MOUNT VERNON — Knox County Coroner Jennifer Ogle, M.D., said her office needs a permanent facility to store bodies and better compensation for the nurses who serve as her death investigators.
Knox County currently has no morgue. The coroner’s office stores bodies in a cooler at the Knox County Sheriff’s Office. Although it is rated to hold three bodies, Ogle is not comfortable with that.
“I won’t put three bodies in there because it’s not appropriate,” she said. “As a coroner, you don’t stack bodies.”
Ogle said when that space is full, the office has relied on two spots at Knox Community Hospital. Funeral homes and autopsy facilities previously held bodies but have stopped for various reasons.
“There’s just been a change in the way people manage bodies, and there’s been a lot more indigent bodies,” Ogle told the county commissioners. “People don’t always want to claim their [loved one]. Even if they love their mother, they don’t want the expense of a funeral sometimes.
“So there’s a lot more bodies out there that we don’t quite know what to do with.”
Ogle said the problem has worsened over the past four to five years amid a growing homeless population and cultural shifts that have left more unclaimed remains.
Lack of space also means law enforcement frequently must wait at a scene while her office figures out where to put the body.
“So they were getting very frustrated. I didn’t blame them; it was really a big problem for that. It replicates into other issues,” she said.
Ogle said a permanent morgue does not need to house administrative staff because the death investigators are nurses who also work in Ogle’s medical practice.
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A potential solution is the building at 17602 Coshocton Road currently used by water and wastewater staff. They will move to a new administration building in Apple Valley.
County Administrator Jason Booth said the interior walls are not load-bearing and can be removed to create an open space.
Renovations would add a garage door to allow for pull-in vehicle access.
Needs include a generator, walk-in cooler for four to six bodies, and a lift to raise bodies to the higher shelves.
“I don’t want to do what we did this time, which is we got something small to kind of limp along. It’s helped, but it’s not at all ideal,” Ogle said. “It’s created stress in lots of different areas in the sheriff’s office.”
Ogle would also like a freezer for long-term storage.
“You don’t want to chill the body for a year. You want a better way, a more dignified way, to manage those remains,” she said.
Increased pay for death investigators
The coroner’s office employs three investigators: an office administrator who is a trained death investigator, chief investigator and death investigator.
Each receives a flat base salary per two-week pay period ($640, $309 and $200, respectively) plus $250 per case when they respond to a scene.
Ogle said the average pay for a medical legal death investigator in Ohio is about $35 an hour. Minimum wage is $11.
“I rely pretty heavily upon my staff to be helpful to me. They’re amazing at what they do, and they’re getting paid less than minimum wage. They deserve better than that,” she said.
“You’re asking these people to get up on Christmas and go. You’re asking them to go in the middle of the night. They’re on call all the time.”
Ogle said she wants to increase investigators’ base pay as well as more per case.
“It’s hard to get up at 2 in the morning and go to a scene where you’re going to be up all night, maybe covered in blood,” she said. “You’re asking a lot of someone to do that.”
Ogle said the pay does not reflect the full scope of the job. Work also includes answering questions, dealing with the public, attending meetings such as child fatality review and working on mass fatality plans for the county.
“There’s a lot of administrative stuff that’s added up over the years that wasn’t there in the beginning,” she said. “There’s nothing that isn’t high stress or high emotion.”
The commissioners asked Ogle to prepare a report listing current pay, how it is structured and recommendations for change.
The role of a coroner’s office
Ogle’s office responds to various situations, including auto fatalities and hospital and home deaths, depending on the circumstances surrounding the case.
However, investigators field numerous phone calls trying to decide whether the office will accept the case.
The office accepts about 60 a year, but Ogle said many are dismissed to get to those 60.
“Once we take it as a coroner case, we’re spending taxpayer money. So, we need to be very careful about what we accept and what we don’t accept as a coroner’s case,” she said.
“At the same time, we need to keep the public safe by making sure we’re making enough to do that job.”
The office has no vehicles of its own. Investigators use personal cars, and an outside contractor handles body transport after funeral homes stopped providing that service.
Ogle said she has intentionally kept the office’s budget and operations small.
“My goal when I started as a coroner 18 years ago was to do things very simply and very easily,” she said. “I like to keep things small, simple and easy, but still do a really good job.”
