Spokane's Coroner Is Not So Dearly Departed

SPOKANE - Dexter Amend finished packing this week, finished taking down his portraits of Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln, finished signing his last death certificates and finally walked out of the courthouse, Spokane County's 15th and final coroner.

Four former coroners died in office. But Amend killed the position.

In his first two years as coroner, he was probably Spokane's best-known resident. Amend sparked national outrage with a one-man campaign against gay men. He fought off a statewide recall effort. He was sued five times by grieving families angered by something he said or did. He helped prompt a new state medical-examiner law and got the people of Spokane County to vote to change something.

Then Amend disappeared. For the past two years, the Spokane County coroner has toiled away in his office, tucked in a mailroom down the hall from the rest of the coroner's office in the Spokane County Courthouse. The door was always closed. The coroner's office hasn't had a sign since someone ripped it down and left it in the hallway. Other county workers say they rarely see Amend. No one has publicly accused the doctor of anything at all, except sticking around.

On Tuesday, he signed 10 death certificates and then had a small going-away party with six deputy coroners. He ate submarine sandwiches, which are his favorite. He gave each of his deputy coroners a framed and signed certificate of "great support to the coroner's office."

He says he's glad to go. "The stress of having to deal with so many dead people just gets to you after a while," says the 79-year-old Amend, who signed about 1,500 death certificates over the past four years.

Dr. George Lindholm takes over

Dr. George Lindholm takes over today. Lindholm, the forensic pathologist who has done most of the autopsies in Spokane County since 1985, will be the county's first medical examiner. He hopes to establish a methodical system of investigating deaths. He wants to run a quiet office.

"Ask yourself, in King County, how many people know that Dr. Donald Reay is the head of the medical examiner's office?" says Lindholm, who publicly bucked Amend several times. "If it's working well, you don't know it even exists. With any luck, we'll be heading for oblivion."

Five Washington counties now have medical examiners: Clark, King, Pierce, Snohomish and Spokane. Medical examiners are forensic pathologists who typically do most of the autopsies in a county and investigate suspicious deaths. A coroner doesn't have to be a doctor, although Amend was a urologist for 43 years. Coroners don't perform autopsies but order them from forensic pathologists. A coroner's primary job is investigating causes of death, signing death certificates, dealing with grieving families and managing paper.

The importance of records

That paper is important. Death statistics point to trends, whether in disease, accidents or suicides. A death certificate is a valuable piece of paper when dealing with a life-insurance company that pays double for an accidental death and nothing for a suicide. A death certificate is part of a family's history that can say whether a grandfather drank too much or suffered a congenital heart problem.

During his term, Amend ordered autopsies at a much lower rate than the national average. He was accused of filling out death certificates sloppily, of letting his moral issues with alcohol and drugs affect his decisions.

But he first got into trouble when he opened his mouth.

First came Rachel Carver, a 9-year-old girl brutally murdered by her uncle. Amend told a TV station that Rachel had been sodomized and coined new forms of the word "sodomy." He indirectly blamed gay men and "the homosexual lifestyle" for the girl's death. The national media landed.

"It was an interesting situation," Amend says. "We were getting phone calls from New York and Los Angeles, people saying I should never say anything about child abuse or sodomy."

"Because it's such a touchy subject," adds his wife, who calls her husband "doctor."

After the furor over Rachel Carver started, Amend was accused of asking a mother of a 16-year-old girl, dead from a shot to the head, whether the victim had been sodomized by gang members.

Amend then asked relatives of an 11-year-old boy, killed in a fire, whether he had ever masturbated.

Family members of these youths sued Amend. So did Carol Weltz, after Amend said her husband killed himself with an overdose of cocaine and heroin. Toxicology tests later showed no lethal amounts of any drugs.

Carol Weltz got nothing from her husband's insurance until she pressed Amend to change the death to an accident.

Weltz finally settled this year with Amend for $1,500 for her husband's children. She said she couldn't face more time in court. Three more lawsuits filed against Amend are still crawling through the courts. One other lawsuit was settled with a change in the death certificate.

"We weren't in it for the money," Weltz says. "We were in it to get him out of office, so he couldn't do this to anyone else."

Nothing could get Amend out of office.

More than 35,000 people signed a recall petition, but the state Supreme Court threw it out. The state panel that regulates doctors filed charges against Amend that could have stripped him of his medical license. But Amend, after a three-day hearing, barely got slapped, with a $1,000 fine and 20 hours of sensitivity training.

His lawyer, Hugh Lackie, has continually said that anything Amend did, he did as a coroner, and all his actions were part of the coroner's duty to investigate deaths.

People started saying that there ought to be a law. And soon enough, there was one, signed by then-Gov. Mike Lowry, the same governor who wrote a nasty letter to Amend telling him to knock it off.

The law allowed counties of a certain population - namely Clark and Spokane - to vote whether to have a medical examiner. Two years ago, more than 80 percent of Spokane County voters said they'd like one. So did Clark County voters.

Amend still got to finish his term.

No regrets

On Tuesday night, sitting in the driver's seat of his Plymouth Voyager, Amend said he didn't regret a thing, just the media attention. Amend fingered a fish bolo tie, made for him by a former patient, and pursed his lips like he was chewing as he talked. His wife stood outside the door and peppered her husband of almost 57 years with "Don't get started" and just plain "Don't."

It's tough to stop Amend from talking, though, once he gets started. He'll say he likes to make a difference for grieving people, likes to help them understand death through God. He'll bring up gays and sodomy, if you let him.

"Now we're back to the time where all this gay stuff happened," he said, responding to nothing.

"Don't," his wife said. And a little later, when asked how he feels about gay people, Yvonne Amend shook her head and told him that's what got him in trouble in the first place.

"It's just the people who carry on with male-sex-on-male," Amend said.

"And then the intravenous drug users," his wife added.

Legal bills remain

People in Spokane say they've gotten along with Amend recently. Even though he's gone, however, he'll continue to cost the county, which must pay his legal bills, so far almost $150,000. The county will also have to shell out $871,000 for the medical examiner's budget, almost 44 percent more than what the coroner's office cost. Lindholm will make almost three times what Amend was paid, which last year was $47,700 plus benefits.

But doctors say a medical examiner will be worth the extra money. For years, the Spokane County Medical Society has pushed for a medical examiner to make the office more professional, more thorough and more accurate.

"Maybe his legacy, in a positive spin, was he was responsible for the medical examiner," says Dr. Philip Werschler, medical-society president during Amend's toughest year. "Maybe it's better, instead of going out in a rage of controversy, he just silently slides away."

Amend has plans for his retirement. He wants to finish writing a book, "Survival After 50." He'll work on growing fig trees in Spokane and hope that some trees he sent to the Philippines take root. He'd like to start a fig industry there. He'll care for six cows and two calves. He'll spend time with his children. Four of the couple's six children are neighbors on the family spread of 210 acres.

Amend says he is happy about the switch to the medical-examiner system. He likes to talk about the volunteer chaplain program he set up for grieving families, and his efforts to get mortuaries to hold the ashes of indigent people. "More respect for the dead," he says.

From his job, he also remembers comforting grieving families. He remembers switching the coroner's office from a handwritten ledger to a modern computer system. He remembers writing a comprehensive history of the county's coroners, dating back to 1889. He doesn't remember a reporter who has written dozens of stories about him. He is not sure how it all started.

"What I remember is, I thought I was doing good, but later I felt a strain come on," Amend says.

His wife pats his shoulder. "We did good," she adds. "For a couple of old folks, we did pretty good."

Kim Barker's phone message number is 464-2255. Her e-mail address is: kbarker@seattletimes.com