Former coroner looks back on memorable cases, and how it’s changed his perspective on life and death

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first in a series about former coroners in eastern Idaho.

RIGBY – Bruce Karren is more familiar with death than the average person, and it’s changed the way he lives on a daily basis.

The 71-year-old Rigby man served as the Jefferson County Coroner for 20 years. He was in office from 1986 to 2006. Now 17 years removed from the position, Karren says he was a bit of an adrenaline junkie in his younger days. Today, he has a greater awareness of his own mortality and his approach to daily life is more cautious and careful than it used to be.

“It’s made me worry a little bit more about my kids and family,” Karren tells EastIdahoNews.com. “I view death a lot more realistically than I used to.”

The coroner’s job, according to Idaho statute 19-4301, is to investigate sudden, unnatural and unexplained deaths. With the help of a pathologist, he helps determine the cause of death, identifies the deceased, notifies the victim’s family and writes the death certificate.

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No medical experience is required, but often people who run for the office have experience as a nurse or EMT, the latter of which was the case for Karren.

He and his wife, Debra, were involved in Rigby’s quick response unit for many years. In his youth, Bruce also served as a medic in the Army reserves.

That interest and familiarity with emergency situations is what initially prompted him to run for coroner.

“I was around those things and occasionally, I’d run into the coroner,” Karren says. “I just thought, I’m here half the time anyway with the QRU, so I decided to go ahead and run for it.”

Noteworthy trends and cases

Over the course of two decades, Bruce saw just about every type of accidental death imaginable. He’s investigated vehicle accidents, which were the most common. He’s also responded to drownings, suicides, farm accidents and homicides.

During his tenure, Karren estimates there was an average of one homicide every other year.

“A lot of those people really don’t hear about. Two or three of those were drug-related, and they didn’t hit the news much,” he says.

Karren responded to about two cases every month, and there were many times he was called to a scene in the middle of the night.

He recalls several occasions when what seemed like the obvious cause of death was completely unrelated to the circumstances.

One time there was a traffic accident on the Lorenzo Bridge and a man drove into the Snake River.

“We pulled him out but when Idaho State Police was investigating it, they said a fisherman (below the bridge) heard the crunch of the gravel as the car was coming off the highway. He looked up and saw the driver’s head (on top of) the steering wheel like he had passed out.”

The autopsy revealed the man had a blood clot in his heart and died from a heart attack. In this case, it was ruled as a natural death, rather than an accidental death.

Some of the most unusual cases were suicides.

Karren remembers an instance when they found a dead man in a pickup on the desert covered in plastic. He apparently shot himself with a shotgun.

“We figured he put the plastic on so he wouldn’t get blood all over the inside of the pickup,” Karren explains.

On another occasion, they found what Karren describes as a mangled man’s body in Hamer early one morning. After an autopsy, they determined several people had killed him and coyotes had eaten some of the carcass.

The men who killed the victim were later caught in Colorado and prosecuted for murder, he says.

Some suicides were much more gruesome, which Karren asked us not to share.

Coping skills

As a coroner, being exposed to blood and gore is a regular part of the job and Karren says it’s not a good fit for everyone.

One of the skills that helped Karren cope is the ability to emotionally detach from the situation.

“It just never bothered me. It’s just my personality,” he says. “When we were in the quick response unit, we had several people over the years who’d respond to a bad accident and quit because they had a hard time dealing with that. You just have to detach and look at it as a job.”

Karren’s wife — who served as Jefferson County’s first female county commissioner — also had experience as an EMT and would often accompany her husband on calls.

She says being able to respond together in some situations was helpful in dealing with a traumatizing circumstance.

“I love that kind of stuff. I’d ride in the car sometimes. I wouldn’t go (up close and investigate), but we were a team and could talk about it,” Debra says.

Though Bruce never had a problem with a graphic scene, he says he had a hard time with smells.

“People that have been dead for days start putrefying. It stinks bad and it’s hard to take,” he says.

Stepping down and lessons learned

In 2006, LaVar Summers, Jefferson County’s current coroner, expressed interest in running for the position. Karren gave Summers his blessing and decided to step down.

One of the reasons Karren called it quits is because he was sick of being jolted awake in the middle of the night.

“I worked construction (full-time) then, and you get woken up at 2 a.m. You’d take two or three hours to investigate and by the time you finished up, the adrenaline was going and you couldn’t go back to sleep. I got tired of that,” he says.

He also wanted to have more time for his grandkids and family life.

Karren is enjoying a slower pace of life now, but there are aspects of being coroner that he misses.

“I probably miss the QRU and EMT stuff more than I do being coroner. There’s a little adrenaline and a team camaraderie spirit. You’re going into an unknown, high-intensity situation, and I miss that occasionally.”

His association with the local funeral Home, law enforcement and first responders is what he misses most.

The dramatic increase of fentanyl cases and other drugs require more of coroners today, Karren says. Oftentimes, he says there is a correlation between drug use and the number of homicides in the county, and it’s important to be familiar with substances that are out there.

On a positive note, Karren says he’s seen a significant decrease in the number of sudden infant death cases over the years mainly due to the public’s increased knowledge of it. Debra says fewer drownings occur today because there aren’t as many running canals.

Despite his frequent exposure to dead bodies over the years, Karren says he’s learned how “resilient” the human body is and it’s motivated him to be healthy so he can live his best life for as long as he can.

“I was talking to a doctor one day and he said there are so many chemical reactions that have to happen every microsecond of your life to keep in perfect balance. You can die just like that,” Karren says, snapping his fingers. “The human body is so amazing in how it works … how complex and resilient it is.”