“Local officials and law enforcement authorities quickly began circulating rumors about the raid,which were then picked up by the media. New York officials claimed some of the hostages were murdered by prisoners as soon as the raid began, some in horrifyingly grisly ways. According to one account, the prisoners castrated some of the guards, then shoved the guards’ detached genitals into the guards’ own mouths. According to another, the prisoners slashed the guards’ throats.
“Many of the dead were sent to Edland, the medical examiner for Monroe County, N.Y. As Thompson writes, Edland was forced to conduct the autopsies in a morgue packed with state troopers, ‘milling around and trying to oversee everything.’ Edland also heard from officials at all levels of state government, right up to the governor’s office. He was under an enormous amount of pressure to confirm the official narrative.”