You know, when you sit in the role of coroner, you can't let personal feelings get in the way of what

the body is telling us in the autopsy. This is death, sex and money in New Orleans. The show from WNYC about the things we think about a lot and

need to talk about more. I'm Anna Sale.

Welcome to what passes for the Morgan New Orleans.

This is where Dr. Jeffrey Rouse comes to work every day, a squat concrete building on

MLK Boulevard in New Orleans.

The building in which you're sitting now is a rented funeral home that has been retrofitted

for use for the coroner's office ever since shortly after Hurricane Katrina.

We've got the transformed embalming room being used as an autopsy suite. And there's a smell when you walk in the door?

There is.

What is that from?

We can't completely stop the decomposition process. We can slow it,

slow it significantly. However, when a person passes away in a body of water or outside in the hot Louisiana summer,

they're already reaching our office at an advanced state of decomposition.

And so that doesn't get us out of our need to do the autopsy and the investigation and such.

However, you know, you work with what you got and this is what we got.

What they don't have at the New Orleans Coroner's office is a lot of space.

Jeffrey Rouse and his staff of 23 are supposed to be moving to a brand new 14.8 million

dollar facility soon.

I'm picking colors and picking furniture.

But that move has been long delayed.

We have some refrigerated trailer trucks that are on generators out

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