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FILE - In this April 25, 2010 file photo, singer Whitney Houston performs at the o2 in London as part of her European tour. An autopsy report shows that cocaine was found in Houston's system and that investigators recovered whity powdery substances from her hotel room. Houston died Feb. 11, in California at the age of 48. (AP Photo/Joel Ryan, file)

Whitney Houston drowned in scalding hot water

Abby Sewell, Andrew Blankstein Los Angeles Times

Last updated Thursday, April 5, 2012 - 10:31am

LOS ANGELES -- The coroner's investigation into the death of Whitney Houston came to a close Wednesday with a final autopsy report that described the singer submerged face-down in hot water in the bathtub of her Beverly Hills hotel suite with a unidentified white powdery residue left in a spoon on the bathroom counter.

The report released Wednesday confirmed that the 48-year-old singer drowned in a bathtub, with heart disease and cocaine use listed as contributing factors. It concluded that Houston's death was accidental.

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Drowning, drugs killed Whitney Houston

Anthony McCartney The Associated Press

Last updated Friday, March 23, 2012 - 7:08am

LOS ANGELES — Drugs took many things from Whitney Houston — her pristine voice, clean image and her career — and coroner’s officials revealed Thursday that cocaine also played a role in the Grammy winner’s death in the bathtub of a luxury hotel nearly six weeks ago.

Entertainment, Features, Cocaine, Coroner, Death, Drowning, Drug abuse, Singer, Whitney Houston, Deaths, Music Read more Comments

At the L.A. County Coroner's Office, Michelle Sandberg, acting supervising forensic scientist, holds a garrotte used in a murder. DNA technology has made "cold case" files that are stored here valuable to solving old crimes. (Don Bartletti/Los Angeles Times/MCT)

Coroner's long-forgotten evidence unlocks old mysteries

Los Angeles Times, Victoria Kim

Last updated Thursday, June 9, 2011 - 10:36am

LOS ANGELES -- In 2002, two detectives arrived in the musty basement of the Los Angeles County coroner's office looking for any scrap of evidence that would help them crack a string of killings from three decades ago.

The killer, they suspected, had raped and choked at least three women as they left bars in the San Pedro area. He would come to be known as the Santa Strangler because the first of his victims was found the day after Christmas in 1972.

The detectives had a suspect in mind, a former taxi driver in his 70s with a big, white beard, but they needed biological evidence to prove his guilt. A search of the Los Angeles Police Department's evidence lockers had proved futile -- the evidence was either not preserved well enough to test, or had been thrown out.

Detectives Richard Bengston and Vivian Flores went to the coroner's office on a whim, without too much hope. They chatted with the evidence clerk, who remembered a dusty, green filing cabinet that had sat untouched for some time.

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