(Editor’s Note: This is the first story in a three-part series interviewing three candidates who have announced intentions to run for St. Tammany Coroner.)
By KEVIN CHIRI
Tammany West news
SLIDELL – Three well-known names in the Slidell medical arena have come out early to announce their intentions to run for the coroner’s job in St. Tammany Parish. Qualifying for the election is Feb. 12-14 with the primary set on April 5.
Unlike years in the past when the election every four years for the St. Tammany Coroner’s Office earned little notice from the public, all that has changed following the recent conviction of former St. Tammany Coroner Dr. Peter Galvan on conspiracy charges, and for using public money for his personal good.
A special election will be held April 5 to fill the final year of the four-year term and three high-profile names have made it clear they plan to qualify. Current St. Tammany Deputy Coroner Dr. Leanne Trueheart, along with two parish physicians, Dr. Adrian Talbot and Dr. Robert Muller, are already campaigning and have confirmed they plan to run for the seat.
Trueheart has been a full-time deputy coroner and mental health director for the Coroner’s Office in St. Tammany since July of 2012, although she makes it clear she had virtually no dealings with Galvan, working as an independent contractor for the agency. She had no connection to the problems Galvan encountered, nor was she ever mentioned in any investigative reports. A primary responsibility for Trueheart has been mental health evaluations that led to 2,600 commitments in two years. She is a board certified psychiatrist who studied at LSU, Washington University School of Medicine and at UCLA. Trueheart acknowledged the need for more mental health providers in St. Tammany, and is part of a team currently studying a program that could be used in the school system to help teens handle mental health issues, and ultimately, reduce the suicide rate here.
Talbot has been a longtime Slidell physician who has served on numerous public boards in a volunteer capacity. He currently operates a private practice in Slidell. “As a veteran with firm Christian values, serving our country and our community has always been a driving force in my life. So when I was approached by a number of highly respected leaders in our community, I made the decision to run for Coroner. The Coroner’s Office is an agency that provides important services to law enforcement and the citizens of our Parish. That agency is a complex mix of Medicine and Law. Having both a medical and a law degree, I am uniquely positioned to serve the Parish as coroner,” he said.
This Week’s Candidate:
Dr. Robert Muller
Muller has 45 years of experience as a physician, working with law enforcement, emergency management and forensics. He said he had considered running for coroner in 2002, long before problems began for the former coroner. After the events in 2013, he decided to leap into his first attempt at public office.
“The top challenges are to bring integrity back to the office by re-earning the public trust, and also to restore the budget to a place where we can operate efficiently and reduce the millage the public is paying for the new parish building,” he said.
Muller served as an assistant coroner in Orleans Parish from 1982 to 1990, then in St. Tammany during two stints totaling four years. But he become interested in law enforcement while teaching at St. Francis Cabrini in New Orleans, and went on to graduate from the New Orleans Police Academy before attending the FBI Academy, Federal Law Enforcement Training Academy, Master Crime Scene Investigations and the Miami Metro-Dade Medical Examiners Office training.
He served as deputy medical director in emergency medical services and deputy chief in disaster operations for the N.O. Police Department until retiring in 1994. He served for 11 years with the St. Tammany Sheriff’s Office as commander of search and rescue and six years as assistant director of the St. Tammany Emergency Preparedness.
“My life experience uniquely qualifies me to lead not one, but all five functions of the Coroner’s Office,” he said. “Having no affiliation with the current Coroner’s Office, I bring new ideas and a fresh start.”
Muller has already spent extensive time researching the budget for the Coroner’s Office, which now brings in approximately $4.8 million a year, with over $4 million of that coming from a 2.6 mill property tax assessment.
Galvan managed to get the public to approve the new millage in 2004, with the promise of building a state-of-the-art forensics center in Lacombe on 40-acres of property. The building came to fruition and opened over a year ago, but Muller said the annual $1.3 million debt service for the millage doesn’t have to come out of the taxpayers’ pockets if more is done to utilize the potential of the building.
“This facility could generate much more money if it was used to its full potential,” he said. “We are currently only using one to two of the DNA stations, but if we recruited more business from Mississippi and surrounding districts, we could bring in much more money. That could lead to a reduction in the millage for the public.”
Muller also said he has already found a number of construction problems in the new facility that has not been open for much more than a year, pointing to siding that is buckling, a 750 KW generator that is not set up properly to be utilized, and other construction defects he said must be fixed. Muller also expressed intentions to renovate the 1,000-square-foot private office Galvan had constructed as his own, which has a wet bar in it, since he said it could be divided into several offices for employees there.
Muller said the 40-acres of land where the Coroner’s Office sits is being wasted, with some of it having the potential to be leased out to other companies for more revenue.
“My goal is to make this facility so productive that we could eliminate or reduce the millage for the public,” he remarked.
He said his experience gives him keen insight to addressing the suicide rate in St. Tammany, and he wants to develop a sexual assault center where victims can be interviewed and treated with privacy and dignity.
“We need to have everything in one location for victims of sexual assault so they can be treated properly, and all evidence can be kept in the same place it will be compiled for trial,” he said. “We need to take the burden off the ER’s when it comes to these crimes.”
Muller has also served as volunteer medical director for Slidell’s Fire District #1 and the Slidell Police Department, and medical director for NorthShore Regional Medical Center, and as an executive assistant in emergency management for Tenet Healthcare Systems.
“I pledge to formulate a complete plan of action to reform the St. Tammany Parish Coroner’s Office that will restore the public’s trust,” he added.
Muller has been a resident of Slidell for 29 years, married for 40 years to Susan Philipsen, and the father of two sons, Ryan and Matthew.
(Dr. Leanne Trueheart and Dr. Adrian Talbot to be featured on Feb. 6 and 13.)