It Can (and Does) Happen Here!
One Physician’s Four Decades-Long Journey as Coroner in Rural North Idaho
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…..Two young quail hunters shuffled up a draw less than a quarter mile from a makeshift campsite on a USFS road. One of them kicked over some leaves and a jawbone. At first, thinking it was from a deer, they picked it up. There were dental fillings! No deer sports dental fillings. This was definitely human.
They brought it to the Kootenai County Sheriff's Office at about 4:30 p.m. My very good friend and colleague, Detective Brad Maskell took one look at the specimen and said, "Houston, we have a problem." He cancelled a family birthday party and set to work.
Detective Maskell went back to the original campsite with the hunters to localize the site and determine the search area. He set up a command post at the temporary campsite and established 24-hour security. Crime scene tape barred access to the area. During the rest of the weekend, Kootenai Search and Rescue assembled a team of searchers and briefed them on a search protocol. They combed the valley for a mile uphill, and the hillsides on either side in a grid search pattern. The terrain is steep and heavily wooded, with numerous deadfalls on the uneven ground. The process was slow and tedious.
Shortly, however, they began to find more skeletal remains scattered over a large area to the east of the draw. Each bone was photographed in situ (in-position), a numbered marker placed, and the individual bones placed in paper sacks and sealed. They located a femur, an intact pelvis, ribs, both ulnae, a radius, and several cervical and thoracic vertebrae. They found the skull, minus the previous mentioned jaw, near a fallen tree. Nearby, a bloodstained commemorative tee shirt with hundreds of sailor's names embossed on it was found nearby. The tee shirt was from the 1996–1997 deployment of the U.S.S. Navy Nimitz Aircraft Carrier based in Everett, Washington. They recovered a large piece of mummified, leathery skin with several incised wounds, and evidence of animal chewing around the edges. Many of the bones also showed evidence of carnivores chewing on the fragments.
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About the Book
When a loved one dies in a mysterious manner, we rely on coroners and medical examiners to tell us what happened. The stakes are high: Coroners seek justice for the dead, exoneration for the wrongfully accused, and closure for the families of victims. They are always on call and work closely with law enforcement.
Author Robert S. West, who served as a physician-coroner in rural Kootenai County, Idaho, from 1970 to 2011, delves into the challenges he faced on the job. While he often lacked resources, he always did the best he could to serve his community, solving numerous mysteries using the tactics of forensic medicine.
Dr. West also explores the shortcomings of the coroner/medical examiner system and how it can be improved. Widely varying educational requirements and unrealistic expectations need to be balanced in order to fill the shortage of forensic pathologists while enhancing the training of current coroners.
Join a coroner from rural northern Idaho as he looks back at his career’s most challenging cases and explains how to reform the system in It Can (and Does) Happen Here!
About the Author
Robert S. West, MD, FACS, is a native of North Dakota who was trained as a surgeon at Harvard. He is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and served as a physician-coroner in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, from 1970 to 2011. He practiced surgery while fulfilling coroner duties in Kootenai County and raised five children with his wife, Martha.