My Third week

May 31 to June 6, 2009

My Third Week

My third week was not as filled with activities, at least not ones that I can talk about. What I can say about my third week is that I wrote a lot of reports about what I did on certain cases. Everything that you do for each case is documented and placed within a file. What is interesting is that all of these files are saved forever. In Ed’s office there are files dating to when Wyoming was still a territory in 1889! Mark Stratmoen, the Chief Deputy Coroner, and the only other full time staff member besides Ed, is currently working his way through the files writing their contents into a computer program to make searching for information easier. This has taken a long time because he only does it when he has spare time in the office- which doesn’t happen a lot.

One day we went to the County Commissioners office in Lander. During my first week Ed went to the county commissioners to present a proposal to increase the amount of money paid for indigent burials to 1800 dollars instead of 1000 dollars. This is necessary due to the increase in costs to bury remains now. He talked to the cemetery personnel and learned that the cemetery would give them land for indigent burials and recommended that the remains be cremated so they could fit more in that area, which would require more money as well. This second visit to the County Commissioners was to listen to an architect give an estimate on how much it would cost for them to build a new county building that housed all the different county offices.

That same day we met with a hospital pathologist and discussed the possibility of her using the coroner’s morgue in the county courthouse for her hospital autopsies. I guess they don’t do very many, but when they do have one they need a morgue and since she is new in town, and doesn’t really prefer the hospital’s, she was looking for an alternative. During this time period I was able to explore the basement of the old courthouse which used to be the jail. The morgue used to be the kitchen and was perfect for a morgue. The rest of the rooms that used to house inmates are now used for storage. Some rooms still have the big heavy doors with plastic windows covered by heavy metal flap that can be lifted to look into the room from the hall. The other rooms are traditional jail cells with heavy metal bars for walls. Each of the locks on these doors are neat because they can only be opened with a key that is twice the size of a normal key and each door requires a different key. It was fun to wonder through this area.

Here are two pictures of the Lander Coroner Morgue. The first was taken before the table was put in. The door leads to the rest of the old jail and is usually closed. Can you see how it was an old kitchen?

This second picture is of it when the table was put in.
During the last part of this day we made a visit to the FBI office to talk to the agents about a case that is classified and may become public later but you won’t hear about it from me. Suffice it to say, I found it really neat to be in this office listening to the conversations between the agents and the coroner.

The rest of the week I worked on improving my supplementals (which are reports that describe what I do for every case), and going through old case files. It was exhausting to go through these because of the amount of information they contained. When I was done I was asked by Mark and Ed as to what I found interesting about each case. Ed says that it is nice to hear a new perspective, and I like how this teaches me about what needs to be collected for cases, but I don't like how tired I feel afterward.

The last day of the week Roni, Ed and I watched the weather channel which was talking about the V2 program now used to document tornadoes. The first tornado they were able to document from start to finish was in Goshen County, Wyoming. All of the national stations are excited about this information and we love that it happened in Wyoming, a place that has very few tornados. We also went to my second sweat which was at a different house and conducted by a man by the name of Fred. That night it was a special sweat to honor and pray for a pastor and his wife who are moving to Colorado. The sweat was good and so was the feast afterward where I sat outside with some new friends and admired the view that Fred and his wife have of the mountains and the valley.

After we got back from the sweat and were just crawling into our beds there was a call for Ed and I. It was a long call, lasting around 2 hours. Ed was tired when we got back to the house. I had had a nap on the way so I was ok.

That weekend...

Saturday was a memorial walk and feast for the BC3 (Beaver Creek 3). This was a death of three teenage girls that occurred 1 year ago last Wednesday. Their families put on this 2.5 mile walk from a gas station near their homes to the St. Stephen’s cemetery where the girls are buried. There were balloons given out with the girls’ pictures on them and t-shirts with their pictures arranged into the shape of a heart. We joined approximately 100 other people in walking this 2.5 stretch behind a group carrying flags of the Arapahoe nation aas well as the Eagle Staff to the cemetery. The Eagle Staff is a staff decorated with red fabric and eagle feathers. It is only used for honoring events.

When we arrived at the cemetery they had Burton Hutchinson, one of the 5 Arapahoe elders, give a prayer, and 4 men pound on a drum and sing first a memorial song and then an honoring song for the girls. During the honoring song a grandmother lead others in dancing around the singers in a very traditional manner. Then all of us let go of our balloons and watched them fly away. At the St. Stephen’s field everyone gathered for a feast of hamburgers and hot dogs. Roni and I left to go to the bathroom in the Catholic Church which was neat. It had a lot of murals depicting catholic and Arapahoe beliefs combined. For example, at the stations of the cross the people’s halos were of eagles wrapped around their heads as the eagle is sacred to the Arapahoe.

We left this feast to go to a BBQ with En Cana, an oil business that Ed likes to stay in close contact with because they excavate a lot of land and have been known to find remains and call the coroner’s office to inform them of the discovery. Needless to say all three of us were full after these two BBQs.

Sunday I was allowed to go on my first autopsy. I was a little nervous because you always hear about those people who go into an autopsy and have to run out of the room and puke, but for me it was actually really interesting to watch. The pathologist and his assistant were very nice and allowed me to stand near them and watch the proceedings and ask lots of questions. I did have to be careful about not getting too close when they were cutting bones or before they drained the blood for safety reasons. I found it interesting how easy it was to differentiate between the different layers of epidermis, and how thick the layer of fat can be on a human body, which varies for each individual. I found myself amazed at how the organs looked in real life, and began reviewing information I had learned in my anatomy class about the lungs, kidneys, intestines, liver, and brain as they were removed and dissected by the forensic pathologist.

I was put in charge of taking pictures during the autopsy and at key areas the assistant would turn to me and say that I needed the camera. He showed me how to take pictures at a 90 degree angle and also straight on. At one point I had to stand on a small step ladder and as I leaned over the body to get a picture at the correct angle, both the assistant and other deputy coroner held me up. I was glad they held me up or I would have fallen on top of the deceased, which would have been bad for everyone!

The drive to and from the pathologist’s office was around 5 hours each way. This is because Wyoming doesn’t have a forensic pathologist, so we have to drive to Colorado to have an autopsy done. This is a common problem in the United States because there are only 500 forensic pathologists in the United States. Some of these individuals are older and would like to retire, but there aren’t enough people coming into the field to relieve these doctors. Forensic Pathologists are well paid and in high demand, however not a lot of people go into it because the clientele arrive in many different states of decomposition and it requires a lot of training.

To be trained as a forensic pathologist one has to first get a bachelor’s degree. The next step is to get accepted and go through 4 years of med school, followed directly by 4 years of residency. After that they need to specialize in pathology and go through another year of a forensic pathology fellowship. This amounts to 13 years of schooling after high school, but they aren’t finished yet because they have to take a forensic pathology board examination which I am told has a 40-50% fail rate! In total this is 13 years of school after high school and takes an incredible amount of dedication and money. A very tough profession, both for the schooling and tests that are required for one to be certified, which explains why there are so few.