He charged Lubbock an annual fee of $140,000,[4] and the smaller counties paid him $650[3] for each autopsy he performed.
The scandal began in 1991 when the family of Robert Craig Newman questioned the findings of an autopsy report.
The deceased man's son told authorities that his dead father had had his spleen removed years earlier.
In 1995 Erdmann was indicted on charges of perjury and tampering with evidence relating to the trial of Johnny Lee Rey in 1990.
[6] He was sentenced to 10 years probation, 200 hours of community service and fined $17,000 for botched autopsies and exhumation expenses.
[1] As a convicted felon it was unlawful for Erdmann to own guns, but in 1995, police found 122 weapons including shotguns, handguns and a fully automatic M-16 rifle.