Today the Northwest Herald featured the unexplained deaths at the Woodstock Residence in 2006 as an issued in the race for McHenry County Coroner.

The headline was

Former Crystal Lake funeral home director Dave Bachmann, running as a Democrat, is challenging long-time Republican incumbent Marlene Lantz. They appeared together before the NW Herald’s editorial board Monday.

As reporter Kevin Craver put it,

“…where incumbent Republican Marlene Lantz and Democratic challenger David Bachmann significantly differ is the office’s response to the ongoing state investigation into deaths at Woodstock Residence nursing home.”

Bachmann’s take:

“Tracking deaths is the most simplistic thing that a coroner can do. I don’t know how this could have not been noticed.”

Lantz is quoted as saying,

“Just because you have a rise in the death count [at a nursing home] does not mean someone is there killing the patients.”

There is more well worth reading.

Something very similar to one plank in Lantz platform–

“to pass legislation setting up drug recycling programs to prevent medications from ending up in local water supplies or landfills,” according to an indirect quote in the NW Herald–

was first put forth by Bachmann October 2, 2007:

“Today, the coroner’s office does NOT send any law enforcement officer to a home of a cancer patient when Hospice is in charge of the patient. What about oversight on all the left over Narcotics??? There is NO protection for the Hospice Nurse that PROVE she disposed of the left over Narcotic Medications…thus, they are open to be accused of taking drugs with no back up. I know, my mother died, one year ago tonight, with TONS of narcotics in her bedroom.

“NO OVERSIGHT AT ALL…

“I plan to close that loophole and send a deputy or myself to home deaths, even when expected, for one specific purpose, to confiscate the narcotics and dispose of them in a way that is proved and backed up… Trust but Verify.

“These drugs are now in today’s world, in the hands of kids selling at our schools.”