In the catalog of darkly humorous products sold at the Los Angeles Coroner’s Skeletons in the Closet gift shop, the “Body Notes” notepad occupied a unique space. It was the most functional item in the shop — a simple notepad, the kind you’d use for grocery lists or phone messages — branded with the coroner’s seal and styled after the forms used in actual death investigations.
The Design Concept
The Body Notes pad took the format of official coroner documentation and repurposed it for everyday note-taking. The header featured the Los Angeles Coroner branding, and the layout echoed the structured forms used by medical examiners to record observations during autopsies and scene investigations.
The humor was in the juxtaposition: the same institutional design that accompanied notes about lividity, rigor mortis, and manner of death was now being used to remind someone to pick up milk.
Office Culture Meets Morgue Culture
The Body Notes pad found a natural audience among the kind of professionals who appreciate gallows humor: medical students, law enforcement officers, forensic science enthusiasts, and the true crime community. It became a popular desk accessory — a small, daily reminder of mortality that doubled as a functional office supply.
For visitors to the Skeletons in the Closet shop, the notepad was an accessible purchase. At a lower price point than the beach towels and clothing, it was the kind of thing you picked up on impulse — a souvenir small enough to toss in a bag but distinctive enough to start a conversation when someone noticed it on your desk.
The Coroner’s Paper Trail
There is an irony in the Body Notes pad that its creators surely appreciated. The real work of the coroner’s office is, in large part, paperwork. Every death investigated by the Los Angeles Coroner generates documentation — scene reports, autopsy protocols, toxicology results, histology findings, and the final determination of cause and manner of death.
The Body Notes pad nodded to this reality. It acknowledged that behind every famous case — every celebrity autopsy, every unsolved murder, every cold case file — there was a stack of paper, filled with handwritten notes by someone whose job was to observe death and write down what they saw.
In that sense, the Body Notes pad was the most honest product the Skeletons in the Closet ever sold.