They spoke for about an hour. Pou told Minyard that she had been trying to alleviate pain and suffering, and he found her manner charming. Her account of conditions at Memorial also connected the conversation to Minyard’s own experience of Katrina. Flooded streets had trapped him in the criminal courthouse for four days after he had waded, swum, and taken a boat to reach it. He remembered the scarcity of food and water and the difficulty of sleeping amid gunfire. That parallel gave him a point of personal recognition, but it did not mean he accepted every implication of Pou’s account.

Sympathy and unresolved questions

Minyard’s warmth during the visit concealed reservations. He believed he would at least have tried to save Emmett Everett, and he doubted that there had been no way to get the 380-pound patient downstairs. He was also troubled that few of the elderly patients who died had been receiving pain medication beforehand, or seemed to require it. These concerns were distinct: one involved whether a patient could have been evacuated, the other whether the later medication was justified by the patient’s condition. His private reservations complicate the impression created by an agreeable meeting and demonstrate that personal charm did not settle his judgment.

The difference between the conversation’s tone and Minyard’s continuing doubts is central to their relationship as the book presents it. Pou could speak of her effort to relieve suffering; Minyard could recognize both the extremity of the hospital crisis and the familiar hardships of Katrina, while still questioning decisions made for particular patients. Because he did not directly question her about her actions during the visit, the encounter provided personal context rather than a complete evidentiary account.

From conversation to expert review

In the first week of October, consultants submitted reports on deaths at Memorial and LifeCare. Forensic pathologists Cyril Wecht and Michael Baden put in writing the strong opinions they had expressed to Minyard in August: they attributed the LifeCare deaths to drug injections. Minyard had also sent medical, autopsy, and toxicology records to three other experts for independent review, seeking more information before making his decision.

The additional assessments did not speak with one voice in precisely the same terms. Two reviewers classified all nine LifeCare deaths as homicides and argued that the patients had survived the preceding days and that the concentration of deaths within a three-and-a-half-hour period, alongside evidence of drug toxicity, could not be explained as coincidence. A local internist, by contrast, found that medical issues could reasonably have contributed to several deaths, while concluding that most of the records did not support that explanation. He described Everett as medically stable, without clear evidence that death was imminent; Pou’s lawyer disputed an overdose explanation for Everett’s death. These contrasting conclusions show why Minyard’s personal meeting with Pou could not substitute for a review of records and outside opinions.

Significance of the relationship

Minyard’s encounter with Pou brings together two forms of judgment that the case repeatedly kept in tension: personal recognition and forensic assessment. Their shared local and family connections helped Minyard see Pou as a person rather than only as the subject of an investigation. His recollection of being trapped during Katrina also gave him an experiential basis for understanding the conditions she described. Yet his concerns about Everett, the elderly patients’ prior pain treatment, and the expert reports remained. The relationship therefore records neither simple allegiance nor a settled verdict: it shows an official drawn toward a physician’s account while continuing to test that account against patient records, toxicology, and competing expert interpretations.