PEORIA, Ill. — Peoria County Coroner Jamie Harwood said Friday his office and the Peoria Police Department are investigating the November death of a 60-year-old woman as a homicide.
Emergency crews were called November 23 around 1 P.M. to the W. Lexington Ct. home of Nancy Vorrath.
There, they found her unresponsive and not breathing.
Despite intense efforts to revive Vorrath, she was pronounced dead just after 2 P.M. that day.
An autopsy revealed multiple blunt force injuries, which Harwood said were consisted with inflicted trauma.
“Her cause of death is from drowning, and that goes without saying,” he said.
“But there were events that led up to that, that are still being investigated.
“We have evidence on her body she suffered some blunt force trauma.”
Her toxicology report came back benign.
Harwood said it took weeks to rule the incident a murder because of the extensive investigative process.
“When we arrive on scene, my initial thing I do and my staff does is, we do an examination of the deceased person. Once we do that examination, and we do an investigation of the scene, we collaborate with law enforcement,” he explained.
“Once we do that, we interview the family. It’s when we have inconsistencies with what we’re being told and what we’re investigating we have red flags pop up, and those red flags drive a continued and very labor-intensive investigation.
“The Peoria Police Department had an entourage of things to do, as well as us in our office. Our autopsy findings weren’t consistent with what we were being told, and so we have no other choice based on our autopsy findings but to rule this death a homicide.”
Harwood said in this case, it was one family member whose testimony was inconsistent with his office’s findings.
Harwood said he expected a forthcoming release from PPD Public Information Officer Amy Dotson.
