Expanded morgue opens, relieving pressure on state autopsies

With an extra 17,511 square feet added to the state's primary morgue, officials hope that now they can stop telling coroners with bodies to be autopsied to "call back tomorrow."

Officially the ribbon was cut to signify the opening of the much larger $6.68 million morgue in Decatur on Wednesday, but it has been in operation a month.

“We had run completely out of space here,” said Vernon Keenan, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which oversees the state’s morgues and the crime labs. “We were telling coroners ‘do not bring us bodies.’”

Gov. Nathan Deal said the lab at GBI headquarters, wouldn’t just benefit law enforcement investigating crimes, but it will also “help in the civil arena. Think of all the insurance policies — life insurance policies in particular — written on Georgia citizens,” Deal said.

A cause of death is critical in resolving such claims, he said. But these companies — and law enforcement — “need to know if someone perpetuated a crime to collect insurance on their victim.”

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The new morgue has expanded intake and body storage areas and provides additional space for autopsies. An entire floor will be assigned to agents who specialize in investigating child deaths. Technology has also been upgraded.

“If your loved one dies and you don’t know why, we have better facilities ... to determine how your loved one passed away,” said state medical examiner Jonathan Eisenstat.

Until the expansion opened at the beginning of October, county coroners were told several times a week that there was no room at any of the state’s forensic labs until other bodies were released.

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

The backlog has sometimes left local officials who rely on the state facilities scrambling to find ways to store bodies, while anxious family members had to delay funerals, burials or cremations.

The opioid crisis has also increased the load on the state’s morgues, officials said.

Autopsies are required in some cases — in obvious homicides, when a child dies or if illicit or prescription drugs are suspected in a death. While Fulton, Cobb, DeKalb and Gwinnett counties have their own medical examiners and handle their own autopsies, the 155 remaining counties rely on the GBI’s 15 pathologists and three morgues near Decatur, Savannah and Macon. (Rockdale, Hall, Barrow and Henry Counties sometimes turn to DeKalb County for their autopsies.)

The state also began building a new lab in Chatham County last summer.

“This is a facility the state has needed quite a while,” Deal said after touring the new space in Decatur on Wednesday. “It’s just a fact of a growing state.”