The Good Life – May-June 2024

There’s a lot that goes into a case.
Day after day, they fit together clues
and solve one puzzle after another.
“We always want to make sure we
are positively identifying someone,”
he said. “Whether that’s through
family members identifying them or
through government-issued IDs, like
a North Dakota driver’s license or
other ID.
We can also identify people through
dental records, through prosthesis
– if somebody had a knee replaced
and was burned beyond recognition,
the medical examiner would remove
that prosthesis and look at the serial
number assigned to that person.”
They also use serial numbers
found on dentures as well as other
dental records and fingerprints to
determine the ID of a deceased.
Toxicology and blood tests are sent
to the North Dakota Crime Lab in
Bismarck for results, and autopsies
are performed in Grand Forks and
16 | THE GOOD LIFE
Bismarck. They handle cases from
all over North Dakota – and some
can even span decades and involve
the work of multiple entities.
“Just this past winter I had a
case referred to me from 1983,”
Haverland said. “I was still in high
school! I had signed this person’s
“We always want
to make sure we are positively
identifying someone.”
– Cass County Deputy Coroner,
Darin Haverland
death certificate after I had been
(working at the coroner department)
because they had a bad brain injury,
but they lived for a long time. All of
the information that was in their
current medical records indicated
that they died by suicide, and that’s
all I had to go on.”
He says the rural North Dakota
police department that was handling
this case got a new detective, who
happened to be going through their
evidence and came across a gun.
“She said ‘I don’t know anything
about this, but it sure doesn’t sound
like a suicide.,’” Haverland recalls.
“So I said I would dig a little deeper.
It took me about a month to get the
medical records from 1983 because
they had to go into a box somewhere
in a basement, but I got them and
read through his emergency room
notes. And the first paragraph was
an accidental gunshot – he tripped
while walking with a gun.
I was very happy that I got to
amend that death certificate for his
parents. They were not happy that
it was originally labeled a suicide,
so they were actually really relieved
that it was changed.”
Above and Beyond
While they’re not licensed
therapists, sometimes just listening