Dr. Eleanor McQuillen: Grandma Moses meets Quincy, M.E.

Like many children, I was raised by parents who said that they would prefer I made, rather than bought them gifts. I spent a lot of time searing my finger tips as I made innumerable stained-glass insects. That might be too generous. Lets say I made lead and stained glass paperweights.

Unlike most children, my mother was the Chief Medical Examiner for the state of Vermont. She spent much of my teenage years and beyond doing forensic autopsies or driving to crime scenes in her red Mercedes with its “QNCY” license plates. (She and my father were fans of the Jack Klugman TV series Quincy M.E..)

After I started making art I turned the gift-giving tables on her. My mom loved folk art and historic restoration, and she was an accomplished stenciller, so I asked that instead of buying me gifts for my birthday, that she make me crime scene paintings. For the next 16 birthdays she complied with a painting. This painting from midway through the series is the only one where she included herself in the scene. That is her in the foreground.

I will celebrate the next 16 Fridays going forward as “Forensic Fridays” with a look at crime scene paintings from this series. We begin with the crime scene painting A Hanging at Halloween.

Dr. Eleanor McQuillen, Vermont Chief Medical Examiner, 1978–1990 dies at 86

Eleanor Nicolai McQuillen, a trailblazing forensic pathologist who became the first female Chief Medical Examiner of the State of Vermont, died peacefully on May 30, 2021.

Eleanor was born on December 26, 1934 to Mario and Eleanor (English) Nicolai, who raised her and her sister, Paula, in South Weymouth, Massachusetts, while operating the Pine Press printing shop in Dorchester. She became a first generation college graduate when she graduated from the University of Massachusetts in 1956. She went on to become one of three female doctors to graduate from the Boston University School of Medicine in the class of 1960. It was there that she met James McQuillen, her husband of 39 years. She and James interned together at Boston City Hospital and started their family of five children—Mary, Charles, Kemedy, James, and eventually Michael. To the disapproving eyerolls of their adolescent children, they never failed to mention that the ornate doorway in the opening scenes of the medical drama St. Elsewhere was where they shared their first kiss.

In 1965, they continued their respective careers in medicine, Eleanor’s in pathology and James’s in neurology, at the Robert Packer Hospital in Sayre, PA. While working as a clinical pathologist, Eleanor was asked to consult on a manslaughter trial where a boy was accused of burying alive his 14-year-old friend who had collapsed from excessive drinking and sniffing glue. Building on overlooked toxicological reports and other medical records, Dr. McQuillen refuted the New York medical examiner’s testimony and testified the 14-year-old was dead when he was buried. While she took the stand with significant trepidation, her testimony helped save the defendant from a murder conviction and launched her career in forensic medicine.

Recognizing that forensic pathology would allow her to return to her roots as a public health physician, Dr. McQuillen pursued further training in crime scene investigation. For a year, while juggling the needs of her young family, she commuted to the Monroe County Medical Examiner’s office in Rochester, New York and became a board-certified forensic pathologist. After securing two mutually satisfactory positions at the University of Vermont Medical Center, the Doctors McQuillen moved their family to Vermont where Eleanor served as the Deputy Medical Examiner. She became the acting Chief Medical Examiner when Dr. Lawrence “Stan” Harris left in October of 1977.

Competing interests between the state and the university made for an acrimonious transition. When the acting commissioner of health appointed Dr. McQuillen the VT Chief Medical Examiner and the state assumed control of the office, long-standing relationships and shared resources with the university were disrupted. Dr. McQuillen worked on multiple fronts to bring structure and professionalism to this new department. She joined the National Association of Medical Examiners (NAME) in 1976; becoming just the fifth female NAME member. After serving on the Board of Directors in 1980 and 1983, she became the first female President of NAME in 1985. She co-authored a groundbreaking paper “Pain and Suffering … and Unconsciousness” with her husband in 1994.

Simultaneously, she pursued an M.S.A. from Saint Michael College, Colchester, VT. Her coursework on healthcare business models and practices brought added efficiencies to the Medical Examiner’s office. She went on to present multiple papers on change management at NAME’s annual conferences in 1989 and 1990.

During these years, Dr. McQuillen developed a regional pathology system in which hospital pathologists performed medical-legal autopsies for a fee while all intricate cases were referred to her. After Dr. Paul Morrow joined the VT OCME in September 1981, the regional pathology program was abandoned and all autopsies were performed centrally; however, the physician-based Regional Medical Examiner system was maintained. Dr. McQuillen retired in January 1990, passing the leadership role to Dr. Morrow.

Dr. McQuillen came to appreciate the unique challenges of crime scene investigation in rural settings and particularly valued her partnership with local law enforcement and the Vermont State Police. She relished the opportunity to use the forensic sciences to inform public policy, advocating especially for the children of Vermont.

In retirement, the Doctors McQuillen established a private neuropathology and forensic consulting business, Consultants in Forensic Medicine Inc., in Hardwick, Vermont, where they specialized in cases concerning pain and suffering in death. They both relished their time spent in the Northeast Kingdom. To stay busy, Eleanor also pursued her realtors license and enjoyed working in Ron Sanville’s Sanville Realty office in Hardwick. In her down time she restored two historic school houses in Hardwick and Craftsbury. All the while she practiced the arts of Early American Decoration, painting trays and furniture, and later turned her skilled hand to folk painting where she chronicled her crime scene experiences in a series of paintings. To see how these paintings express her unique view of life and death in Vermont visit https://charlesmcquillen.com/category/forensic-friday/ .

A Roman Catholic, Eleanor was grateful to all of those who kept her in their prayers, especially in her final years.