Grays Harbor County Coroner Lane Youmans’ computer screen background is a black and white photo from the early ‘60s of a young boy dressed in a uniform, complete with a police-style cap, white Sam Browne belt and a flag reading “STOP.”

“That’s me in my first law enforcement job, patrol boy at Central School,” he said.

After more than 40 years of public service, first for the Sheriff’s Office and later as the county coroner, Youmans has decided not to seek re-election to his coroner position. After his law enforcement career, he became a deputy coroner in 2006 and has led the office since 2014.

Youmans was born and raised in Hoquiam, the son of a past Hoquiam mayor and county commissioner, Omar Youmans. He was sworn in as a deputy with the Grays Harbor County Sheriff’s Department Jan. 1, 1977, served several years as a road deputy, then as a detective, a slot he held down for 25 years before an arm injury forced him to take a medical retirement.

“I was mostly the crime scene guy,” he said. “The fingerprint guy.”

Memorable cases

During his time as a detective there were several cases that stick with him. One is the 1988 case of Stefan Christopher, an Oakville man who tortured and sexually assaulted teenage girls who were part of the extended family of his wife, brought to Christopher’s farm by his wife from Bangladesh.

Youmans arrived at the scene, where a 16-year-old girl was found hanged to death in the barn. Further investigation showed that Christopher, a concert violinist and former consultant to the United Nations, had been torturing and sexually assaulting his wife’s family members for some time, forcing them to perform slave labor on the farm.

“Very unusual for the little town of Oakville,” said Youmans. “There were all these kids in saris.”

Another case had Youmans on the hunt for a serial killer.

Youmans was called to the bloody scene of a vicious beating at an Oakville-area dairy farm in 1999. Miraculously, the victim survived, but he was struck by the similarities of the scene to two unsolved homicides where the bodies of two brutally slain women were found on a remote logging road, one found in 1991, the other in 1996.

The man arrested for the claw hammer beating — David Gerard —was convicted after Youmans and his team sent DNA evidence to the state crime lab and, in 2002, a DNA match linked Gerard to both homicide victims.

Then, just recently, a man who was found hanged in his Amanda Park motel room in 2001 was identified as a California man through a familial DNA match. The man’s identity had been a mystery all these years.

“We got word of the match and sent his photo to his dad,” said Youmans. “He said, ‘Yes, that is my son.’”

The case had dragged on so long because it turns out the family had thought the young man had left and simply chose to break contact with them.

Youmans marveled at how much technology has advanced during his years in law enforcement.

“When I became a cop we could collect fingerprints and biological samples, but without a suspect to compare them to, they just sat around in an evidence locker,” he said.

Youmans’ medical retirement lasted about six months. He landed a deputy coroner gig under Ed Fleming, who retired in 2009, then under Dan Burns until Burns retired in 2014, when county commissioners tapped Youmans to take on the coroner position.

The life of a coroner

“Most people have no idea what I do. They think I do autopsies,” said Youmans. The truth is the job is paperwork intensive, has him fielding calls from the public when people pass away and contacting doctors to try to determine the cause of mysterious or unusual deaths.

About 640 people die in the county every year. Of them, about 100 will cross paths with Youmans. Fewer than half of those will require an autopsy. Many cases can be put to rest by simply making phone calls or awaiting toxicology results.

“That’s the frustrating part, the ‘CSI’ effect,” said Youmans. It can take months to get test results back, not a few hours like you see on crime shows.

A difficult part of the job is notifying next of kin. Youmans said he makes such notifications “a couple times a month. When you’re knocking on someone’s door at 3 in the morning they know immediately it’s not good news. And I know as soon as that door opens their lives are going to change.”

When the cause of an unusual or suspicious death is determined, it provides a sense of closure to the family.

“We speak for the dead,” said Youmans. “The family wants to know what happened to their loved one, and we provide the answers they need to know.”

What’s next?

“Ladling butter at the 7th Street, working around the house, play video games,” answered Youmans. He has volunteered for many years at the 7th Street Theatre in Hoquiam and is often the guy putting butter on the bags of popcorn people line up for before performances. He said he may volunteer at other places as well, naming PAWS and the local food bank as possibilities.

He will spend more time with family, including his wife, Terri. The two have been married for 43 years — “Remarkable for a cop,” quipped Youmans — and first met while attending Grays Harbor College. The couple has two children, Melissa, who works as a speech therapist, and Steve, who himself went the way of law enforcement and works for the Sheriff’s Office in the corrections division.

As for the future of the coroner’s office, Youmans said he’s “leaving it in good hands.” Deputy coroner Robert Kegel is the only person who filed for the office and is a retired Aberdeen Police officer. Ryan Meister, who formerly worked for Whiteside Funeral Home — “I could see her becoming coroner,” said Youmans — is another deputy coroner. And the most recent addition, Deputy Coroner Tom Thompson, who retired from law enforcement in Spokane, is an ER nurse, and has a “wealth of information,” according to Youmans.

“I’ll miss it,” he admitted. “I thought about running for re-election, but after 41 years it’s time to enjoy myself. It is hard to walk away.”