Tattle | Who knew Beethoven was into heavy metal?

TALK ABOUT a cold case.

Viennese forensic expert Christian Reiter claims Beethoven may have been killed by his doctor, Andreas Wawruch, who inadvertently overdosed him with lead - or left him too long in the waiting room playing with Chinese-made toys.

Previous research determined that Beethoven had suffered from lead poisoning, first detecting toxic levels of the metal in his hair and then, two years ago, in bone fragments. Those findings strengthened the belief that lead poisoning may have contributed to his death at age 57.

Reiter says his analysis, published last week in the Beethoven Journal, shows that in the final months of the composer's life, lead concentrations in his body spiked every time he was treated by Dr. Wawruch, for fluid inside the abdomen. Those lethal doses permeated Beethoven's ailing liver, ultimately killing him, Reiter told the Associated Press.

How Reiter could discern the spikes 180 years after Beethoven's death is beyond us, but we were impressed by "Quincy, M.E."

Reiter, however, does not fault Wawruch. "How was he to know that Beethoven already had a serious liver ailment?" he asked.

Only through an autopsy after the composer's death in the Austrian capital on March 26, 1827, were doctors able to establish that Beethoven had suffered from cirrhosis of the liver, as well as from edemas of the abdomen. Reiter says that in attempts to ease the composer's suffering, Wawruch repeatedly punctured the abdominal cavity - and then sealed the wound with a lead-laced poultice.

Bad move for a bad liver.

As for what caused the poisoning even before Wawruch's treatments, some say it was the lead-laced wine or high-lead water that Beethoven drank.

In a related story, the Superman Journal reports Beethoven was immune to Kryptonite.

* She's not quite Beethoven, but

Amy Winehouse has made a bit of a name for herself in the music world.

Now her father-in-law, Giles Fielder-Civil, says fans should stop buying her records to force the singer to seek help for what he called a drug addiction.

Fielder-Civil said he believed that Winehouse and his son, Blake Fielder-Civil, had used cocaine, crack cocaine and heroin, and were in "abject denial" about their problem.

"I think they believe they are recreational users of drugs and they are in control," Fielder-Civil told BBC radio yesterday. "Clearly they are addicts."

He said fans should send a message to Winehouse "that her addiction and her behavior are not acceptable."

"It's all clutching at straws," Amy's dad, Mitch Winehouse, told the BBC. "There's only one way out of this, and anybody with any drug experience will tell you . . . that the only way out of this is not sectioning them, not locking them up. At some point they are going to reach rock-bottom . . . and at that point they will say, 'Listen, I don't want to do this anymore.' "

However, if they're apt to reach rock-bottom while driving, we say lock them up.

Not a bad set of stand-ins

Since his untimely death in April prevented journalist David Halberstam from touring behind his final book, "The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War," publisher Hyperion has gotten some of Halberstam's friends and admirers to take to the road on his behalf.

According to Celia McGee of the New York Times News Service, the list includes Joan Didion, Seymour Hersh, Bob Woodward, Anna Quindlen, Alex Kotlowitz, Paul Hendrickson, Samantha Power and Bill Walton. Not bad.

Tour stops are a mix of chain bookstores and independents.

Tattbits

* Jim Carrey's new film?

Not so funny.

It's a straight-to-YouTube PSA on behalf of the Human Rights Action Center and the U.S. Campaign for Burma. The goal: To free Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been confined by the Burmese government for 11 of the last 17 years.

"Even though she's compared to a modern-day Ghandi or Nelson Mandela, most people in America still don't know about Aung San," Carrey says.

Hey, Jim, many Americans don't know where America is . . .

* A funnier YouTube vid is Miss

Teen South Carolina's attempted answer of just such an issue at last Friday night's pageant.

After host Mario Lopez asked her why one-fifth of Americans can't locate the U.S. on a map, Lauren Caitlin Upton could not locate her brain.

Yesterday on "Today," she got another shot.

"I would love to re-answer that question," Upton said. "Well, personally, my friends and I, we know exactly where the United States is on our map. I don't know anyone else who doesn't. And if the statistics are correct, I believe there should be more emphasis on geography."

Still not a very good answer, but at least it was coherent.

Upton, however, took her flub - and the attention - in stride.

"Everything did come at me at once," she said yesterday. "I was overwhelmed and I made a mistake. Everybody makes a mistake. I'm human."

With an attitude like that, she could be a senator from Idaho - which, by the way, is a state just north of Utah and Nevada.

Anyway, we find it ironic that 20 percent of the people who've been ridiculing Upton's answer can't find the U.S. on a map.

* U.N. goodwill ambassador

Angelina Jolie visited Iraq yesterday to meet with refugees and U.S. troops.

She adopted a corporal.

* Patriots QB Tom Brady's ba-

by has the initials JET.

Actress Bridget Moynahan announced yesterday the name of their son - John Edward Thomas Moynahan.

The name beat out Senator Daniel Patrick Moynahan. *

Daily News wire services contributed to this report.

Send e-mail to gensleh@phillynews.com