Lessons for journalists in tragic stories

The heartbreaking story of the mistaken identifications of Laura VanRyn and Whitney Cerak was doubly mystifying for me.

As you heard that the wrong family had buried one young woman while another wrong family spent five weeks waiting for another young woman to recover from horrible injuries, you might have wondered: How could this happen? I wondered: How could this happen again?

When people ask what was the most incredible story I covered in my 33 years as a reporter and editor, I always answer, without hesitation, the story of the mistaken identification of Patricia Noonan and Shawn Lake.

Like the two young women from Taylor University, Patty and Shawn were involved in a horrific automobile accident in which one of them died, along with others (their fathers, in this case), and one survived with severe head injuries. This accident happened in November 1984, as the girls were riding with their fathers to a football game.

As I kept asking, "How could this happen?" the answer came in pieces, but it boiled down to this: Whatever could have gone wrong went wrong.

As in the current case, the girls looked incredibly similar. As in the current case, surviving members of both families didn't know the other girl. Both accidents caused a jumble of bodies and purses and the misidentification started at the scene, where a purse contained ID with a photo looking very much like a nearby body.

In the current case, an assistant coroner told a family member it might be difficult to view the body, so she did not do so. In the 1984 case, the mother at the funeral home wailed that the dead girl didn't look like Patty. But what mother of a dead teen-ager isn't in denial? And what mortician could make a cadaver look like the vibrant teen the mother remembers? Everyone comforted the mother and the misidentification continued.

In both cases, the surviving girl had head injuries, and the swollen face looked enough like the daughter for the distraught family to accept what they were told. What daughter looks like herself lying comatose in a hospital bed?

Perhaps journalists' errors don't have consequences as grave as the mistakes of these coroners. But innocent errors can have serious repercussions in our business as well, so let's examine the lessons these cases might present for journalists seeking to find the facts in confusing and stressful circumstances:

Always seek confirmation. In the current case, bodies were identified by people from the university the girls attended (they were traveling with other students on a university function). Those weren't the most reliable sources the coroner could have used. Seeking confirmation from family members might have prevented this ghastly error. In the 1984 case, authorities identified both girls without seeking confirmation and informed one mother she had lost her husband and daughter and told the other her husband was dead and her daughter was in critical condition. By the time either mother saw the daughter, she was already struggling to accept the tragic news.

Details matter. I did a whole story in 1984 on the little things that went wrong. A funeral director in 1984 asked Patty's mother if she wanted what her daughter had been wearing. Patty didn't wear jewelry, so her mother just thought, no, she didn't want the bloody sweatshirt. The coroner didn't ask family members to identify the bodies because the accident was quite gruesome. But if the coroner had asked someone to identify the clothing and jewelry that Shawn was wearing, Patty's mother would have said no, that's not hers. The injured girl was taken to a rural hospital for emergency treatment, then to an urban trauma center. The rural hospital sent word that they had her personal effects and would hold them until the family wanted to pick them up. The family's attention was on the girl in the hospital gown and the rural hospital was a different direction from the urban one than their home, so no one went to pick up her clothes and jewelry. I haven't seen the similar matters addressed yet in the current case, but parents are less likely to know what jewelry or clothing a college student might wear. Patty and Shawn were still in high school.

Listen to your doubts. VanRyn's boyfriend and sister were the first to wonder if the young woman in the hospital was actually Laura. They or others dismissed their doubts. Colleen Lake began wondering why the girl in the hospital was eating things her daughter didn't like. Nurses reassured her that the head injuries had jolted her senses. How many recent journalism scandals included tales of editors suppressing doubts about a reporter's integrity because they wanted to believe what they were being told?

Check your suspicions. The 1984 misidentification began to unravel when Patty spoke her name, the first word she had been able to speak in two weeks. Shawn's mother knew right away that this was Patty, but nurses and doctors reassured her, speculating that Shawn was wondering what had happened to Patty. Colleen Lake got a tape measure from the nurses' station and measured the girl in the bed. She was not the same height as Shawn. The nurses said you couldn't measure accurately in bed. Colleen, who had never met Patty, went home and sent another daughter to find a yearbook from Patty's school. She was hoping to see that Patty was a brunette or maybe a heavier girl than Shawn and this girl in the hospital. In the more recent case, Cerak actually was saying "Whitney" when VanRyk family members called her Laura. They didn't figure it out until she wrote her name for a therapist. (Since five people died in the van wreck that injured Cerak, the VanRyk family may not have recognized "Whitney" as the name of one of the dead passengers.)

I learned another important lesson in covering the story: Sometimes people want and need to tell difficult stories.

The easy interview to get was with Patty's mother. I interviewed her in a hospital conference room, along with a CBS crew. Early stories about the case said the people answering the phone at the Lake home said Shawn's mother would have no comment.

I wanted to hear her story, though. I drove an hour or more from the Sioux City hospital to the town of Primghar, where the Lake family lived. I looked them up in the phone book, hoping I could go directly to the house. They were listed only as living on a rural route. Calling the house, I felt like some sort of vulture. I wondered if I would be cursed and have the phone slammed on me. Who was I to prey on this family's tragedy? But I also knew that this wasn't my story and whether I told it wasn't my call to make. It was hers.

A youthful male voice answered the phone. I identified myself as a reporter from the Des Moines Register and said I was in Primghar and wanted to come to the house and talk to Mrs. Lake. The youth didn't cover the phone and I heard him tell his mother I was right there in town. Soon I heard her voice. I told her I was sorry to bother her at this difficult time, but I wanted to tell her story.

Apparently she wanted to tell it. She gave me directions to her house. She talked so long I almost didn't make my deadline. I think when she tried to explain to other people how this went on so long and how others reassured her every doubt, the loved ones around her tried to comfort her and tell her she didn't need to explain. But she did need to explain. And I was willing to listen.

I'm mystified how this could happen again. But I know how it happened 22 years ago, because I pushed past my fear of facing someone's anger and gave this grieving mother the choice of being left alone or telling her story.