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Thursday, January 16, 2003

By Tom Gibb, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

The Indiana County coroner says he may seek permission to exhume three members of an Indiana County family -- a 19-year-old, his father and his grandmother -- who died within 18 months of each other.

The exhumations would broaden an investigation into the mysterious cadmium poisoning of an Indiana County retiree last spring. One other body has already been exhumed in connection with that case, but results of the autopsy are not yet in.

County Coroner Thomas Streams said he was uncertain when or in what order the additional exhumation requests would come if his office decides to go ahead.

His office reported yesterday it was considering whether to seek court permission to exhume:

*George Holodnik, a mentally retarded 19-year-old, found dead in bed at his family's home in Lewisville, a crossroads hamlet 14 miles northeast of Saltsburg. Streams said last month that the December 1995 death initially was ruled the result of a seizure disorder.

*Holodnik's father, 67-year-old Marine veteran Andrew Holodnik, who divided time between farming and construction. He died at home on April 8, 1997 of what Streams says was thought then to be a heart attack.

*Ida Irene Kiner -- George Holodnik's grandmother and Andrew Holodnik's mother-in-law -- a widowed, retired social worker who lived with the family before going into the county nursing home shortly before her death on Nov. 10, 1995. There, at the nursing home, Kiner died at age 89 of what the death certificate showed as heart failure, malnutrition and an abdominal mass.

Streams has labeled the matter a criminal investigation.

But he, Deputy Coroner Michael Baker and District Attorney Robert Bell have said they have no clear suspects in the cases and won't say what could tie the deaths together.

The investigation has not yielded enough information, Bell said last month, to provide probable cause to seek any search warrants.

In March 2002 Homer City-area retiree Russell Repine, 61, a seemingly healthy man, was found dead of what was thought to be a heart attack.

His body was exhumed in June and toxicology tests showed that his body contained lethal levels of cadmium, a chemical commonly used in metal coatings and rechargeable batteries.

The amount of cadmium was "much too much" to have come from gradual exposure, Baker said this week.

The second body exhumed was that of Anna Nagg, 58, a chronically ill Saltsburg woman. But when she died in November 2001, it followed what Streams termed "a sudden and unexpected illness." She died at at Latrobe Area Hospital where she was rushed from the tiny two-story home she shared with her husband and grown, mentally retarded son.

Last month, a Northampton County pathologist performed an autopsy on Nagg's remains, but results of tests for poisons have not yet been returned, the coroner's office said yesterday.

"We may find nothing," Baker said after last month's autopsy. But given tips and other information that investigators won't discuss, "that doesn't mean that the investigation is over," he said.

Exhumation would require a petition to the county court.

"It's our practice to ask permission of family," Baker said this week.

Save for George Holodnik's mentally retarded younger brother, now living in sheltered care, the last remaining family member is 59-year-old Indiana, Pa., resident Elaine Holodnik -- George Holodnik's mother, Andrew Holodnik's widow and Ida Kiner's only child.

"I'd give permission," Elaine Holodnik said yesterday. "My goodness, why wouldn't I? They can look at anything they want to. I hope this is solved soon."

To date, no investigators have approached to ask particulars about the deaths or about the possibility of exhumations, she said.

Holodnik said Repine and Nagg -- two people who lived 22 miles apart and didn't know each other-- were both "very good friends" of hers.

Repine's daughter-in-law described Repine as an adviser who tried to help Holodnik straighten tangled personal finances. Holodnik described herself as a companion to Nagg, their friendship renewed during a chance meeting in church four years ago, after they had met years earlier while taking their sons to the same school.

"She ... took 13 medications. She had diabetes in the worst way," Holodnik said last month. "We talked on the phone a day or two before she died. ... She told me she didn't feel that good that night, and I said, 'Anna, take care of yourself.' "

In an interview last month, Holodnik told of her husband collapsing at home and how, a year and a half earlier, "Momma got sick." But yesterday, Holodnik's most vivid recollection of the deaths in her own family was her recollection of finding son George not breathing as he lay alone in his father's bed.

The discovery, on a Sunday morning, sent a friend hurrying to fetch a doctor who was worshipping at Lewisville's stately old Presbyterian Church, a few lots away.

"My husband came in. I stood up to go to him and my legs just gave out," Holodnik said. "My husband grabbed hold of me, and I started shaking like crazy ... and he said, 'The Lord took him.' "

Tom Gibb can be reached at tgibb@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1601.