Rural Missouri Coroners Face Steep Budget Shortfalls, Low Pay

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Shannon County Coroner Sam Murphy worked out of his house, drove his own car and used body bags from the state surplus. Murphy, who was paid less than $800 a month, didn’t have a cooler to store bodies.

When Danny Leo Green was the Cedar County deputy coroner, he did his work on a volunteer basis with no pay.

Wayne County Coroner Mark Smith went $10,000 over budget to ensure that toxicology and other key tests were done.

Coroners are among the lowest-paid elected officials in Missouri. They’re some of the first people to lay eyes on the deceased and one of the last to do so after certifying the death certificate. Coroners are one of the only officeholders required to be on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. The coroner is one of the few who gets woken up in the middle of the night to check out a dead body.

Coroners’ offices are often constrained by low budgets, which can affect many facets of the job, including the ability to order autopsies.

Dent County Coroner Ben Pursifull has a salary of $18,600 a year. On the job, he’s had to transport decomposing bodies for over two hours wearing a mask to protect himself from the odor and fumes.

“One year, I made less than $1 an hour,” Pursifull said. “And that’s a common occurrence across the state.”

Phelps County Coroner Ernie Coverdell works two jobs to “make ends meet.”

The position is sometimes considered part time. But the Dent County deputy coroner clocks a minimum of 48 hours weekly, and Pursifull is on call for 120 hours weekly. When both were reclassified as full-time employees, he said, neither salary was raised.

“They all think it’s a part-time job.”

Part-time versus full-time status is up to the discretion of the county commission. County commissions also approve coroner budgets and salary increases.

“I had no idea about all the politicking that went with the budgeting,” Pursifull said. “I’m 100% sure you’ve had people that have stepped into this office, got elected, realized it’s 10 times worse than what they ever imagined and didn’t do it.”

Pursifull had been fighting for a new vehicle for two years — he had an old, run-down Suburban — when he finally had enough. After being called to a particularly nasty decomposition, he went to a county commissioner’s house at 9 p.m. to ask for help.

After one look inside a house with a body that had been decomposing for two weeks, the commissioner turned around and left. The next day, county commissioners received a selfie: Pursifull wearing a respirator in the Suburban with a full body bag in the back seat. In another instance, he had to use the bed of his personal pickup truck because the body had decomposed to the point that it was too leaky to put in the Suburban.

In Perry County, a previous coroner ran a funeral home in tandem with the coroner’s office. Lots of Missouri coroner’s offices operate this way because a funeral home provides coolers, transportation and body bags.

Pursifull bought his office iPads with cash so that he wouldn’t have to go through his commission. Lincoln County was denied radios.

“Every one of us has used our own personal money on stuff for the office,” said Dan Heavin, the Lincoln County coroner and president of the Missouri Coroner’s and Medical Examiner’s Association.

Coverdell recently wrote a letter to the Phelps County Commission explaining that he believes the coroner’s office cannot properly fulfill its statutory responsibilities. He alleges that this is due to the county commission not providing his office with adequate resources, such as a morgue or facility to store bodies and manage death investigations.

Coverdell’s letter argues that the commission’s “refusal” to provide the necessary equipment for the coroner’s office violates Missouri statute. The statute stipulates that the county must provide space for county officers, such as the coroner, to properly perform their duties.

Currently, Coverdell is using a local cremation site to store bodies at $75 per day per body. He said he spent $8,300 on storage fees last year.

Coverdell said he is pushing for what he needs to do the job right. From the other perspective, Joey Auxier, the Phelps County presiding commissioner, said he told Coverdell twice that he had to include what his office needs, including a morgue, in his budget.

“Coverdell is making the commission out to be the bad guy,” Auxier said.

When Coverdell took office, the Phelps County Commission knew that he was “way underpaid and under-budgeted,” so, they doubled both his salary and budget. When the state tried to pull back his salary increase because it was a raise given midterm, the commission stood its ground, Auxier said.

When current Perry County Coroner Bill Bohnert was elected in 2016, his salary was roughly $16,000. That didn’t meet his needs, so he worked with the county commission to increase his salary by almost 2.5 times, obtain an office and fund a car, coolers and equipment.

The original salary was based on the assessed value of his county, as called for by Missouri statute. To increase a coroner’s salary, the county commission gets the final stamp of approval.

County commissioners all think it’s a part-time job, Bohnert said.

“I think every corner is rudely awakened to the fact that the commissioners — I’m not saying this to give commissioners a black eye — but the commissioners just don’t care about the coroner’s office,” Pursifull said.

Allocating taxpayer dollars

One of a coroner’s key responsibilities is determining the cause of death. When a coroner needs to know beyond the shadow of a doubt why someone died, that’s when an autopsy is ordered. Such circumstances can include if foul play is suspected in a criminal case or if there’s no hypothesis for the cause of death.

Pursifull said he is very conscious of the fact that he’s using taxpayer money for autopsies. In a handful of circumstances where he’s on the fence about ordering an autopsy, he’s chosen not to do one because he’s spending almost $3,000 of taxpayer money to confirm an answer he’s 75% sure about.

When Bollinger County Coroner Calvin Troxell took office four years ago, $10,000 would cover almost five autopsies. Now it doesn’t go nearly as far.

A typical autopsy costs anywhere between $2,500 to $3,750 at discounts for Missouri coroners.

“You can send a county into bankruptcy,” Cedar County Coroner Danny Leo Green said when referring to a surplus of autopsies.

Budgeting can always be unpredictable; it’s impossible to know how many crime scenes or deaths under the purview of the coroner’s office will happen in any year. Reallocating money is a part of doing business, said Joe Gildehaus, president of the Missouri County Commissioners Association and the Warren County presiding commissioner.

“No budget’s ever perfect, there’s always something that comes up,” Gildehaus said. “You really want to try to make your budgets balanced so you don’t have no big, big surprises.”

Checks and balances are needed when there’s a process to approve using taxpayer dollars, said Nora Powell, the former Cedar County coroner. Her office was budgeted two autopsies a year. When she needed additional funding, she went to the county commission. In her county, it was less about the commission not wanting to hand over money, but instead being unable to.

“It was a pain in the butt process,” former Cedar County Deputy Coroner Frank Brumfield said.

Powell understood where the commissioners were coming from as they had their own budget constraints. She saw funding from the perspective of the whole county’s budget.

“The struggle is, where does the money come from? In small counties and poor counties, there’s only so many dollars to pull from,” Powell said.

When she was the county coroner, she was never refused an autopsy that had to be done, but “there was no unlimited checkbook, that’s for sure,” she said.

She made do with as much as possible, such as using her own computer or a borrowed computer for work.

“You can’t survive at $13,650 a year.”

Pursifull holds a full-time job aside from being his county’s coroner; many Missouri coroners have a second job, he said. As a paramedic, he makes more working one overtime shift per month over 12 months than one full year as a coroner.

If Bollinger County Coroner Calvin Troxell wasn’t retired and living off of his 401k, there’s no way he could have run for coroner, he said.

“I mean, you can’t survive at $13,650 a year,” Troxell said.

When he was Cedar County’s deputy coroner, Brumfield had a salary of $49 a month while still working full time for the police department. He drove his personal vehicle, was reimbursed for gas and used his own testing equipment as a crime scene specialist.

When the previous head coroner retired, Brumfield was coaxed into running, but the $15,000 a year salary couldn’t convince him. He and his wife also wanted to take vacations, a luxury that most coroners don’t have.

Coroners have an obligation to stay put in their county, Pursifull said. There are half a dozen restaurants in Salem, where Pursifull lives. If he wants to drive 25 miles north to Rolla to take his wife out to dinner, he feels as though he can’t. He has to be in Dent County to respond to a death.

Coroners leave birthday parties, errands and holidays for death calls — no exception. As a coroner, your phone is always on, Brumfield said.

When the Coroner Standards and Training Commission convened in September, recommendations by multiple members included a coroner compensation that reflected a “reasonable, full-time salary.” Additional recommendations included classifying coroners as full time, as opposed to those who are considered part time.

Why would anyone become a coroner?

Bollinger County Coroner Troxell said coroners are like the airbag in your car or the concealed weapon in your purse, because no one ever wants to see them. The only thing the public wants is for them to work perfectly if they need them.

“We’re always pushed to the back. We’re the last one thought about,” Taylor said. “But when we’re needed, we’re the first ones they call.”

The coroner is about half a step above a dog catcher, Powell said.

Why do people become coroners in Missouri? The vast majority do it just to help out, Pursifull said.

When he was a volunteer deputy coroner, Green was doing it for the people, not the money. On Jan. 1, he took over as the head coroner with a salary of around $15,000.

“You’re helping people during one of the hardest times of their lives,” he said.

Troxell is in his position because of his love for his county and being able to serve folks in a time of need. When he started in the coroner industry, he already had 25 years working with the fire department under his belt. He felt pulled not only to serve but to continue his service.

“I serve my country locally,” Troxell said.