I am sickend by what I have read. Our 18 year old son died from a horrific MVA is seattle January of 2006 and to think his body could of been used for most digusting picture is unthinkable to me. What do they do with these pictures are they out there for the world to see on the internet? That is my baby they did this to. I am emotionally not doing well with this at all. I have had a hard time with the way he died in the first place and to now find this out does not help my healing process. They should all be fired. How can people be so numb to the feelings of others and to care so little for the ones they deeply love. Our son was a fine young man and deserved to be taken care of with the most repsect. God forgive them and may our son forgive us for letting such a practice happen. Just sick........

King 5 should be ashamed for such a sensationalized report filled with unbelievable inaccuracies and exaggerated claims. One should question how thorough an "Investigation" this piece of tabloid journalism performed. Did Ms. Byron do any background work on her source's legitimacy? Does anyone wonder why former employees are just that? Or a possible agenda? Unfortunately, the result of such ratings-seeking "reporting" is at the expense of the citizens' of King County. The Medical Examiner's Office provides a sensitive, caring, professional, and trustful service.

Anon, it seems the report has you at a disadvantage. A further investigation of the office is in order to ensure that the people's trust is not being abused and you are not being taken for a blind minded ignorant.

This seems to be normal for ME office. Snohomish county has had a dozen employees leave claiming hostile work environment and mis management and some of them are doctors.

Cheryl Anderson has no idea what she is talking about. As a former employee who left under the hostile circumstances I can attest to the accuracy of the information in the article, and there are plenty of other problems within that office that still have not been addressed. But of course these type of problems are rampant throughout the King County System. While some of the employees did their best to be respectful and caring there efforts were hampered by individuals who are still employed by the KCMEO.

Cheryl please accept my apologies I read the blogs wrong, I should have written that ANON doesn't know what they are talking about. Again sorry for the mistake.

If you wish a sensational story, then "disgruntled former employees" are the best source. They have nothing to lose and axes to grind. However, investigators can't talk with employees who are still there and are satisfied with their work. So who can you believe? I suggest readers and viewers consider that the purpose of "investigative" journalism is to sell air and internet time, and not necessarily do good things for the community. Just a thought...

I have been working in Forensics for several years. I have worked as an Autopsy Assistant for the past 3 years, but I specialize in Forensic Photography. After reading this article it saddens me to know that there are people in the field who have no regards for the dead and their loved ones. As for myself, I have had the honor of working for a few great offices. All of which are known for their training techniques, learning facilities for law enforcement agencies and medical students, and the caliber of Medical Examiners are unsurpassable. The treatment and behavior amongst employees and their peers and the remains of the deceased would never happen where I have worked. However, on the OTHER HAND, I recently had the joyful experience of working with a local county (cough cough...Snohomish), wow. I am quite fortunate to have had the training, and unbelievably positive experience that I did BEFORE my working with Snohomish County. They need serious, guidance.

same as at the Everett office. they have lost bodies and mixed up bodies but you cant get the records so they just say they were doing more tests and there is no way to prove it. It takes forever for them to finish a report and they offer no excuses

Anon, I think you are wrong. I too have witnessed many problems at the ME's office. From the tantrums and bullying by Joe Frisino, the lying by Greg Hewett and the failure by anyone (except a handful that said "stop" and were forced to leave) to do anything but stand around and quietly watch. It says a great deal about the principles of the people who remain working there. We looked at many of the lawsuits and complaints that have been filed against the ME and they reveal far more that what the news has reported. But what do you expect when you have an office that performs death investigations and autopsies and it is run by a Manager (Hewett) who has never done either. Actually, it was reported that he was previously "let go" from his previous job after lying about employees (probably disgruntled ones Anon). Not to mention that the senior staff members have never taken any courses to help become a better employee (Frisino who was relegated to doing the job of an admin assistant while remaining at the top of the pay scale). What kind of a competent and credible ME would allow these practices? The information in the article is accurate Anon and you are speaking beyond your experience.
As for problems in the Everett and the Snohomish ME's office, That ME did his training at the King County ME's office. Surprise, surprise!
I have been to several ME offices across the country and found most to be run by professionals in a professional manner. Not the King County office. But it is King County after all and none of this will ever get investigated with any legitimacy. What will remain as "normal" is the level of their dysfunction and the fact that taxpayers fund it.

Anon, you are so obviously deluded, so much so that it's as if you are trying to protect yourself or should I say defend yourself. Either way you still have no idea what you are talking about. Maybe you should try finding out how many lawsuits, and complaints have been filed with the King County EOC because of the harassment employees have experienced, even the assistant ME left under duress because of the harassment. There are real problems in that office. someone needs to clean the upstairs of that house.

anon, you are wrong. open up these offices and talk to current and past employees as well as airing the buried complaints from families. This will be a way to clean up the system and do good for the community that pays for the service.

Duey, not only did King County ME office lose their asst ME who could not/would not tolerate the incompetence of the leadership, many of the capable talented doctors who fled ended up at snohomish county ME, and guess what, discovered that the hhostile atmosphere was exactly the same, and left there too. ANd guess what, that office is run by former King county people and the Evertt office has even worse history because nobody at all is looking under the forensic microscope at it!(yet) The high turn over rate and law suit and formal complaint history for this small department sure could make one of those "sensational" stories. However I dont think that exposing the abuse of tax payers money is sensational. Fat rises to the top and Snohomish Co ME is overloaded with (mis)management. Seems like Ms. Byron didn't report anything that wasn't factual. You can tell because when they were exposed they changed what they were doing.

Get a job!

This sort of blog on a news station is an insult to good journalism and reporting. This cheap investigating reporting was nothing more than a soapbox for disgruntled employees who were either let go or resigned because of their lack of performance.
King 5 credible sources are not too credible. First they interview a fired investigator. One might ask, why was he fired? Better yet, a little investigation on KING 5 into his past, one might ask, why is he no longer a cop? Do we see a pattern?
The credible autopsy technician was anything but credible. How many claims has she brought against past employers? Is there a pattern? And of course, the credible pathologist King 5 spoke too. Why is she no longer at King County? Does being a bigot against races have anything to do with it? Why isn't she at Snohomish County? Surprise? Her pattern followed her and thank god she is out of the state and someone elses' problem. Credible sources? hell no. It is a shame that ratings to a news station is more important than harming good employees who work every day at the Medical Examiner's Office doing a very difficult job. These ex employees need to get a job and a life. King 5 needs to get a new investigator with some skill in doing good reporting.

I have to agree with realtruth. We do see a pattern here.
As for why people choose to change professions, whether it be firefighting, police work or performing autopsies, there are a thousand reasons for choosing or being forced into another line of work (just ask the 9 recently fired Federal Prosecutors). One possibility is they choose not to remain in a hostile work environment. When half your resignations allege a hostile work environment, retaliation and sexual harassment you have to wonder. Especially in an office that has about 25 employees. Do we see a pattern?
I'm uncertain why you raised the issue of a female pathologist that moved to Snohomish and then moved to another state because I don't recall the story ever mentioning such a person. I do recall a female pathologist in King County who raised concerns over the hiring of an inexperienced, untrained white male employee over the hiring of a qualified and experienced female black employee. You may be right that a "bigot against races" could be the culprit. Do we see a pattern?
Lax security practices, Child deaths not being reported to CPS, employees operating a crime scene cleanup business out of the office (with county supplies), child homicides being overlooked by investigators only to be discovered when the suspect turns himself in, a supervisors constant tirades and vulgarities aimed at subordinate employees, that same supervisors failure to perform yearly employee evaluations, an autopsy supervisor who lied on his application for promotion, employees spending hours surfing the internet, lost and misplaced paperwork and an office manager who is investigated but nobody is told why. These are just a few of the complaints we know about. Were any of these complaints investigated or the employees disciplined? No. Do we see a pattern?
You're right realtruth, we DO see a pattern.
It would be refreshing to see the Chief Medical Examiner, one of the highest paid public officials in WA State, address these questions before the County Council, the Board of Health and the press. His silence is deafening!
Realtruth, I think you're an insider and as Duey put it: "so much so that it's as if you are trying to protect yourself or should I say defend yourself".

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.

The one function that TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were.

Get your facts first, and then you can distort 'em as much as you please.

If you're not careful, the journalists will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.

Television has a real problem. They have no page two. Consequently every big story gets the same play and comes across to the viewer as a really big, scary one.

I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.

Journalism - a profession whose business it is to explain to others what it personally does not understand.

The only gossip I'm interested in is things from the Weekly World News - 'Woman's bra bursts, 11 injured'. That kind of thing.

Television news is like a lightning flash. It makes a loud noise, lights up everything around it, leaves everything else in darkness and then is suddenly gone.

All television is children's television.

Don't you wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence? There's one marked 'Brightness,' but it doesn't work.

An editor should have a pimp for a brother so he’ll have someone to look up to.

Some years ago I discovered to my horror that news media companies need to make money.

In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.

Being a television journalist is as much a diagnosis as a job description.

I do not mean to be the slightest bit critical of TV newspeople, who do a superb job, considering that they operate under severe time constraints and have the intellectual depth of hamsters.

Laziness has become the chief characteristic of television journalism, displacing incompetence.

The lowest form of popular culture - lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people's lives - has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.

The First Law of Journalism: to confirm existing prejudice, rather than contradict it.

If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people - including me - would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

If a person is not talented enough to be a novelist, not smart enough to be a lawyer, and his hands are too shaky to perform operations, he becomes a journalist

Television Journalism is full of lying, cheating, drunken, cocaine-sniffing, unethical people. It's a wonderful profession.--

So much for Objective Journalism. Don't bother to look for it here — not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.

"Great liars are also great magicians."

"It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place."

Opinions are like Don Halberg....everybody has one.

What does that even mean? Everyone has an opinion like Don Halberg? Everyone is like Don Halberg? Everyone should be like ... well, you get the idea. Is English your second language? People who don't have a basic grasp on how to compose an idea on paper shouldn't write blogs.

Sha na na na, sha na na na na,
Sha na na na, sha na na na na,
Sha na na na, sha na na na na,
Sha na na na, sha na na na na,
Yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip
Mum mum mum mum mum mum
Get a job Sha na na na, sha na na na na
Every morning about this time
she get me out of my bed
a-crying get a job.
After breakfast, everyday,
she throws the want ads right my way
And never fails to say,
Get a job Sha na na na, sha na na na na
Sha na na na, sha na na na na,
Sha na na na, sha na na na na,
Sha na na na, sha na na na na,
Yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip
Mum mum mum mum mum mum
Get a job Sha na na na, sha na na na na
And when I get the paper
I read it through and through
And my girl never fails to say
If there is any work for me,
And when I go back to the house
I hear the woman's mouth
Preaching and a crying,
Tell me that I'm lying 'bout a job
That I never could find.
Sha na na na, sha na na na na,
Sha na na na, sha na na na na,
Sha na na na, sha na na na na,
Sha na na na, sha na na na na,
Yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip
Mum mum mum mum mum mum
Get a job Sha na na na, sha na na na na

"Uh, long distance, directory-assistance, area code 212",
I said, "Hey mama, this is Mr. Rhythm-and-Blues"
He said hello and put me on hold
To say the least, the cat was cold
He said, "Don't call us, child, we'll call you"
I said, "You got my number?"
He said, "Yeah, I got it when you walked in the door."

Don't call us...we'll call you
Don't call us...we'll call you

"I got your name from a friend of a friend
Who said he used to work with you
Do you remember the all-night preacher from Stereo-92?"
I said, "Could you relate to our quarter-track tape?
You know the band performs in the nude."
He said, "Uh-uh, don't call us, we'll call you."

"Listen kid, you pay for the call
You ain't bad, but we 've heard it all before
Yeah, it sounds like John, Paul and George."

Anyway, we cut a hit and toured a bit,
With the song he said he couldn't use
And now he calls, and begs and crawls,
It's telephone Deja Vu
We got percentage points and lousy joints
And all the glitter we can use, mama,
So, huh, don't call us, we'll call you!

You may have heard this one before, too:
"Listen kid, you pay for the call
Well, you ain't bad but I've heard it all before."

Don't call us...we'll call you.
Don't call us...we'll call you.

WHAT?