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Speak Her Name: Stories from a Life in True Crime
When a family friend died unexpectedly, Dr. Mary Jumbelic was pulled into the investigation—and uncovered the true cause of death. This woman was one of hundreds uanble to move, unable to speak, laying on autopsy tables due to violent crimes. Mary uses her unique voice to speak for these victims and seek justice.
Throughout her career as a medical examiner, Mary saw female bodies that had been sexually violated, battered, stabbed, and shot. Their corpses were dismembered. Some were buried in shallow graves, while others meticulously hidden. A majority of these deaths had been caused by someone the women knew—just like her friend.
As a woman in a man's world, Mary spent her life honing her forensic skills. Through this work, she came to terms with events in her own life. Experiencing motherhood in juxtaposition with her job provided constant reminders of her two one with the living, and one with the dead. Personal and professional experiences are interwoven in this tapestry of memoir.
Real women. True stories.
We bear witness and use the truth to effect change. Together, we speak her name.
Throughout her career as a medical examiner, Mary saw female bodies that had been sexually violated, battered, stabbed, and shot. Their corpses were dismembered. Some were buried in shallow graves, while others meticulously hidden. A majority of these deaths had been caused by someone the women knew—just like her friend.
As a woman in a man's world, Mary spent her life honing her forensic skills. Through this work, she came to terms with events in her own life. Experiencing motherhood in juxtaposition with her job provided constant reminders of her two one with the living, and one with the dead. Personal and professional experiences are interwoven in this tapestry of memoir.
Real women. True stories.
We bear witness and use the truth to effect change. Together, we speak her name.
- GenresBook ClubNonfiction
288 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 7, 2025
About the author
Mary Jumbelic
2 books14 followersShe speaks for the dead. They speak for her.
Mary Jumbelic, M.D. is an author from Central New York, and former chief medical examiner of Onondaga County.
A board-certified forensic pathologist, Mary has performed thousands of autopsies during her 25-year career. She has received awards for her work from the National Transportation Safety Board and the New York State Senate, and has been recognized as a trailblazer by the National Organization of Women. As an expert witness, she has appeared on numerous national broadcasts, most recently Dateline and 48 hours.
In retirement, Mary has published many nonfiction stories, accounts of her life both in and out of the morgue. Using her experiences, she provides a strong voice for the deceased as explores the human imprint made by those departed, demystifying death for herself, and others.
In November 2023, Mary published her first book, literary memoir "Here, Where Death Delights" (ISBN: 979-8988205203) in which she shares her journey from first experience of death to the crimes she has helped to solve with her forensic expertise.
Mary has separately published with more than 25 literary publications and, in 2021, her work was chosen in the top ten for the Tucson Literary Festival and a different story nominated for the Pushcart Prize. In 2014, her piece was selected for the top ten in the AARP/Huffington Post Memoir Writing Contest.
Mary teaches writing, and enjoys sharing her expert tips for a great crime novel or pathology mystery. She is also an Assistant Editor for Stone Canoe.
Mary lives in Central New York with her husband, and is surrounded by family.
Mary Jumbelic, M.D. is an author from Central New York, and former chief medical examiner of Onondaga County.
A board-certified forensic pathologist, Mary has performed thousands of autopsies during her 25-year career. She has received awards for her work from the National Transportation Safety Board and the New York State Senate, and has been recognized as a trailblazer by the National Organization of Women. As an expert witness, she has appeared on numerous national broadcasts, most recently Dateline and 48 hours.
In retirement, Mary has published many nonfiction stories, accounts of her life both in and out of the morgue. Using her experiences, she provides a strong voice for the deceased as explores the human imprint made by those departed, demystifying death for herself, and others.
In November 2023, Mary published her first book, literary memoir "Here, Where Death Delights" (ISBN: 979-8988205203) in which she shares her journey from first experience of death to the crimes she has helped to solve with her forensic expertise.
Mary has separately published with more than 25 literary publications and, in 2021, her work was chosen in the top ten for the Tucson Literary Festival and a different story nominated for the Pushcart Prize. In 2014, her piece was selected for the top ten in the AARP/Huffington Post Memoir Writing Contest.
Mary teaches writing, and enjoys sharing her expert tips for a great crime novel or pathology mystery. She is also an Assistant Editor for Stone Canoe.
Mary lives in Central New York with her husband, and is surrounded by family.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
May 14, 2026
Like her first book, Here Where Death Delights (2023), Mary Jumbelic’s Speak Her Name (2025) provides fascinating accounts of homicides that, as a forensic pathologist, she was called on to solve. Both books intersperse formative events in Jumbelic’s life with case histories drawn from her career. Speak Her Name (2025), however, focuses on violence against women. It exposes society’s pervasive sexism and misogyny in a forceful and nuanced way. Despite the feminist movement of the 1960’s and recent “Me Too” movement, Speak Her Name demonstrates that law enforcement may fail to protect a vulnerable woman, especially if the abuser is her husband.
Mary Jumbelic grew up in Baltimore in a loving, stable home, but lost her father when she was thirteen. Her mother worked as a housecleaner, struggling to make ends meet. Despite struggles with undergraduate science courses, Jumbelic excelled in medical school, where she met her husband, Marc. With their three boys, the couple moved to various cities, seeking a place where both could have satisfying medical careers. Jumbelic became a surgeon, but soon left a cruelly male-dominated profession, which marginalized even the most competent women. Because a high school job-shadowing project at the morgue had profoundly influenced her, she turned to cutting “up dead bodies for a living” (145). Jumbelic spent more than 25 years as a pathologist, examining almost one thousand victims of homicidal violence, many of them women.
Since there are only 500 Medical Examiners nationwide who are also surgeons, Jumbelic has a rare combination of skills. Through close examination of human-made marks and traces (e.g., fabric or chemicals) left on victims’ bodies, inside and out, Medical Examiners recreate the last moment’s of a victim’s life. They interpret their findings for laypersons, often in courts of law. As a Medical Examiner, Jumbelic learned how suddenly and easily young, seemingly healthy people die. In her own words, Mary devoted herself to “serving as a witness so that lives of those lost will not be buried along with the bodies” (185).
Internalizing society’s sexism, many women take the blame for their husband’s abuse. Until recently, Americans considered “wife-beating” a private family matter. Mary describes attending church bingo games with her mother and listening to the ”lady talk.” These middle-class women considered the beatings an acquaintance routinely received just another bit of gossip: “Al’s drinking again. . . . She ended up with stitches last time” (28). In Speak Her Name, Jumbelic recounts a phone call with her childhood friend Stacy, who had claimed that her husband was “Prince Charming.” During a terrible fight, Stacy’s husband strangled her until she almost lost consciousness. Stacy shouldered the blame: “He told me to be quiet. I wouldn’t. You know how I get. I keep shouting” (153). Jumbelic, who had seen too deaths from domestic disputes, urged her friend to pack a bag and leave. Stacy’s story, however, is left unfinished.
ANY little girl or adult woman, Speak Her Name suggests, is vulnerable to male violence. Momentarily separated from her father at an amusement park, five-year-old Mary was seized by would-be abductor. Though, almost immediately, her father confronted the pedophile and rescued his daughter, many children are not as fortunate. Speak Her Name includes excruciating case histories of children who are killed or grievously harmed. In another biographical incident, Jumbelic, as a young single woman, was on vacation with girl friends in Mexico. She narrowly escaped being raped by a man who offered her a ride back to her hotel. Jumbelic juxtaposes this personal story with an account, year later, of examining the body of an 18-year-old, stabbed to death by someone she freely admitted to her apartment. By interspersing case histories of female corpses she examined with stories from her own life, Jumbelic does not permit female readers to distance themselves emotionally from victims of violence.
As a middle-class woman with an intact, nurturing family, I tend to protect myself emotionally when hearing of gruesome homicides. Deploring the gullibility and poor choices of murder victims, I tell myself: “This couldn’t happen to me because I don’t live in that crime-ridden part of town.” Speak Her Name, however, does not allow readers to feel superior to victims of male violence. It insists on the female reader’s commonality, her shared vulnerability, with all women. Jumbelic expresses—and demands from her reader— remarkable empathy with the dead women she examines.
From 1998 until her retirement in 2009, Jumbelic was Chief Medical Examiner of Onondaga County. As a Syracuse resident since 1983, I read contemporary media accounts of several cases that she was instrumental in solving. In 1996, a Syracuse University student, April Gregory, was declared missing. After a long investigation, a neighbor revealed that April had hit her head and died during an argument. He dismembered her body and buried the parts in the his basement and yard. At the time, my husband and I had a close friend who lived on the same street. Dave and I took ghoulish pleasure in pointing out the “body parts house” as we drove by.
I also vividly remember Jill Cahill’s death in 1998. In the hospital after her husband had nearly beaten her to death, Jill began to recover. Her husband disguised himself as a janitor, snuck into her hospital room, and poisoned her. Jumbelic had examined Jill both before and after her tragic death. As a Medical Examiner, she often examined hospitalized victims of violence—preverbal children or women too severely injured to speak for themselves—to determine the cause of their injuries.
The most high-profile murder in Speak Her Name is Leslie Neulander in 2012. Jumbelic and her husband were neighbors of the Neulanders and attended the same synagogue. Bob Neulander, a respected pediatrician, claimed that his wife had died from a fall while showering. A family friend, however, confided to Jumbelic that she was sure that Bob had murdered Leslie. Not only was Bob involved in money difficulties and an affair with another woman, but his claim that he had carried his injured wife from the shower to the bedroom to perform CPR did not make sense. Jumbelic telephoned an old friend, District Attorney, William Fitzpatrick, with her suspicions. Though Mary had retired as Medical Examiner, “Fitz,” who also was suspicious of Neulander’s story, urged her to read the Neulander file. These documents convinced Mary that, beyond a doubt, Leslie had been murdered. Shortly before Bob Neulander was about to leave for Israel, which has no extradition treaty with the U.S., police apprehended him. Convicted of the murder of his wife, Neulander is presently serving a long prison sentence. Jumbelic’s timely call to the DA averted a grave miscarriage of justice.
Reading her two books, I was struck by the profoundly spiritual way in which Jumbelic approached her job as a forensic pathologist. Though brought a Catholic, and educated by nuns, Mary converted to Judaism when she married. Speak Her Name describes death from the perspective of multiple spiritual traditions. Since 1990, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act requires that Native American remains be returned to lineal descendants rather than sent to museums. In an exceedingly moving chapter, Jumbelic describes a reburial ceremony. Chief Waterman, Wisdom Keeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga Nation, wrapped the unearthed remains in buckskin, then secured them with colorful ribbons, assuring that the deceased will be recognized by the Creator in the Sky World.
In Speak Her Name, Jumbelic describes “serving as a witness so that the lives of those lost will not be buried along with the bodies” (185). Through her meticulous examinations of the bodies and personal effects of persons who have died violently, she gives a voice to persons who can no longer speak for themselves. Jumbelic says this of her career as forensic pathologist: “I met the dead after the light of their living was extinguished. Yet their appellations and countenances shine in my mind as bright as a theater marquee. They glow in neon light intensity as on the day we met—April, Quiana, Amber, Valerie, Denise, Carol—effortlessly plucked from the interstices of the memory” (190).
Mary Jumbelic grew up in Baltimore in a loving, stable home, but lost her father when she was thirteen. Her mother worked as a housecleaner, struggling to make ends meet. Despite struggles with undergraduate science courses, Jumbelic excelled in medical school, where she met her husband, Marc. With their three boys, the couple moved to various cities, seeking a place where both could have satisfying medical careers. Jumbelic became a surgeon, but soon left a cruelly male-dominated profession, which marginalized even the most competent women. Because a high school job-shadowing project at the morgue had profoundly influenced her, she turned to cutting “up dead bodies for a living” (145). Jumbelic spent more than 25 years as a pathologist, examining almost one thousand victims of homicidal violence, many of them women.
Since there are only 500 Medical Examiners nationwide who are also surgeons, Jumbelic has a rare combination of skills. Through close examination of human-made marks and traces (e.g., fabric or chemicals) left on victims’ bodies, inside and out, Medical Examiners recreate the last moment’s of a victim’s life. They interpret their findings for laypersons, often in courts of law. As a Medical Examiner, Jumbelic learned how suddenly and easily young, seemingly healthy people die. In her own words, Mary devoted herself to “serving as a witness so that lives of those lost will not be buried along with the bodies” (185).
Internalizing society’s sexism, many women take the blame for their husband’s abuse. Until recently, Americans considered “wife-beating” a private family matter. Mary describes attending church bingo games with her mother and listening to the ”lady talk.” These middle-class women considered the beatings an acquaintance routinely received just another bit of gossip: “Al’s drinking again. . . . She ended up with stitches last time” (28). In Speak Her Name, Jumbelic recounts a phone call with her childhood friend Stacy, who had claimed that her husband was “Prince Charming.” During a terrible fight, Stacy’s husband strangled her until she almost lost consciousness. Stacy shouldered the blame: “He told me to be quiet. I wouldn’t. You know how I get. I keep shouting” (153). Jumbelic, who had seen too deaths from domestic disputes, urged her friend to pack a bag and leave. Stacy’s story, however, is left unfinished.
ANY little girl or adult woman, Speak Her Name suggests, is vulnerable to male violence. Momentarily separated from her father at an amusement park, five-year-old Mary was seized by would-be abductor. Though, almost immediately, her father confronted the pedophile and rescued his daughter, many children are not as fortunate. Speak Her Name includes excruciating case histories of children who are killed or grievously harmed. In another biographical incident, Jumbelic, as a young single woman, was on vacation with girl friends in Mexico. She narrowly escaped being raped by a man who offered her a ride back to her hotel. Jumbelic juxtaposes this personal story with an account, year later, of examining the body of an 18-year-old, stabbed to death by someone she freely admitted to her apartment. By interspersing case histories of female corpses she examined with stories from her own life, Jumbelic does not permit female readers to distance themselves emotionally from victims of violence.
As a middle-class woman with an intact, nurturing family, I tend to protect myself emotionally when hearing of gruesome homicides. Deploring the gullibility and poor choices of murder victims, I tell myself: “This couldn’t happen to me because I don’t live in that crime-ridden part of town.” Speak Her Name, however, does not allow readers to feel superior to victims of male violence. It insists on the female reader’s commonality, her shared vulnerability, with all women. Jumbelic expresses—and demands from her reader— remarkable empathy with the dead women she examines.
From 1998 until her retirement in 2009, Jumbelic was Chief Medical Examiner of Onondaga County. As a Syracuse resident since 1983, I read contemporary media accounts of several cases that she was instrumental in solving. In 1996, a Syracuse University student, April Gregory, was declared missing. After a long investigation, a neighbor revealed that April had hit her head and died during an argument. He dismembered her body and buried the parts in the his basement and yard. At the time, my husband and I had a close friend who lived on the same street. Dave and I took ghoulish pleasure in pointing out the “body parts house” as we drove by.
I also vividly remember Jill Cahill’s death in 1998. In the hospital after her husband had nearly beaten her to death, Jill began to recover. Her husband disguised himself as a janitor, snuck into her hospital room, and poisoned her. Jumbelic had examined Jill both before and after her tragic death. As a Medical Examiner, she often examined hospitalized victims of violence—preverbal children or women too severely injured to speak for themselves—to determine the cause of their injuries.
The most high-profile murder in Speak Her Name is Leslie Neulander in 2012. Jumbelic and her husband were neighbors of the Neulanders and attended the same synagogue. Bob Neulander, a respected pediatrician, claimed that his wife had died from a fall while showering. A family friend, however, confided to Jumbelic that she was sure that Bob had murdered Leslie. Not only was Bob involved in money difficulties and an affair with another woman, but his claim that he had carried his injured wife from the shower to the bedroom to perform CPR did not make sense. Jumbelic telephoned an old friend, District Attorney, William Fitzpatrick, with her suspicions. Though Mary had retired as Medical Examiner, “Fitz,” who also was suspicious of Neulander’s story, urged her to read the Neulander file. These documents convinced Mary that, beyond a doubt, Leslie had been murdered. Shortly before Bob Neulander was about to leave for Israel, which has no extradition treaty with the U.S., police apprehended him. Convicted of the murder of his wife, Neulander is presently serving a long prison sentence. Jumbelic’s timely call to the DA averted a grave miscarriage of justice.
Reading her two books, I was struck by the profoundly spiritual way in which Jumbelic approached her job as a forensic pathologist. Though brought a Catholic, and educated by nuns, Mary converted to Judaism when she married. Speak Her Name describes death from the perspective of multiple spiritual traditions. Since 1990, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act requires that Native American remains be returned to lineal descendants rather than sent to museums. In an exceedingly moving chapter, Jumbelic describes a reburial ceremony. Chief Waterman, Wisdom Keeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga Nation, wrapped the unearthed remains in buckskin, then secured them with colorful ribbons, assuring that the deceased will be recognized by the Creator in the Sky World.
In Speak Her Name, Jumbelic describes “serving as a witness so that the lives of those lost will not be buried along with the bodies” (185). Through her meticulous examinations of the bodies and personal effects of persons who have died violently, she gives a voice to persons who can no longer speak for themselves. Jumbelic says this of her career as forensic pathologist: “I met the dead after the light of their living was extinguished. Yet their appellations and countenances shine in my mind as bright as a theater marquee. They glow in neon light intensity as on the day we met—April, Quiana, Amber, Valerie, Denise, Carol—effortlessly plucked from the interstices of the memory” (190).
September 7, 2025
Speak Her Name is a powerful and deeply human story that blends grief, resilience, and the search for truth. Mary Jumbelic writes with striking transparency, opening her own story in a way that feels both brave and deeply connective. Her honesty allows the reader to not only see her life, but to reflect on their own.
On a personal level, I found echoes of my own past experiences with spousal violence in her writing. Reading those passages was difficult but also validating, as it reminded me that survival and healing can exist alongside pain.
What moved me most was how she gives victims of crime a voice after death, ensuring their lives carry meaning beyond tragedy. Her words honor them and invite us to witness, not just observe.
On a personal level, I found echoes of my own past experiences with spousal violence in her writing. Reading those passages was difficult but also validating, as it reminded me that survival and healing can exist alongside pain.
What moved me most was how she gives victims of crime a voice after death, ensuring their lives carry meaning beyond tragedy. Her words honor them and invite us to witness, not just observe.
December 9, 2025
I really enjoyed this. It's a collection of stories about women who were victims of crimes who Dr. Jumbelic met through her work in forensic sciences. She weaves in her own story about her life and career trajectory between the chapters. The chapters about the women victims give voice to their names and their stories, which I really loved. Though their ends were violent, Dr. Jumbelic honors each of these women by telling their stories and not letting them fade into oblivion. Each chapter is quite short, making this an easy read, though quite graphic since we are reading about actual crimes, autopsies, and related investigations.
Dr. Jumbelic is local to me (she is the former Chief Medical Examiner for Onondaga County) and this local connection likely made me enjoy the book more.
Dr. Jumbelic is local to me (she is the former Chief Medical Examiner for Onondaga County) and this local connection likely made me enjoy the book more.
July 1, 2025
As a true crime lover, I highly recommend Speak Her Name. It’s more than just a story, it’s a raw, powerful journey that shines a light on the realities so many women face. Mary’s courage in sharing her own experience, and her dedication to giving a voice to other women who have survived domestic violence, is truly inspiring. This book doesn’t just tell a story; it raises awareness, sparks empathy, and reminds us how important it is to keep women safe. If you appreciate true crime that goes beyond the headlines and dives deep into the human side, this is a must-read.
September 1, 2025
This book gives proves to you that pathologists are human. Jumbelic combines horrifying stories of murder by many different methods with her normal personal life. An underrunning story of the book was a friends purported accidental death. After her retirement, Mary was asked by a friend to look ove the file and reinvestigate. The case went to trial and the husband was sent to prison. Mary is a compassionate and consciencious doctor. Doctors of all kinds should be this way.
August 11, 2025
This is the second book by Dr Mary Jumbelic, a noted forensic pathologist who is writing on her life and her career. Most importantly in Speak Her Name she reflects on women who crossed her autopsy table, under horrific circumstances. The stories Dr Jumbelic tells allowed justice to be done, and the names of the dead heard and remembered. We follow her path from schoolgirl in a Baltimore rowhouse to med school and to her fellowship at the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office the second busiest in the US. Her husband’s specialty of Pediatric Ophthalmology with hers limited choices going forward so off to Central Illinois and becoming a Coroner’s Pathologist was her fate. Eventually moving to Syracuse and finally as Chief of the Onondaga County Medical Examiner expanded her experience. There are more remarkable big city and small town cases with stops at 9-11 and KAL 747 in Guam as well. The victims’ stories compel reader to continue long reading sessions.
Within the pages of this book Dr Jumbelic shares some rather personal moments in her life. I learned a great deal more about her as a person, beyond our collegial friendship from Cook County MEO. Nothing however prepared me for the revelation within of an incident that truly shaped her career. Both her books are good reads for anyone in the death investigation realm or for a person seriously considering a career in forensic pathology.
Within the pages of this book Dr Jumbelic shares some rather personal moments in her life. I learned a great deal more about her as a person, beyond our collegial friendship from Cook County MEO. Nothing however prepared me for the revelation within of an incident that truly shaped her career. Both her books are good reads for anyone in the death investigation realm or for a person seriously considering a career in forensic pathology.
November 6, 2025
Mary Jumbelic’s Speak Her Name is more than a memoir it’s a courageous act of remembrance and reclamation. With unflinching honesty and profound compassion, Jumbelic offers a rare glimpse into the intersection of science, justice, and humanity. Each page bears witness to lives silenced by violence, yet restored in part through her voice.
As a medical examiner, Jumbelic navigated the harsh realities of a profession dominated by men and haunted by tragedy. But her perspective transcends the clinical: she writes not merely to inform, but to humanize. The stories she tells of women whose lives were cut short and of her own efforts to uncover their truths invite readers into a dialogue about empathy, accountability, and the transformative power of bearing witness.
Jumbelic’s prose is deliberate and deeply felt, walking the delicate line between professional detachment and emotional truth. Her juxtaposition of motherhood and mortality of nurturing life while investigating death adds powerful emotional weight to her reflections.
Speak Her Name is both an elegy and a rallying cry. It reminds us that behind every case file is a story, and behind every victim, a voice that deserves to be heard.
As a medical examiner, Jumbelic navigated the harsh realities of a profession dominated by men and haunted by tragedy. But her perspective transcends the clinical: she writes not merely to inform, but to humanize. The stories she tells of women whose lives were cut short and of her own efforts to uncover their truths invite readers into a dialogue about empathy, accountability, and the transformative power of bearing witness.
Jumbelic’s prose is deliberate and deeply felt, walking the delicate line between professional detachment and emotional truth. Her juxtaposition of motherhood and mortality of nurturing life while investigating death adds powerful emotional weight to her reflections.
Speak Her Name is both an elegy and a rallying cry. It reminds us that behind every case file is a story, and behind every victim, a voice that deserves to be heard.
June 26, 2026
What stayed with me after reading Speak Her Name: Stories from a Life in True Crime is how consistently the women at the center of each case are treated as people whose lives deserve to be remembered, not simply victims whose deaths need to be explained. That perspective gives the memoir its emotional foundation long before the forensic details come into focus.
I was especially drawn to the way the book interweaves Dr. Mary Jumbelic's work as a medical examiner with her experiences as a mother and as a woman working in a profession historically dominated by men. The movement between the autopsy room and her personal life creates an ongoing tension between professional detachment and human empathy, showing how each continually shaped the other. Rather than presenting investigations as isolated cases, the memoir asks what it means to bear witness over an entire career.
This book will resonate with readers who appreciate memoirs where professional expertise and personal reflection develop together, particularly those interested in forensic medicine, justice, and women's lived experiences. What remained with me most was the quiet insistence that remembering someone's life can itself become an act of justice.
I was especially drawn to the way the book interweaves Dr. Mary Jumbelic's work as a medical examiner with her experiences as a mother and as a woman working in a profession historically dominated by men. The movement between the autopsy room and her personal life creates an ongoing tension between professional detachment and human empathy, showing how each continually shaped the other. Rather than presenting investigations as isolated cases, the memoir asks what it means to bear witness over an entire career.
This book will resonate with readers who appreciate memoirs where professional expertise and personal reflection develop together, particularly those interested in forensic medicine, justice, and women's lived experiences. What remained with me most was the quiet insistence that remembering someone's life can itself become an act of justice.
December 2, 2025
Speak Her Name is not just a true crime memoir, it is an act of witness. Mary Jumbelic writes with forensic authority and deep emotional intelligence, recounting the countless women whose lives ended in violence and whose stories might otherwise have been forgotten. The personal thread woven through the investigation of her own family friend adds aching intimacy and moral urgency to every chapter.
What makes this book exceptional is its rare balance between scientific rigor and profound humanity. Jumbelic never sensationalizes tragedy; she restores identity, dignity, and voice to the victims. This is a haunting, necessary, and deeply meaningful read, one that lingers long after the final page.
What makes this book exceptional is its rare balance between scientific rigor and profound humanity. Jumbelic never sensationalizes tragedy; she restores identity, dignity, and voice to the victims. This is a haunting, necessary, and deeply meaningful read, one that lingers long after the final page.
September 3, 2025
A well written book that methodically and tastefully unveils the vulnerability of women, any woman. Dr Jumbelic uses her professional experience as a forensic pathologist to inform us about the-much too common- violence against women that often results in death. In her book “Speak Her Name” she describes how some of these women died. She is compassionate in her details and makes sure we know who they were and what was their story. Crime against women does not discriminate on age, race, location or social status. It is a sad fact of life. I find the book informative and fascinating, a must read for men and women; in particular young women.
January 14, 2026
Mary Jumbelic shares her personal family story, and her journey toward becoming a Medical Examiner, interspersed with stories of women and girls she has autopsied. Speak Her Name is her effort to give a voice to women who have died by the intentional violence of someone else, frequently their own partner. Jumbelic is disturbed to discover one of her personal friends suffers such a death, and she will encounter the husband in the community and at her synagogue. Eventually, he is charged with his wife's murder and the case becomes a high profile trial at which Jumbelic may be asked to testify.
November 8, 2025
Difficult to read at times, because it is so gruesome what some people do to other people - especially men to women or parents to children (god forbid), in the form of domestic violence. But a remarkable type of job, and career that Jumbelic describes. I do like how she weaves in her personal life stories as well.
The brevity of the chapters in some way makes it somewhat easier to stomach - because you know you don't have to 'face' the same story for too long of a time.... Awful stories.
The brevity of the chapters in some way makes it somewhat easier to stomach - because you know you don't have to 'face' the same story for too long of a time.... Awful stories.
October 18, 2025
The author is very respected in our central NY area. This second book is mainly about the IPV ( intimate partner violence) done to women. Through her years of experience as a pathologist she has encountered so many wrongs done to women in this area. I’m very glad that she has spoken out about this violence including the under privileged and privileged. This type of violence has no boundaries!
March 26, 2026
Beyond every expectation. It’s hard to summarize a review as it covers so much in such a powerful, captivating read. Not often am I jealous of an authors writing style, but this is written so well- you can feel every word, breath, bone and body. Memorizing in the worst yet best way. All I can say… nonnegotiable must read. 10 stars
November 30, 2025
The main story is one of a murder investigation in Syracuse, my town. But the many other stories are of women murdered in vengeance, in anger, in shows of power. Dr Jumbelic writes with rich description of her life, her vocation as an ME and the women she helped in death to tell their story.
September 6, 2025
Wow! I loved this book! Dr Jumbelic’s writing style captured me. Her expertise coupled with her experiences of female homicide hooked me from the beginning. A “must read”.
December 11, 2025
Dr. Jumbelic has led a fascinating professional as well as personal life. it was wonderful being able to hear her given author's discussion, in this book is definitely worth reading.
February 12, 2026
I finished reading Speak her name. Your book was fabulous. I loved learning about your work, the cases, and your journey growing up. I truly enjoyed reading it. Thank you 🙏🏼♥️
February 25, 2026
I have followed the case from the beginning and justice was finally served. I googled the murderer and his 2024 appeal was denied.
August 7, 2025
This was a quick read because it was so engaging . I loved the authors ability to weave in and out of her very difficult professional experiences with her family stories and stories from her childhood. I also really appreciated how she told the story of “Leslie” throughout the entire book. It was very well written and I loved listening to her tell her stories (I listened on Audible). The author tells an important story and I hope the many women out there who need someone like Mary Jumbelic can get the help and support they need by reading this
July 7, 2025
Dr. Jumbelic’s dual perspective as a woman and seasoned forensic pathologist lends credibility and depth. She writes from a professional and personal standpoint for justice and trauma
being both informative and deeply affective.
You feel like you are on every call with her. She speaks for the dead, so the families and those left behind have an answer.
As a forensic memoir, the book is vivid and sometimes has disturbing imagery; it is intended to show gender‑based violence.
Abuse against females of all ages goes undetected and ignored in many areas of the country.
I am waiting to see what she will share in her next book.
being both informative and deeply affective.
You feel like you are on every call with her. She speaks for the dead, so the families and those left behind have an answer.
As a forensic memoir, the book is vivid and sometimes has disturbing imagery; it is intended to show gender‑based violence.
Abuse against females of all ages goes undetected and ignored in many areas of the country.
I am waiting to see what she will share in her next book.
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