Deadhouse: Life in a Coronerâ??s Office

EPILOGUE

168 EPILOGUE Three years after Ed Strimlan and Mike Chichwak parted ways, they have found themselves working side by side once again. After working the day shift for a few months, Ed was promoted to a senior deputy coroner position and moved into the administrative offices on the second floor. Mike was promoted to an equivalent position in 2003. They miss regularly poking around at death scenes, so whenever the office is shorthanded they go out on calls. Their other old evening-shift partner, Tiffani Hunt, now works in the autopsy room as a technician, a more predictable job that better suits her personality. Dr. Bennet Omalu, the former resident pathologist, has returned to the coroner’s office as a full-fledged forensic pathologist, with a specialty in neuropathology, his ace in the hole. The parade of cases has continued, of course, and the coroner’s office staffers have long forgotten the ones they worked on in the summer of 2000. Ernest “Pickles” Harris’s trial is long over as well; sixteen months after his arrest, he testified that it was a case of self-defense, and a jury acquitted him. The regular day hours have given Ed the opportunity to pursue his longterm goal of teaching. He now teaches forensic investigation courses at three different colleges: the University of Pittsburgh, Carlow College, and Point Park University. He teaches four evening classes a week, making him just as busy as he was when he was juggling the night shift at the coroner’s office with his day job at Trax Farm. Ed didn’t seek out the teaching jobs; the colleges came to him. Asked why there is so much academic interest in forensics programs, Ed says the answer is obvious. “CSI,” he says. By CSI Ed means not just the one show, but the horde that followed its success , including the spin-off CSI: Miami and an NBC drama called Crossing Jordan, about a medical examiner in Boston. Cable television has joined the forensic pathology craze—A&E’s Silent Witness is a British series about a female pathologist. Documentaries are everywhere, too. HBO has Autopsy, Court TV has Forensic Files, and TLC has Medical Detectives. The “CSI effect,” as it’s called in the forensics community, is widespread. Now that forensic mysteries can be seen on TV just about every night of the week, thousands of college students are deciding that hunting criminals with science is what they want to do. And colleges and universities are doing their best to accommodate them. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the boom in interest has led to “higher enrollments, new degree programs, and even a few new faculty jobs.” West Virginia University, Oklahoma State University and Carlow College are among those who have developed new degree programs in recent years. Existing programs have exploded; George Washington University’s graduate forensics program has doubled in recent years to more than two hundred. CSI has sparked interest in the field, but it has not created more jobs in crime labs and medicolegal facilities. It remains to be seen whether the growing wave of forensic program graduates will be able to find jobs. Another potential problem with the trend is that the reality of forensic investigation may not live up to expectations created by TV. Much of the time, processing a crime scene is plodding work. “We have people calling in and emailing us regularly, saying, ‘I want to get into criminalistics,where do I go to school for that?’”Ed says.“They think they’ll walk out and become an investigator.I try to show them the diversity of the field: ballistics, chemistry, toxicology, pathology. They see guys on TV doing it all.” EPILOGUE 169 Ed also has fielded numerous calls at the coroner’s office from a novelist who is crafting a thriller featuring a serial killer who is an autopsy technician. Ed enjoys the fanfare his field is getting right now. Others find television’s dramatic depictions of forensics downright irritating. “One thing I don’t understand about those programs is why don’t they turn the lights on,” one deputy coroner says.“Ever notice that? They’re always working the scenes with flashlights. Turn a fucking light switch on—maybe that’ll help.” Even the autopsy rooms on TV are dramatically dark, whereas the most modern facilities have skylights and big windows...