When 18-year-old Alanna Phillips-Crocker died last May, two weeks shy of her graduation from Westbrook High School, her sudden death left her parents and friends in shock.

“I was in a complete blur for May, June and July. I didn’t even realize the summer was going by. I was just getting up and going through the day, it was horrible,” said her father, Kevin Crocker, as he sat holding his daughter’s cat.

But what made grieving even more difficult for Crocker and his wife, Sandra Phillips, were the unanswered questions surrounding their daughter’s death. They were left to wonder what had caused their daughter’s unexpected death as they waited for the report from the Medical Examiner’s Office, which finally came on Oct. 20 – five months after her death. Crocker is now questioning why it took so long for the state to tell them their daughter died of natural causes from a heart ailment she had been diagnosed with when she was 13 years old.

“I got the impression that they have more work than they can handle,” he said. “And there’s a bit of frustration because they would like to do it in a timely manner because they realize that every single case that comes into the office there are loved ones who are waiting for the answer. But there’s nothing they can do about it. As far as I know, they’re overworked at the coroner’s office. They don’t have enough staff and time to do what they have to do.”

Unfortunately, for families like Crocker’s, a long wait is not atypical, in many cases where the cause of death is not readily apparent, it can take anywhere from three to six months for medical examiners to analyze test results and determine a cause of death.

Jim Ferland, the administrator of the Maine Medical Examiner’s office, said the office receives reports of about 2,200 to 2,300 deaths per year. The medical examiner’s office reviews those cases and takes on an average of 1,400 cases per year. Ferland said in many of those cases, examiners in the field can determine the cause of death, and an autopsy is not necessary. In some cases, like Phillips-Crocker’s, the cause of death is not as obvious, necessitating an autopsy. Ferland said the state does about 350 to 400 autopsies per year.

There is now only one medical examiner in the office, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Margaret Greenwald. The state’s other medical examiner, Dr. Michael Ferenc, left in October for a job in Arizona. Ferland said he expects to have another medical examiner on board later this month to help deal with the backlog of cases.

The long wait

Crocker and Phillips did try and reach out to the community that embraced them after their daughter died. Just days before graduation, they joined Westbrook High School Principal Marc Gousse and the entire senior class to plant a tree in her memory.

Just days after that, instead of happily celebrating with family in the audience at her high school graduation, Crocker and Phillips had the difficult task of walking across the Merrill Auditorium stage to pick up the high school diploma that their daughter earned, but would never see.

Crocker said he was not concerned about the cause of his daughter’s death on the day she died. He was more concerned with dealing with his grief and making her funeral arrangements and he wasn’t thinking about what killed her.

“We were told by (the funeral home) because they had talked to the coroner, that it could be six weeks to two months until we got the report,” said Crocker. That was later revised to three months because the toxicology samples had to be sent to a lab in California.

While the autopsy on Phillips-Crocker had been done just two days after her death, medical examiners were not able to determine what killed her. So the state needed to perform toxicology tests to see if that showed any probable cause of death.

Ferland said the state sends toxicology tests to an out-of-state lab because the state doesn’t have a lab that can perform the level of toxicology tests required in all areas, and the lab in California gives Maine the best results for its money.

In August, Crocker contacted his insurance company and was told the company needed a cause of death before it could process his claim. “It got me to thinking about what’s taking so long,” he said. “Frankly, I didn’t care, I was going through the motions.”

While Ferland said it can take anywhere from two to six weeks to get the toxicology results, he said that isn’t the end of the case. Once the state receives the results, the doctors have to review each case in its order of priority, with suspected homicides or cases with possible criminal prosecution coming first.

“Unfortunately, we have cases that take precedent,” Ferland said. “It’s part of the circumstances when you have limited resources.”

Waiting for answers

Even in those cases, investigators must wait for reports. Westbrook Det. Sean Lally, who works with the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency, said it can sometimes take between three and six months to get a report. “There’s such a backlog of cases,” he said. “It takes a while to determine the cause of death.”

Lally said while the delays have held up a few cases he was investigating, he knows that the process takes time. “I don’t blame the medical examiner’s office for it,” he said. “It’s not as simple as someone dies and they find out within a week what killed them. They have to look at everything in total. It’s not a simple process by any means.”

Westbrook Police Det. John Desjardins, who investigated Phillips-Crocker’s death, agreed with Lally, saying the medical examiner’s office lets him know any results as soon as possible. “They’re in constant contact with us over the phone,” he said. Desjardins added he could not recall a case where delays from the medical examiner’s office held up an investigation he was conducting.

Bill Stokes, a deputy attorney general who is chief of the office’s criminal division, said he doesn’t see any problems in the medical examiner’s office. “I’m not complaining,” said Stokes. “I think it’s a function of the staffing. They do an extraordinary number of autopsies. Sometimes reports take time to provide.”

Stokes said he does not recall a case where a delay in receiving a report from the medical examiner held up the prosecution of a criminal case. He said while the report may not be issued, the medical examiner’s office is always willing to sit down with both prosecutors and defense attorneys to discuss a case and let both sides know what was discovered during the examination.

Crocker said he did speak to the medical examiner’s office by phone and said they were helpful, but it made him angry at the time that they were not able to give him what he needed: an explanation as to why his daughter had died. It upset Crocker to think that his daughter was not considered a priority by the state.

“You die from a homicide or a suicide and you have the report in three days, complete,” he said. “Why am I waiting?”

While he was waiting for the report, Crocker said he felt there must have been a reason, other than natural causes, for his daughter’s death and he had the sense that the report would give some answers and “somebody would pay the price for her being dead.”

When he found out his daughter died from a heart ailment, that news pushed Crocker back into his grief. “I had been holding off that stage because I didn’t know what was going to come,” he said. “If I had gotten it earlier, I could have been a lot further along.”

That anger even spilled over into Crocker’s unsuccessful campaign for a seat on the Westbrook City Council. He now says he was distracted during the race, and in retrospect he probably shouldn’t have run at all.

“Part of my grieving process was right then,” he said.

Desjardins said he sympathized with Crocker and his family. “I can certainly understand the frustration of the Crocker family that this took so long,” said Desjardins. “But the flip side is the police and the medical examiners office have a duty to get it right. But I completely feel for the Crockers. They want answers too.”

Now that he has the answer he has been waiting for, Crocker said he could now mourn his daughter without the cloud of not knowing what caused her death hanging overhead. However, he added that doesn’t make the pain of his loss any easier to bear.

“Every minute of every day is difficult,” Crocker said. “But at least now we know that she was exactly what we always knew her to be, a great kid who didn’t do anything (wrong). But I’m still trying to come to grips with the fact that she’s not going to be around anymore.”

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