Mohave County to end contract with man in charge of ME’s office after MCSO investigates complaints

MOHAVE COUNTY, Ariz. - Controversy between funeral homes and the medical examiner’s office in Mohave County continues.

Earlier this year, law enforcement said there was a legitimate concern about the ethics and practices of the man who runs the ME’s office.

A Mohave County Sheriff’s Office report done in February reveals a probe into alleged corruption at the medical examiner’s office.

According to the special investigation unit, allegations made by some funeral homes are valid, including documented misuse of equipment and personnel.

After three years, the board of supervisors voted to cancel solicitation with the businessman currently in charge of the ME’s office, nearing the Nov. 30 deadline without a long-term plan.

It’s been two years since we introduced you to John Hassett, the Director of Operations at the Mohave County Medical Examiner’s Office. At the time, he was also the CEO of Serenity Memorial Group.

That’s important and, to some, controversial, because in 2021, Mohave County awarded Hassett and his company a contract of $92,500 a month to run the ME’s office.

Local mortuaries had a problem with that because Serenity owned a handful of competing funeral homes, claiming it was a clear conflict of interest.

In FOX 10's first report, a former employee of Hassett who did not want to be identified, shared her insight, including an alleged chain of custody issues with dead bodies.

"Sometimes there was calls and they’d leave bodies at one of John’s funeral homes. He’d call them ‘substations.’ He would do that from anything from an overdose to a suicide to homicide cases. They would sit in different coolers not at the medical examiner’s office, sometimes for a week," the former employee said in a previous interview.

Months after the report, Hassett sold Serenity, yet the county told FOX 10 he’d retain a role within the company, and was still contracted to run the medical examiner’s office.

Then, the of board supervisors heard more complaints from funeral homeowners who said they were left out of a scheduled rotation to take in decedents who don’t have families to claim them or afford funeral services.

They asked why the county’s data did not line up with missing bodies.

"Do the right thing and rectify this problem," Kristen Lietz of Lietz-Fraze Funeral Home said in November 2022.

Now, in August 2024, there are more calls for the county to find new leadership rather than keeping Hassett at the helm.

"We’ve had three licensed pathologists that fell in their lap that asked last year, went to procurement, went to the county manager’s office, let them know that they were interested in applying for a proposal, and they were ignored," said Naomi Bradbury-Marchand of the Bradbury Memorial Center during a Mohave County Board meeting on Aug. 5.

Former employees speak to alleged conditions

"I came into this from a business standpoint," Hassett said during the Aug. 5 meeting.

He's not a licensed pathologist nor did he claim to be, but still took over the county’s administrative duties while retaining the former medical examiner as a pathologist for autopsies.

"There’s no backdoor deals," Hassett said during the meeting. "There’s no hiding."

Back in February, MCSO special investigator Lori Miller interviewed owners of four affected mortuaries and former staff members of Hassett.

One man who worked as a cremationist in 2021 described 120-degree heat in a crematory and coolers with human remains stacked on shelves, strapped by seat belts, not far from body fluids on the floor.

He also claimed to see a cage of dead dogs outside the building and quit after two weeks.

Another former employee told MCSO he witnessed bodies crammed in the cooler, saying the ventilation in the room was so bad that a coworker had to take breaks to breathe.

Crematories are not Mohave County’s responsibility, the county's health department says. 

‘Nobody has a problem like this …’

As for the current medical examiner’s office, the delayed timeline of autopsies is another reported allegation.

"I believe that our people aren’t getting autopsies done in a quick enough time. It’s my understanding it’s only one day a week," said Buster Johnson, District 3 Mohave County Supervisor, during an Aug. 5 board meeting.

Jordan Carvalho was a missing man out of Golden Valley in 2019. His human remains were discovered four miles away in September 2022.

MCSO sent a portion of the remains to Othram, Inc., a genealogy lab that identified Jordan in July 2023.

Investigators decided the skull needed a closer look to rule out homicide as a cause of death, but it would take another seven months for Mohave County's medical examiner to list the cause as "undetermined," despite having the remains since 2022.

Carvalho's family finally received the remains in February 2024.

"Regarding autopsies being completed one day a week, you are accurate in that statement," Hassett said.

A mother spoke to just that, saying she waited a while for answers about her daughter's death.

"I was upset about my daughter not getting an autopsy because she wasn’t deemed as being suspicious. Lying dead in 115-degree heat in the driveway of a friend’s house by her car where she had gone supposedly to get something, and no one questioned why she didn’t come back for four hours," said Sharon Haugen, the mother of a woman who died in Mohave County, to the board on Aug. 19.

FOX 10 asked the Mohave County Department of Public Health to address more of the allegations listed in MCSO's report. The department’s director says allegations linked to missing bodies were investigated and unfounded by November 2022.

Melissa Palmer, the county's health director, also calls MCSO’s 2024 investigation into the medical examiner’s office "inconclusive at this time."

On Aug. 19, the public reiterated concerns about an independent contractor in charge of the ME’s office.

"Nobody has a problem like this. Not one county except for Mohave County," says Dr. Ryan Swapp, forensic pathologist with Monolith Diagnostics.

Hassett made his case before the board’s vote on a potential one or three-year contract renewal.

"I’ve offered my time, my services to make sure that this becomes a county-run business," Hassett said.

Those motions failed.

Instead, a majority chose to end doing business with Hassett after his contract’s expiration on Nov. 30.

The big question is, will Mohave County pay the next contractor month-to-month until an in-house medical examiner’s office is established?

The county declined to speak with FOX 10 on camera, as did Hassett.

Despite MCSO’s report that the allegations made by funeral homes are valid, the sheriff told the board on Aug. 19 that there isn’t sufficient evidence or probable cause showing criminal activity.