Taking care of the families
Susan Boone used her compassion to guide families dealing with the death of relatives after homicides, accidents, suspicious situations and other circumstances that required the attention of the county coroner.
The reflections about Boone, a longtime former Sangamon County coroner who died at 76 on Dec. 30, 2024, came from the Sangamon County Board chair and the current coroner. Both observed and dealt with issues raised during and after Boone’s controversial tenure and resignation in 2011.
The Springfield Republican was the elected coroner for 14 years and served as a deputy coroner for 17 years before that.
“She was extremely kind-hearted and ideally suited to dealing with families experiencing trauma from the death of a loved one,” said Andy Van Meter, a Springfield Republican and elected County Board member since 1994 who has led the board as chairperson since 2000.
“I think Susan’s challenge was that the nature of the position and the nature of the office changed over time and became much more technical and scientific. She continued her laser-like focus on service to the families, and she wasn’t prepared to adapt,” Van Meter said.
The current coroner, Jim Allmon, a Republican who was hired by Boone as a deputy coroner in 2003, said he learned by watching his boss “communicate with family members who have just suffered a tremendous loss.”
Death notifications, done in-person whenever possible, is “something the coroner’s office does that kind of flies under the radar,” Allmon said. “But when somebody passes away in this county, we have to go to the house and find the family and notify them. Those are extremely difficult.”
Allmon said he saw Boone “sit with families for hours” to console families and help them understand the next steps for a deceased person that could include a post-mortem examination known as an autopsy.
“It can be upsetting for people,” Allmon said. “Autopsies are obviously very invasive. … Those are all really tough conversations.”
Boone, he said, “was really good” in comforting families.
Allmon, 51, was appointed coroner in 2020 upon the death of former coroner Cinda Edwards in a plane crash. He was elected later that year and reelected to another four-year term in 2024.
Allmon said his focus as coroner is “a lot different” than Boone’s, adding that the controversies Boone dealt with taught him “the importance of having a board-certified forensic pathologist.”
Allmon’s office employs Dr. Nathaniel Patterson, a board-certified forensic pathologist to conduct autopsies and supervise the other medical aspects of death investigations. Boone hired Dr. Jessica Bowman, who was a pathologist but not board-certified in forensic pathology.
The quality of Bowman’s work, and the way Boone operated the coroner’s office, were called into question and played a role in Boone’s forced resignation in 2011 amid concern about the quality of her office’s death investigations.
Boone’s decision came after Van Meter announced he would support a County Board resolution to abolish the coroner’s office and assign the coroner’s duties to then-sheriff Neil Williamson. Van Meter never carried through on that idea.
“Susan felt that that was not a good direction to go, and in order to preserve the coroner’s office, she agreed to resign, and I think she did the right thing,” Van Meter said.
The consulting firm Maximus, hired by the county to evaluate the office under Boone’s leadership after her resignation, found “serious management deficiencies.” The problems included a lack of written policies and a “trust me, I know what I’m doing” approach, according to a 2011 story in The State Journal-Register.
Boone, based on Bowman’s findings, had decided that 2-year-old Anakin Credit died in 2008 from a rare, undiagnosed cancer. The inspector general for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services reopened the case a year later, and two other pathologists determined Credit had died from abuse.
Boone’s resignation came two months before a Sangamon County grand jury charged Mason Weems, the boyfriend of Credit’s mother, Angela Butler, of killing the boy through what the pathologists believed was a blow to the child’s side or back that caused internal bleeding.
Weems pleaded guilty to aggravated battery of a child and was sentenced to 20 years of prison 2013. He remains incarcerated.
In another case, Boone decided, after an autopsy conducted by Bowman, that Grandview resident Patrick Burns died from “excited delirium” following a 2010 altercation with Sangamon County sheriff’s deputies in which they used tasers 21 times against Burns, 50, whom the deputies hog-tied and placed on his stomach.
Evaluations by Patterson and another forensic pathologist later determined Burns had suffocated while restrained and on his stomach. State health officials in 2023 granted Allmon’s request to rule Burns’ death a homicide to reflect the doctors’ findings.
Sangamon County prosecutors decided not to charge the deputies who scuffled with Burns, agreeing with an Illinois State Police investigation in 2010 that the deputies used reasonable force when arresting him.
Richard Burns, Patrick Burns’ younger brother, accepted a $40,000 settlement offer from the county to settle a federal lawsuit that alleged “cruel and unusual treatment and excessive use of force” in connection with Patrick Burns’ death. County officials said they spent more than $250,000 in defense-related legal fees in the case.
A judge approved exhuming the body of 17-year-old Jade Ostermeier and her 3-week-old daughter after Boone failed to have Ostermeier X-rayed despite requests from a sheriff’s detective and the Springfield Fire Department. Bowman performed autopsies on both when they were found dead after a Springfield house fire in 2010.
Eric Fagan, the brother of Ostermeier’s boyfriend, pleaded guilty in 2013 to murder and aggravated arson in the deaths of the mother and child and was sentenced to 38 years in prison. Prosecutors said Ostermeier died in a struggle with Fagan, and the child died from smoke inhalation in the fire set by Fagan after Ostermeier’s death.
After Boone’s resignation, county officials considered replacing the coroner’s office with a new system run by an appointed medical examiner but deemed the option too expensive.
Boone’s daughter, Peoria-based mental-health therapist Kelly McKenna, 50, said her mother, who was divorced and died from heart problems, retired “well before she would have liked to” and was hurt by the criticism of her and the coroner’s office.
McKenna said her mother wanted to carry on the legacy of her predecessor, Norm Richter. Though Boone was a shy person, McKenna said her mother “felt like it was God’s plan for her to take care of the families.”
Dean Olsen is a senior staff writer with Illinois Times. He can be reached at dolsen@illinoistimes.com, 217-679-7810 or www.x.DeanOlsenIT.
This article appears in January 1-7, 2026.
