Coroner Martin will retire after 37 years of service

Jana Mathia, Gazette Reporter | Jan 25, 20180

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pete martin

Pete Martin will retire March 1, 2018, after serving as the longest-running, consecutively-elected official in the state.

County Coroner Peter Martin submitted a letter Jan. 22 to announce his retirement as of March 1, 2018.

“I have found that the position as Coroner very challenging and satisfying. I was appointed Coroner in 1981 and have dramatically changed the office to a professional and well-respected office. My Chief Deputy Coroner, Annie Pillers, and the deputy coroners are excellent and will continue to serve the public well,” he stated in his letter.

Martin’s brief letter does little to portray nearly four decades in the post he has held since its creation in Whitman County. At 72, he is the longest coninuously serving elected official in the state. During that time he has seen the coroner case load quadruple, filled in as sheriff, owned and operated a rural clinic and provided medical care at the jail. The only time he was in any contested election was when he ran for county commissioner in 1988 and lost 52 to 48 percent following a student voting wave.

Martin was appointed to the county coroner position in 1981 when Whitman County went from a fourth class county to a third class county. In that transition, the county gained a coroner’s department which beforehand had been handled by the prosecutor. As it had been part of the prosecutor’s job before, the coroner position is on the same election schedule. Martin, who was working as a physician’s assistant at the St. John clinic, was appointed to a two-year term before being elected.

At first, the coroner position was part-time and only had about 30 cases per year. In 2006, it went from part-time to full-time pay, although Martin noted the hours had not necessarily been restricted to part-time.

“We were always at it, you’re always on-call,” he said of the coroner’s office.

The increase in the number and types of cases was one of the biggest changes Martin saw during his tenure.

“More complicated cases,” he said of the workload today. When he started, most of the approximately 30 cases were traffic accidents, natural causes, SIDS and suicides; there were very few violent deaths, he noted.

Now the office handles around 120 cases per year. They see more drug overdoses, death of children, more homicides―especially violent homicides―and more motor vehicle accidents. Drug use and the variety of drugs has been a big factor that he anticipates will continue to increase over time. He noted college age people utilize more narcotics and overdose. Marijuana, while not the substance overdosed on, becomes a driver to other drugs that are overdosed.

The biggest change to the coroner’s job he has seen is the amount of education and training needed.

“When I started there wasn’t really any formal training,” he said. Now it takes about nine months to train a new deputy coroner. Part of that training is in the reporting which is more detailed and time consuming.

On-scene forensic findings is a big part of what the coroner does. The coroner and his deputies have to be better trained for on-scene findings, looking at the body and what is immediately around it as part of determining cause of death. Shows like “CSI” have made people more aware of forensics and elevated their expectations, especially regarding the speed at which results can be determined.

“They see it all, and they think you can do it. We have to tell them that’s make-believe,” Martin said.

The coroner does not preform autopsies. Those are done in Yakima by a pathologist from the coast. Martin said Whitman County has about 15 autopsies a year at a cost of $2,000 a piece.

Another big change has been the cooperation between the different law enforcement providers. Early on, each department kept to its geographic coverage area. That practice has eroded to where the city, county, state and WSU law officers all work together.

“I cooperate with all law enforcement,” he said.

Part of that change came from more training, professionalism and communication among the officers.

“That goes along with what we’ve done, better education,” he said.

For most of his time as coroner, Martin has had multiple irons in the fire. He owned and operated the Tekoa Medical Clinic from 1990 until Dec. 31, 2013, as a physician’s assistant.

“We did a lot of good service,” he said.

Martin took over the clinic from a former Spokane County coroner. He started with 300 patients and built it up to 2,000 by the time he left.

During the mid 1990s, Martin inadvertently took over medical care at the Whitman County jail. The doctor who had been treating the inmates asked Martin to cover while he went on vacation for a few weeks. One week into the vacation, the doctor called and said he was not coming back.

“The jail, I hadn’t planned on that,” Martin admitted.

He continued to work at the jail until 2014. He noted the cases there changed over time with more diabetes and drug addiction.

“I enjoyed all of them,” Martin said of his different work roles, but he could not keep up with the load. All together he was working about 80 hours a week before cutting back to just coroner.

Martin became an outlier when he had to fill the Sheriff’s position for six months;―only the second time a coroner has had to do that in the state’s history. He acted as sheriff for six months when the elected sheriff became disabled until the appointment of Steve Tomson as the new sheriff. While Martin was sheriff, the undersheriff served as coroner. After Tomson’s appointment, Martin returned to his regular coroner role.

One of the cases that stands out most to Martin was one of his first that was recently revived. It was the death of a co-ed in 1981 near Lewiston. Portions of the girl’s body were found in the Snake River. It is the only homicide he has ever worked on that has not been solved.

“That was one of the most challenging cases I’ve ever had,” he said. The case was resurrected last year when a news agency and a detective were working on it to try to find some closure and interviewed Martin as part of the process. Despite all efforts, the case remains unsolved.

Martin also had two inquests that stood out to him. The first was the case of a homicide/suicide in Pullman when a paint store owner shot his partner then set the store on fire and killed himself. The other was a woman who shot her husband in self-defense which was later determined to be justifiable homicide.

“Both of them took a great deal of time and energy,” he said.

Martin said he has seen all too often successful young people come up against a problem that may have eight solutions, but they default to suicide. He pointed out that if that same person had those same issues after they were 30 years old, when the brain is fully-developed, they would not consider suicide. He wishes he could tell young people, “Let’s take suicide off the table,” as a solution for problems.

The decision to retire was not a sudden one. In the last year or so, Martin has been attending fewer scenes so his deputies could get more experience. He purposefully waited to retire until there was someone who could do the job, Pillers, and there were enough other good deputy coroners to cover the need.

“I can always go back to work as a P.A. again,” he said of his undetermined retirement plans.

“You can’t really know until you retire,” he added.

Martin does foresee some travel, recreation and service, however. He plans to develop a forensics course to take to junior high schools that looks at things like fingerprints and blood spatters, different things so the students can appreciate everything covered by forensic science.

Martin is still active in that he hikes, backpacks, fishes and camps. He and wife Fran have two daughters and three grandchildren, all in Whitman County. He has nine siblings, most of whom live on the coast now. That resulted in a bunch of nieces and nephews, many now in the medical field.

Martin served in the Army in Vietnam from 1968 until 1971 as a clinical specialist. He received a battlefield promotion from E5 to E6 and was awarded a bronze star. At the time he was awarded his bronze star, he was told he could have it officially presented at another time, and he is hoping to do that this spring.

County commissioners Monday noted the coroner’s office is an elected partisan position, and they will call upon county Republicans to submit nominees for appointment.

The coroner’s office is slated to be on the ballot in the 2018 general election, and filing for that office and other county offices will begin in June.

Martin said he will miss the camaraderie of working with officers and others on coroner calls, but he will not miss the long hours often required at the scene to complete an investigation of an unattended death.