George R. Nichols, II, M.D.
1946-2024
Dr. George Riley Nichols II, a forensic pathologist and Kentucky’s first Chief Medical Examiner, died Wednesday, November 20, 2024. Nichols, 77, died at his home in Louisville with Dr. Janell Seeger, his wife of 41 years, at his side.
Dr. Nichols was born in Louisville on November 22, 1946 to parents who were both from Grayson County, Kentucky. Dr. George R. Nichols, Sr. was a general practitioner who had a small practice in a working-class neighborhood while his mother, Jakie (Anderson) Nichols, taught elementary school. He attended Louisville public schools and graduated from Atherton High School where he wrote for the school’s literary magazine and played trumpet in the Louisville Falcons, a local rock band that had a hit song on WAKY.
In 1968, he graduated with honors and a BA in history from the University of Louisville. He then entered the University of Louisville Medical School where he chose pathology as his specialty. While getting additional training as a deputy coroner for Hamilton County in Cincinnati, Nichols took part in some Kentucky investigations. One was in 1976 after a pair of explosions at the Scotia mine in Letcher County killed 26 men. The following year he was again sent across the river where a fire at the Beverly Hills Supper Club at Southgate, Kentucky, claimed 165 lives. His work helped investigators trace the source and path of the fire.
On July 1, 1977, two months after the fire, Nichols was appointed as Kentucky’s first Chief Medical Examiner. His job was to bring professional standards and procedures to a state where death examinations were performed by elected coroners who were often funeral directors with little or no medical training. Nichols led a successful effort to require coroners to receive annual training by certified medical examiners. He also worked to expand the state’s medical examiner program. By the time he retired in 1997 the state had facilities in four cities and nine medical examiners who performed more than 2,000 autopsies a year.
During his 20 years in the office, Nichols said he personally performed an estimated 10,000 autopsies. He also testified in some of Kentucky’s most notable criminal cases. That list included the trial of a drunk driver who collided with a decommissioned school bus on I-71 near Carrollton, Kentucky in 1988. The bus was carrying young people home to the Radcliff, Kentucky, area after an outing at an Ohio amusement park.
When the bus was hit, its fuel tank exploded into flames trapping most of the passengers inside killing 24 young people and three adults. After the court case, Nichols’ testimony helped prod state and federal governments to require new safety measures to reduce the potential of a fuel explosion in a crash.
One of Nichols’ many autopsies was performed on a former president who had been dead for 164 years. Kentuckian Zachary Taylor, buried in Louisville, died in 1850 a few days after speaking at a July 4 dedication of the Washington Monument. The cause of his death was not determined and over the years, speculation arose that he might have been poisoned. In 1991, Nichols and a team of medical examiners said they found no evidence of arsenic or other poisons in Taylor’s body. In Nichols’ words, Taylor’s tissues were “consistent with being a human being on the planet Earth.”
After leaving the medical examiner’s office, Nichols started a medical legal consulting firm where he worked for 28 years. During his career, he testified in state and federal courts in 25 states. And he supported efforts to forensic methods and techniques to the living by training nurses and emergency medical personnel who deal with sexual assault and other cases where patient care overlaps with the law.
Nichols held faculty appointments at the U of L School of Medicine from 1972-2006, last as Clinical Professor. He was honored as the school’s alumnus of the year in 1997 and 2006 and was named a School of Medicine Fellow at U of L in 2020. In 2023, he was given the David Jones Legacy Award by the Kentucky Coroner’s Association.
Nichols was an accomplished cook who passed along his knowledge to his three sons. He disdained golf, preferring to find joy in boating, skiing, scuba diving, gardening, taking his dog to farmer’s markets, spending a day at the races or sipping a fine bourbon, neat.
Dr. Nichols is survived by his wife, Dr. Seeger, and their three sons: Ian with his wife Lauren and their sons Lawson and Max in Denver; Dillon with his wife Michelle and their sons Bennett and Owen in Winnetka, IL; and Jordan with his wife Lauren and their son Riley in Denver. Also surviving is a brother, Thomas with his wife Janet in Louisville.
Plans for a memorial event are pending. Special thanks to the Borden Mortuary Group. Donations in his honor may be directed to his wife’s favorite charity, friend4life.org.
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George R. Nichols, II, M.D.
FORENSIC EXPERT
FORMER CHIEF MEDICAL EXAMINER OF KENTUCKY
Consultants in Medical Legal Case Review and Expert Testimony
Commonwealth Medical Legal Services assists legal and health care professionals involved in medical malpractice, personal injury, workers’ compensation , wrongful death and nursing home negligence cases. The president and founder of Commonwealth Medical Legal Services is George R. Nichols II, M.D.
Dr. Nichols has over twenty years experience as Kentucky’s Chief Medical Examiner. He established Kentucky’s Medical Examiner Office in 1977. In his role as Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. Nichols has performed in excess of 10,000 autopsies, including the exhumation and subsequent examination of Zachary Taylor, the twelfth President of the United States. He has supervised the performance of another 30,000 autopsies. Dr. Nichols has testified in the Courts of the Commonwealth of Kentucky and 24 other states on hundreds of occasions. He is qualified in Federal Courts as an expert.
Dr. Nichols provides expertise in matters of forensic pathology, clinical forensic medicine, causation of injury and defective medical devices. He is qualified as an expert in physical injuries of infants and children, adults and elderly. Dr. Nichols has given expert testimony in matters involving child abuse, domestic abuse, elder abuse, firearm injury, motor vehicle trauma, fires, explosions, aircraft fatalities, defective consumer devices, natural causes, occupational injury and allegations of medical negligence among other issues. Dr. Nichols has testified roughly on an equal basis for plaintiff and defendant in civil trials.
Commonwealth Medical Legal Services, Inc. was established on January 1, 1998 as a result of the demand for his expertise and professional services.