Every major city has a coroner’s office. Only Los Angeles turned its into a cultural institution.

The Los Angeles Coroner’s Office has investigated the deaths of more celebrities, solved more high-profile murders, and generated more public fascination than any similar office in the world. It is the office that autopsied Marilyn Monroe, Robert Kennedy, Natalie Wood, and the Notorious B.I.G. It is the office that coined the phrase “Coroner to the Stars.” And it is the only morgue in America that operated a retail gift shop selling body outline beach towels.

This is the story of how a death investigation office became famous.

The Building on Mission Road

For decades, the Los Angeles Coroner operated out of a distinctive Spanish Colonial Revival building at 1104 North Mission Road in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. Built in 1933, the building served as both the city morgue and the administrative headquarters for death investigations across the largest metropolitan area in America.

The Mission Road building became iconic — its arched doorways and terra-cotta roof tiles provided an oddly beautiful backdrop for the grim work conducted inside. Television crews filming segments about high-profile deaths almost always included a shot of the building’s entrance. It became visual shorthand for death in Los Angeles.

In 2014, the department relocated to a modern facility at 1104 North Mission Road (a new building on the same campus), but the old building’s image remains inseparable from the office’s identity.

Thomas Noguchi: The Coroner to the Stars

No individual shaped the LA Coroner’s public image more than Dr. Thomas Noguchi. Born in Japan and trained in forensic pathology, Noguchi became the Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner of Los Angeles in 1967. Over the next fifteen years, he performed or supervised autopsies on an extraordinary roster of famous deaths:

  • Marilyn Monroe (1962) — Noguchi was a deputy medical examiner when he performed the Monroe autopsy, ruling her death a probable suicide by barbiturate overdose. The case made his reputation.
  • Robert F. Kennedy (1968) — Noguchi’s meticulous autopsy of the assassinated senator became the gold standard for forensic work in political assassinations.
  • Sharon Tate and the Manson Family victims (1969) — The office handled the autopsies of all five victims of the Tate murders, thrusting the coroner into the most sensational crime story of the decade.
  • Janis Joplin (1970) — Ruled an accidental heroin overdose.
  • Natalie Wood (1981) — Noguchi’s ruling of accidental drowning would be amended thirty years later.
  • John Belushi (1982) — Noguchi’s office determined the cause of death as a combined drug intoxication (speedball).

The press dubbed Noguchi “The Coroner to the Stars,” a nickname he initially resisted but eventually embraced. His high-profile cases made the LA Coroner’s Office a fixture in entertainment news — and blurred the line between forensic science and celebrity culture.

The Controversies

Noguchi’s tenure was not without scandal. In 1982, the Board of Supervisors demoted him from Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner, citing mismanagement and what they described as a pattern of seeking publicity. Noguchi fought the demotion and was partially reinstated, but the episode revealed tensions between the office’s forensic mission and its growing public profile.

Critics argued that Noguchi’s willingness to discuss cases publicly compromised the scientific objectivity expected of a coroner. Supporters countered that transparency in death investigation served the public interest — especially in cases involving powerful people who might otherwise escape scrutiny.

The controversy never fully resolved. Noguchi went on to write bestselling books about his cases, further cementing the LA Coroner’s place in popular culture.

Skeletons in the Closet: The Gift Shop

In 1993, employees of the Los Angeles Coroner’s Office opened what may be the most unusual retail operation in the history of government: a gift shop called “Skeletons in the Closet.”

Located inside the coroner’s building on Mission Road, the shop sold merchandise branded with the department’s official seal and death-investigation themes. The product lineup included:

  • The Body Outline Beach Towel — A white towel printed with a chalk-style body outline, designed by coroner employee Marilyn Lewis. It became the shop’s bestseller and an icon of Los Angeles kitsch.
  • Crime Scene Towels — Beach towels printed with yellow “CRIME SCENE — DO NOT CROSS” tape.
  • Department of Coroner Tote Bags — Canvas bags stamped with the official seal.
  • Body Notes Notepads — Notepads styled after official coroner documentation.
  • Toe Tag Key Chains — Miniature toe tags as key ring accessories.
  • Coroner’s Office Mugs — Coffee mugs with the department logo and dark humor taglines.
  • Body Bags — Garment bags designed to look like actual body bags.

The shop’s proceeds funded the Youthful Drunk Driver Visitation Program, which brought young DUI offenders to the morgue to witness the consequences of drunk driving. This public-service mission gave the shop a justification that deflected much of the criticism directed at its concept.

Skeletons in the Closet became a genuine tourist attraction. Travel guidebooks listed it alongside Hollywood landmarks. International visitors sought it out as one of LA’s most unusual experiences. The shop demonstrated that even in a building dedicated to investigating death, Los Angeles could find a way to sell something.

The Coroner in Pop Culture

The Los Angeles Coroner’s Office has appeared in more films, television shows, and books than any other forensic institution in the world. Its influence on popular culture is difficult to overstate:

  • Television — Shows from Quincy, M.E. (inspired partly by Noguchi) to NCIS: Los Angeles have depicted fictionalized versions of the office. The concept of the glamorous, mystery-solving medical examiner owes much to the LA Coroner’s real-world celebrity cases.
  • Film — Countless crime films set in Los Angeles feature scenes at or references to the coroner’s office. The building itself has appeared as a filming location.
  • True Crime — The modern true crime genre — podcasts, documentaries, books — draws heavily on cases handled by the LA Coroner. The Black Dahlia, Marilyn Monroe, and the Manson murders are foundational texts of the genre, and the coroner’s findings in each case remain central to ongoing analysis.
  • Tourism — Dark tourism operators run “murder tours” of Los Angeles that inevitably reference the coroner’s office and its most famous cases.

The Modern Office

Today, the Los Angeles Coroner’s Office handles approximately 19,000 cases annually — making it the busiest coroner’s office in the United States. The department employs forensic pathologists, toxicologists, investigators, and support staff who work around the clock to determine the cause and manner of death for every case that falls under the coroner’s jurisdiction.

The celebrity cases still come — the office investigated the deaths of Michael Jackson, Kobe Bryant, and numerous other public figures in recent years. But the vast majority of the office’s work involves ordinary people whose deaths require investigation: homicides, accidents, suicides, and deaths where the cause is unknown.

Why LA?

The question that underlies the LA Coroner’s fame is simple: why this office? Other cities have coroners. Other cities have celebrity deaths. What made Los Angeles different?

The answer lies in the unique convergence of forces that define the city itself. Los Angeles is the entertainment capital of the world — a place where fame, money, beauty, and power concentrate in quantities found nowhere else. When those forces collide with death, the results are inevitably spectacular. And the office tasked with investigating those deaths becomes, by proximity, part of the spectacle.

The Los Angeles Coroner did not seek fame. It simply occupied the intersection of death and celebrity in a city that produced more of both than anywhere on earth. The gift shop, the bestselling books, the television appearances — these were symptoms, not causes. The cause was Los Angeles itself.

No other coroner’s office could have become what the Los Angeles Coroner became, because no other city is Los Angeles.