Forensic center open

The new Permian Basin Forensic Center in Odessa boasts a shiny array of state-of-the-art features, but there’s one perk that officials are not overly eager to put to use. A roomy 30-by-40 foot cooler allows the center to store and preserve up to 50 human bodies at a time.

“We’re told it’s the largest cooler between Dallas and Phoenix,” Carl Rogers, the center’s business manager, said over the whir of six fans cooling the empty chamber to 36 degrees.

After several months of construction, the new center opened its doors for business. The digital X-ray equipment has been installed. A storage closet is lined with boxes of rubber gloves and blue body bags. The coffee pot in the break room works.

The only thing missing now are the bodies.

The center, a branch of the Southeast Texas Forensic Center, is expected to fill a huge void and conduct business with up to 43 counties in West Texas. Ector and Midland counties, previously among the many that sent bodies to Fort Worth for autopsies, are on board and expect to save thousands of taxpayer dollars a year by shaving transportation costs.

The cost of an autopsy — $1,700 — is also $150 cheaper than Fort Worth charges. Ector County officials have put the savings at about $60,000 a year. Midland officials, who have paid more for transportation costs, are expecting to save about $100,000 a year using the new center. The center does not offer contracts and conducts autopsies on an as-needed basis, Rogers said. Chief operating officer Susan Jones said the Odessa location on Third Street is the most advanced of the company’s four facilities.

“What we did was we took our design and changed what we didn’t like about it,” Jones said of the original site in Beaumont. “It’s the first of our facilities to be built from the ground up.”

In addition to recruiting Rogers, who retired as chief investigator at the Ector County Medical Examiner’s Office, the company has signed Dr. Elizabeth Miller to conduct autopsies. Rogers said Miller is relocating to the area.

Despite the fancy technology, the forensic center lacks its own lab, so officials will still need to send off for toxicology work. But Rogers said he anticipates much shorter turnarounds because the center won’t have a backlog.

“This is long, long overdue, and now it’s up to us to provide the product,” Rogers said. “This is going to be good for a lot of people.”