Coroner Stories

Amy G. submitted the following comment:

Hi, I am interested in the job of being a County Coroner…Its weird, but I have actually wanted to do this for a long time, my family thinks its weird, but I want to pursue this only I am not sure how to go about doing this, or what classes I need to take..I currently reside in Iowa, but in a year or so, I plan to relocate to Texas..Please give me any information that I would need to help me pursue this career, anything would be helpful, thank you, Amy

Amy:

States vary with regard to how they provide medicolegal death investigations to the public. In short, some rely on a coroner system and some have a statewide medical examiner system. Others have a combination of the two with a coroner system in the rural areas and a medical examiner system in the urban areas—especially common in the larger states. If you are planning on relocating to Texas, I would recommend moving to a large urban area. Naturally, more people means more deaths which means more employment opportunities.

Death investigators come from a variety of backgrounds. The majority have some past experience with exposure to trauma. Examples would be paramedics or anyone with corpsman or medic experience from the military. Working as an autopsy technician or in the funeral business is also good exposure. The problem is that an autopsy technician job is hard to come by and the funeral business is much more lucrative.

Degrees are certainly helpful, but access to coursework in this field is limited in most parts of the country. Most universities have a criminal justice program but only a few of those offer classes that are specific to the field of forensics. Of those, the majority are focused on lab based forensics—toxicology, serology, DNA, etc. It’s “easier�? to find work in those areas simply because there are more chemists than there are death investigators.

If you live close to a coroner or medical examiner’s office, you can offer your time as an intern, but you’ll need something on your resume to distinguish yourself from the CSI wannabes. Simply calling your local office and expressing an interest isn’t going to get you past the front desk. It’ll take enrollment in specialized classes or attendance at conferences to separate you from those with morbid curiosity.

As for your family, they’ll either adjust or they won’t. My family thought it was weird too at first, but they’ve relaxed considerably now that they see how much I enjoy what I do. You should find that you get more satisfaction from this job than they do from their jobs.

Hope that helps and good luck to you.

There is one aspect of this line of work that no amount of formal schooling or training can prepare a person to experience. Believe it or not, it has nothing to do with traumatic injuries. There are plenty of photos and textbooks for that, and anyone interested in this field is expecting to see trauma. What surprised me about this job was the constant exposure to poor housekeeping.

Crime scenes on television are so clean. Every once in a while there is a body in a wooded area or a dumpster, but for the most part people never die in a filthy house in “Hollywood.�? I’ve worked deaths at several houses that were immaculate. The rest of them however range anywhere from “my house after a week without the wife�? to “someone needs to call the health department.�?

There is nothing more disheartening than arriving at a scene and seeing a filthy yard. If creative landscaping isn’t the only reason it is impossible to navigate a direct path from the curb to the front door, then I generally assume the interior is worse. Unfortunately I have yet to be proven wrong. In my experience, if someone doesn’t care about the part of the house that people see when driving by, they typically care even less about the part hidden from public view.

Sometimes when I drive down a street I try and guess how many houses on a block are filthy inside. I try not to judge based on the socioeconomic dynamics of a given neighborhood. Interestingly enough, the level of cleanliness has nothing to do with the part of town that someone lives in. I’ve been in upper class neighborhoods that were absolute pits inside. Still, I have to admit that I’ve seen more filthy houses in upper class neighborhoods than clean ones in lower class neighborhoods.

I groan a little each time an officer tells me, “You may want to wear shoe covers on this one.�? This statement is usually followed by a detailed description of the condition of the floors in the house. During one scene investigation, I took my first two steps onto the linoleum of a kitchen floor that was so sticky I walked completely out of my shoe covers. There must have been a previous spill of construction grade adhesive. Or maybe it was Mountain Dew.

Sometimes there are piles of dog feces all over the house. I recall one time when an officer noticed I was having trouble seeing the body I was examining. The wall switch was already on, so he pulled the chain at the light fixture. The first chain he pulled was actually the ceiling fan chain, which generated a snowstorm of dog hair and other mysterious particles from the fan blades that drifted down onto everything in the room.

Even more disgusting is when there is fecal matter scattered throughout the house and the person didn’t own a pet. It makes it easy to track the movements of the homeowner (no pun intended)—sort of like footprints in the snow. Fortunately, most fecal matter is contained in the bathroom. Unfortunately, it is not always contained in the toilet. Sometimes I get the impression that the person must have been standing over the toilet with a case of projectile diarrhea in order to make that kind of a mess.

I suppose from now on I should take time to photograph the various elements of filthy houses. Things like skillets of half-eaten Hamburger Helper infested with maggots and roaches crawling inside of baby bottles in the sink. Then I could publish a textbook of those photos to help prepare others to experience this unexpected aspect of death investigation.

I don’t know if the average person ever thinks about the issue of removing a body from a scene. Most everyone has seen a body rolled away on the news or on a crime drama by people specially “trained�? to perform that task. Needless to say, there is no actual formal training. Each removal is potentially its own little training session. Training sessions are distinguished from routine removals as they are typically punctuated by variations of the phrases “That worked well�? or “Don’t ever try that again.�?

A best-case scenario for body removal is a 100 pound little old lady that died in bed during the night on the first floor of her house. First, she’s easy to lift. In fact, it may be possible to collapse the gurney to the same level as the bed and just slide her over wrapped in a sheet. Second, she’s already laid out flat. No need to struggle with breaking the rigor mortis in order to buckle her to the gurney. Next, she died in the night. She hasn’t been dead that long, so there may not be any foul odor until her body is moved. And lastly, she’s on the first floor, so no more than one or two steps to go up.

Now for a worst case scenario—a 350 pound man that died in bed two weeks ago on the third floor of his apartment building. Obviously the increased weight changes everything and it’s only complicated by the fact that he’s been dead for some time. It is now necessary that he be placed in a body bag in order to contain the decomposition “juices�? that have accumulated just under the surface of the skin. The rigor mortis has already gone away or “passed,�? but his girth still makes it difficult to zip up the body bag and to strap him to the gurney.

The only redeeming element of this scenario is that the man is in bed and not directly on the floor or (God forbid) in the bathtub. As it stands, I would lay the open body bag on the floor next to the bed. Then I would throw a bed sheet over the body to catch any decomposition juices expelled from areas of concentration ruptured during the initial move. Next, I would grab the body through the sheet, pull it from the edge of the bed, and let gravity do the rest. It’s at this point that the decomposition juice is actually helpful. It makes for a slippery surface on which it is much easier to slide a body.

Once he’s in the bag, there is still the issue of getting him to ground level. He’s already met the “250 Pound Rule�? which states that “Anyone who dies in an apartment building above the first floor is guaranteed to weigh at least 250 pounds.�? Hundreds of apartment buildings in this city and they seem to have all been constructed before the days of handicap accessibility.

Without an elevator, gravity is called upon once again. I am a firm believer in letting the floor do the majority of the work, so there is a lot of sliding involved—especially when it comes to stairs. Holding on tightly to the bag, I slowly allow it to slide down each flight of stairs to the ground floor. The drawback of this process in conjunction with the lack of rigor mortis results in the body slumping down into one end of the bag like an orange in a sock.

I’ve lost count of how many times I wished I had “body handlers�? at my disposal like the ones that are often shown on television and in movies. Hollywood body handlers are typically two respectable looking actors with no lines that are shown moving the body from the scene on a gurney. Their manner of dress makes them look a lot like paramedics but without the sense of urgency burdening those with life-saving responsibilities.

In the real world—or at least my corner of it—the body handlers are myself, the mortician transporting the body, and anyone else willing to help. Needless to say, volunteers are usually hard to come by.

After reading the above, Douglas commented:

“You mention using the floor to do most of your work. And specifically describe a trip down the stairs. Is there not much concern that a bouncy trip down the stairs would produce new damage or obscure existing wounds making pronouncement that much more difficult?�?

To which I responded:

As I reread my post, I can see where my description sounds like a scene from “Weekend at Bernie’s�? with a body sliding uncontrollably down the stairs like a runaway toboggan. It’s more of a controlled slide as we ease the bag down with the help of gravity. It still requires some straining, but considerably less than carrying it the whole way down.

As such, there is minimal impact to the body. I have seen a head strike a concrete surface as a gurney fell over. There was a slight mark to the scalp but no underlying fracture present at autopsy and there was no swelling because there was no blood pumping.

About the only trauma that might occur would be an abrasion to the body from rubbing against the inside of the bag. In this case there would be very little “reaction�? in the skin tissue–that is to say the abraded area of the skin would have a parchment-like appearance as opposed to the typical appearance of aggravated tissue that has started to heal itself.

As for obscuring the wounds, they should have already been documented before removing the body.

Couches are easier to move down stairs. They may be bulkier, but they are much more rigid and the weight is even distributed. Even a body in full rigor will sag in the middle making the body seem much heavier. I wouldn’t be surprised if an undertaker was the first person to coin the phrase “dead weight.�?

Hope that answers your question…