Coroner lives legacy of death

By DALE W. HLAVES Eagle Staff Writer

March 22, 2005 Last Updated: March 23, 2005 03:47 PM Special Sections

Father, son have served as coroner

Working with the dead is in Billy Young's blood.

William Foster Young III is the Butler County coroner and the funeral director of the Young Funeral Home on Jefferson Street.

His father, William "Digger" Young Jr., was the county coroner for almost 30 years.

Billy's great-grandfather, Breaden Young, founded the Young Funeral Home in 1896 in West Sunbury.

"I was raised in a graveyard," Billy said. "I have always worked around graveyards."

Young, who is serving his first elected term as coroner, has two part-time deputies who help with the pickup and removal of bodies and who are present for autopsies. The coroner appoints the deputies.

"This is a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week business," Young said. "We don't get holidays off. I try to give the deputies the holidays off, but it is tough."

Young said it is common for the coroner, who is elected to a four-year term, also to be a funeral director. Coroners, however, differ from medical examiners, who are licensed doctors or pathologists.

Once elected, coroners must complete a 32-hour course that covers the basics of crime-scene investigation, toxicology, forensic autopsies and the legal duties of a coroner. The coroner must then pass an examination, and must complete continuing education courses each year.

People don't become a coroner to get rich. Young is paid about $40,000 a year, while one deputy gets $12,000 and the other earns $10,000.

"I would like to get more money for my deputies," Young said.

He said the current hit television series "CSI" has actually made his job tougher. While the show has raised the profile of what medical examiners do, it also has made people more suspicious of Young.

For example, on occasion he will rule on a person's cause of death based on his experience. Now, because of the show, some people will ask questions or request specific details about the cause of death.

"The rule is when you first walk onto a scene of death, everything is considered to be a murder until proven otherwise," Young said. "It is my job to do that."

Young said the methods the characters on television use to solve a case are not always available to coroners in real life.

"We don't always have access to all of the technology that they do," he said. "Things tend to get blown out of proportion on television."

Young said he started working at an early age because he was raised by his parents to earn what he wanted.

Even though he is the fourth generation to work in the family business, the work is not fun or glamorous.

He said most of the forensic work is done by the police.

"I investigate the cause and manner of death," Young said. "Everything else is done by others."

He said when he first gets to a scene where there is a body, he takes many things into consideration, including the climate and temperature of the site and the position of the body.

He said the hardest cases are the ones that involve children."Being a coroner is doing a job that needs to be done," Young said. "I have been woken up at all hours of the night."Working in the graveyard is different because every day is different. You deal with different families in different locations," he said.Young said he works with families to get as much information about the deceased as he can.Young will use that information to help determine if an autopsy is necessary. As coroner, he ordered 90 autopsies conducted in the county in 2004. That was well above the average of 50 to 70 autopsies performed each year in the county.An autopsy costs about $1,000.Young said 65 years of age is normally the benchmark age he uses in determining whether to have an autopsy done.If they are younger than that, he considers an autopsy."People can die of natural causes at 65," Young said. "People don't normally die of natural causes at age 25."If Young sees anything that is questionable while observing a body, he will order an autopsy.If a person dies of a suicide, especially if there is a suicide note present, an autopsy will not be performed.If a single person is the victim of a single-vehicle fatal collision, no autopsy is performed.However, if there are passengers or multiple vehicles, an autopsy will be done for insurance reasons to assist the families of the victims.Young said the state requires a blood kit be run on every fatal vehicle accident. The kit is sent to Harrisburg, where it is tested for both alcohol and illegal drugs. The drug test was added in the past few years.Young said the district attorney's office requests drug tests for every heroin-related death in the county. A simple blood sample costs about $80, while a drug blood test can cost up to $1,000.Young keeps blood samples from all autopsies in vials donated by Butler memorial Hospital. He keeps them indefinitely.Although there is no law requiring a coroner to keep samples from an autopsy, Young keeps organ and tissue samples for many years in formaldehyde-filled jars.Two or three years ago, Young began preserving them in blocks of paraffin. The blocks replace the old jars and will last forever.Young used to take the bodies to the medical examiner for Allegheny County in Pittsburgh for autopsies, a process that could consume up to 10 hours. Now the autopsies are conducted at the funeral home by officials from Allegheny County.By doing the work here, an autopsy can be completed in two to three hours.Young said he was required to complete 120 hours at mortuary school to become certified as a funeral director.Young also helps maintain three privately run graveyards that are nonprofit organizations. He said people in the past used to take great care of graveyards, often doing the work without being asked simply because it needed to be done."People had a lot more respect for the dead 20 years ago than they do today," Young said.His father first took young Billy out on a call as coroner when he was 12 years old, and he has loved it ever since.

Here are the types of deaths investigated by the Butler County coroner in 2004:

Butler County 28Allegheny County: 2Driver 18Passenger 6Bicycle 1Motorcycle/quad 5Alcohol related: 11Total: 30

Fall 3Fire 1Hanging 1Asphyxiation 1Sledding 1Hunting 1Total: 8

Total: 1

Gun 8Hanging 4Total: 12

Gun 2Stabbing 1Total: 3

Total: 17

Total: 96

Total: 164SOURCE: Butler County coroner