WEST LIBERTY, Ky. (LEX 18) — The coroner of Morgan County, Kentucky, “resigned/retired” after the family of a man made allegations that the coroner had left their loved one's body in a hot car for an entire afternoon and night, according to a lawyer who is representing the family in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday.
The body of Nathan Payton was left so badly decomposed that multiple people at the funeral became ill directly due to the smell, according to the lawsuit.
“Unfortunately,” Nathan’s brother Basill said as he held back tears, “The casket had to be closed, and the odor that was emanating was sickening.”
The lawsuit, which includes an abuse of a corpse claim, said coroner Raymond Vancleave did not have access to any local location where bodies could be stored in a cool place. A local hospital suspended his privileges to use their facility because he didn’t remove bodies in a timely manner, the lawsuit states.
“Nobody should be treated that way, not even animals,” Payton said.
Our attempts to reach Vancleave at a number listed on the county’s website have been unsuccessful.
“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of him,” Basil said. “That is something that will stay with us until the day we die, knowing how he was mistreated.”
Nathan died on December 30, which the lawsuit describes as an unseasonably warm day. Vancleave took the body in a black body bag in the coroner’s vehicle to his home, the lawsuit states, not taking it to the state medical examiner’s office for an autopsy until the next day, where a medical examiner described it as being “moderately decomposed.”
By the time it made it to a funeral home, it was “badly decomposed,” the lawsuit says, preventing it from being embalmed. Instead, it was left inside the sealed body bag.
“It infuriates me that someone had to know his actions, if they didn't know, they should have known,” Payton said.
Vancleave had no office and was working out of his home, Payton said.
Now, Payton is focused on making sure this doesn't happen to anyone else while believing Vancleave treated other bodies in a similar way.
“He was my only brother, I loved him more than anything,” Basill said. “You just can't replace a brother.”
Morgan County’s coroner is now Casey Helton, who ran against Vancleave in a recent election, a lawyer with McFarland Tinker, who is representing Nathan’s family, said.
