Notorious Coroner Arrested -- Felon From Texas Worked At Rose Hill Junior High School

REDMOND - Ralph Erdmann had just about put his troubled past behind him.

He had moved away from the Texas town where his botched autopsies, eccentric habits and felony convictions were dinner-table topics. He had traded the national media spotlight for quiet anonymity in a suburban cul-de-sac. He had landed a job at the Rose Hill Junior High and even given a speech for students at a Veterans Day assembly.

But the 68-year-old former forensic pathologist apparently made one big mistake.

As a felon sentenced to 10 years of probation, Erdmann wasn't allowed to own guns.

And as Redmond Police discovered by chance Wednesday, Erdmann allegedly had 122 of them: shotguns, handguns and a fully automatic M-16 rifle.

"We were overwhelmed by the quantity," Redmond Police spokesman Ed Billington said.

Once the topic of a "60 Minutes" segment, Erdmann pleaded no contest to seven felonies tied to falsified evidence and botched autopsies in Lubbock, Texas, and two Texas counties. He surrendered his medical license in August 1992.

Redmond police learned about the gun collection during an unrelated investigation into possible child abuse. Police said the allegation proved unfounded, but as part of their routine questions detectives asked family members if there were guns in the house in the 7700 block of 135th Place Northeast.

The answer was yes.

Police called Department of Corrections officers, who can investigate a possible probation violation without a warrant. They found a trunk inside Erdmann's house filled with handguns and rifles.

Police then obtained a search warrant for the house, as well as a storage unit, and with Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents found the rest of the collection.

Before police counted the weapons, they estimated there were 300 guns, the number they initially gave the news media yesterday.

After taking an exact inventory, police then laid out the firearms for display. There were two tables lined with dozens of hunting-style rifles. Another held handguns, including inexpensive .22-caliber pistols and a 9mm World War II Luger. On another table was an M-16 assault rifle - an automatic weapon banned by federal law - and a 9mm semiautomatic assault-style weapon.

Billington said Erdmann had likely collected the guns, worth about $60,000, as a hobby.

Erdmann was being held in the King County Jail. Billington said he likely will be charged for being a felon in possession of a firearm. If convicted, he could face five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

As news of the arrest spread through Erdmann's neighborhood, the past he'd tried to conceal surfaced quickly.

"I was kinda startled to hear he'd been convicted of a felony," said Erdmann's next-door neighbor, Pete Fox. "He never said much about the past."

Familiar to many Texans, Erdmann's story gained national attention after allegations that he sometimes based his conclusions on police theories and on occasion didn't perform an autopsy when he reported he had. Some of his reports were rife with errors. Investigatorsexhumed a dozen bodies. .

In a 1992 profile, The Dallas Morning News said Erdmann trained for forensic pathology in the Army. He eventually handled bodies for 48 counties, earning $140,000 a year.

He reportedly used his house as a lab. In the "60 Minutes" segment, cameras recorded vials of blood and urine in his refrigerator, next to jelly and picante sauce.

The Associated Press reported in 1992 that Erdmann said he weighed the spleen of a 41-year-old man as part of an autopsy. But family members said the man's spleen had been removed years earlier.

Erdmann also reportedly once lost a victim's head. But in an interview with The Morning News, Erdmann admitted he threw the head away after police said the body had been identified and buried.

"What he was doing was very, very, very sloppy work," said Georgia attorney Millard Farmer, who represented a defendant in a death penalty case for which Erdmann had performed an autopsy. "And he was covering up his sloppy work by giving false testimony."

There was no one home at the Erdmann house yesterday afternoon. A rundown Oldsmobile plastered with bumper stickers: "It's hard to be humble when you're from Texas" and "I'll be a Longhorn till I die" sat in the driveway. A dirt bike, lawn mower, bowling ball, and other odds and ends littered the yard.

Joe Zvara, 18, who lives across the street, said the home's inside wasn't any more orderly.

"He's got all kinds of weird junk in there," Zvara said. "He's got all these stuffed animals and pigs feet hanging on the wall."

Erdmann was hired by the Lake Washington School District in September 1994 as a substitute teacher's assistant for special education.

A spokesman for the district, Dan Youmans, said Erdmann had worked for 86 days at Rose Hill Junior High and 32 days as a school-bus assistant.

Youmans said the district was aware of Erdmann's past.

"He told us he was on parole," Youmans said. "He did not say, `I am a convicted felon.' We found out from the background check what the nature of his crime was."

Erdmann was terminated for alleged insubordination April 5 from the $8.13-an-hour position. Youmans would not elaborate.

He said the district does not usually hire felons, but decided to make an exception because they believed his medical background made Erdmann well-qualified. They also talked to Erdmann's parole officer, who said he would not be a danger to children. "In retrospect we recognize we made an error in judgment in hiring him," Youmans said. The error, he said, was "in judging him as an individual."

Seattle Times East bureau reporters Katherine Long and Elizabeth Rhodes contributed to this report.