Longboat police, medical examiner wait for test results in sauna death

It has been more than a month since Lori Martin was found dead in a Longboat Key sauna. And not much more is known publicly now than just days after it happened.

Inconclusive evidence at the Harbourside Moorings, where her body was found, has kept the District 12 Medical Examiner’s office from issuing a cause of death, which would in turn lead to more information being released by the Longboat Key Police Department.

Martin died Jan. 23 in a heated sauna, where her body was for hours before its discovery, police have said. There was blood found at the scene, and police dismantled some of the sauna for a deeper investigation of physical evidence.

Police have not confirmed if they suspect homicide or suicide. Because the circumstances haven’t been publicly confirmed, the police haven’t identified the victim, but the family has.

According to her obituary, Martin was 54 when she died and was born in Niles, Ohio. She is survived by her husband, Dave of Sarasota; sons Stephen Cleary of Anderson, S.C., Michael Martin of Columbus, Ohio, and Stephen Martin of Edgewater, Md.; her parents; her sister, Linda Gleespen; her brother, Jim Nestor; six grandchildren and numerous aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews.

She was buried Feb. 1 in Ohio.

“We don’t have all the information we need,” said Dr. Russell Vega, chief medical examiner with the District 12 Medical Examiner’s office.

That information includes the results of various tests, one of which, Vega said, is toxicology, that have been sent to the University of Florida for examination.

If the university does not have the means to complete one of the tests on an expedited schedule, it may send evidence to an out-of-state testing facility. Some of the evidence in Lori Martin’s death could already be there, Vega said.

[Longboat Police rule out accident, natural causes in sauna death]

The Medical Examiner’s office has paid extra for expedited results and is expecting results within a few weeks, Vega said.

“The testing is not like you put a sample into a machine and it comes out with an answer. It takes a lot of human processing. It’s not simply the fact that there are a lot of specimens in line,” Vega said.

But the department has more answers than questions, and its timeline is “pretty stable at this point,” Police Chief Pete Cumming said.

The Medical Examiner is key to the scientific examination of evidence, Cumming said. He said the office has received partial toxicology and DNA results, which it has shared with the department.

“Thoroughness is more important than timeliness,” Cumming said. “Everybody wants the answers to this, and people deserve them. When we give them the answers, they’re going to be thoroughly examined.”