Pueblo County Sheriff Dan Corsentino will form a task force to investigate the 1977 death of a Pueblo woman, and the county coroner is considering an inquest following a 9News investigation of the original coroner’s report in the case.
The task force will investigate the Feb. 14, 1977, death of Barbara Yak lich. Yaklich, 36, was the first wife of Dennis Yaklich, a Pueblo police detective whose second wife, Donna, was convicted of hiring two teenagers to kill him.
Donna Yaklich claimed domestic violence in an era when it was not a common defense. Prosecutors argued that she had her husband killed in December 1985 in order to collect $250,000 in insurance.
The initial autopsy determined Barbara Yaklich died from natural causes following Dennis Yaklich’s “energetic” attempts to revive her with CPR.
But two forensic pathologists who examined the autopsy report at the request of 9News dispute the 1977 finding, and point to a severe blow to her midsection as a more likely cause.
“One of the things that jumps right out at you is the injury that she apparently sustained,” said Dr. Michael Doberson, chief coroner in Arapahoe County. “Her liver was lacerated. She had a very large amount of blood that was in her abdominal cavity, and in the autopsy, it’s later described as 2,000 milliliters. If someone is doing CPR, you will find a little bit of hemorrhage created with those efforts. Very rarely is it over 100 or 200 milliliters.”
Based on his review of the original report, Dr. Tom Henry, chief coroner in Denver County, said he would certify the cause of Barbara Yaklich’s death as blunt force trauma to the abdomen.
Dr. Doberson called the woman’s death “suspicious” and said, in his opinion, the cause “is more likely a blow to the stomach.”
Dr. Neill McGrath, a hospital pathologist who is now deceased, performed the original autopsy. He said Barbara Yaklich suffered “circulatory collapse” caused from “hypokalemia” from “diuretic abuse.” That resulted, he surmised, in Barbara Yaklich “fainting” and her husband trying to revive her using CPR.
Doberson said using CPR in this case was unusual because it is used “when there is no heartbeat, not when someone has fainted.”
Doberson said he found “very little evidence that Barbara Yaklich was taking a diuretic over a period of time … so I just think it again calls into question the cause of death in the case.”
Barbara Yaklich could not have inflicted the injury on herself, both pathologists said.
The Pueblo County sheriff’s incident report on her death does not contain an interview with Dennis Yaklich, the only adult known to be in the home when she died.
Members of the task force appointed to look into Barbara Yaklich’s death will be introduced at a news conference in Pueblo today.
