Idaho May Have a Coroner Problem

In its investigation of Idaho's coroner system, ProPublica unearthed a line from a national magazine in 1951 asserting that the state is "the best place in the nation for a criminal to 'get away with murder' in the literal sense" because of its "antiquated county coroner's system." More than a half-century later, the story by Audrey Dutton suggests things haven't improved much. "Most of the county coroners in Idaho are part-time elected officials with tiny budgets and no oversight or state funding to support their work," and that often leads to what national experts interviewed describe as "cursory" investigations, writes Dutton. It's also a big reason why Idaho is last in the nation in terms of autopsies conducted in cases of known homicide, and third last overall.

The story focuses in particular on the case of Clayton Strong, who drove the body of his 75-year-old wife to a small hospital in Idaho and claimed she had died peacefully after years of struggle with Parkinson's disease. Nobody checked to see whether any of that was true before she was cremated. Her children from another marriage raised the alarm after the fact. (Strong had prevented them from visiting their mother in her final years, sometimes at gunpoint.) A few years later, Strong's next wife was shot to death in Texas, and he died of cardiac arrest while in custody after being arrested. At the very least, the children of the first woman, Betty Strong, say the second woman, Shirley Weatherley, might have been saved if a proper investigation had been conducted. They are pushing for Idaho to enact tougher protocols and improve the coroner system overall. (Read the full story.)