Once, Frank Burkert found out a grown man put his hand down his elementary-aged daughter’s blouse, so Mr. Burkert drove his pickup truck through the man’s living room bay window.
Another time, he learned a dog at the shelter couldn’t be adopted and was going to be put down because it was considered vicious, so he climbed the fence in the middle of the night and brought the dog home, where it became a cherished family pet.
That’s how he lived, his daughters said Thursday, with good intentions, but not always with the most orthodox methods.
Mr. Burkert, 59, of Coraopolis, died Dec. 15 after he had trouble breathing in the Allegheny County Jail. The Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s office did an external exam and ruled that Mr. Burkert died from natural causes: heart failure. That makes sense to his daughters; he was an alcoholic and had been on medication for heart and liver problems for the last couple of years.
But before they cremate his body, Rose and Daisy Burkert want to be sure there is no need for a full autopsy — they want to know whether their father was getting his medication in the jail, and whether he was receiving treatment for his alcohol addiction.
“We just want answers,” Rose Burkert, 36, said.
Their father was in jail for a violation of a protection-from-abuse order, she said, and on other charges.
They tried for 10 days to get Mr. Burkert’s medical records from the jail, calling Deputy Warden Laura Williams about a half-dozen times, but were unable to get the records or learn the process to do so. Not until Thursday, after an inquiry earlier in the day from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, did Daisy Burkert, 34, get a call from Warden Orlando Harper explaining that she needed to email a copy of her birth certificate and sign a release form in order to get the records, she said.
Amie Downs, the county spokeswoman, said the timing of that call was related to employees’ holiday vacations, not the newspaper’s query. Deputy Warden Williams said in a statement that the jail is working with Mr. Burkert’s family to release his medical records as soon as they provide the necessary documentation.
Daisy and Rose Burkert don’t know if the jail could have prevented their father’s death, but hope the medical records will shed some light.
“He was an alcoholic, so we didn’t expect him to live to 80,” Daisy Burkert said. “But maybe he wasn’t getting the care he needed, and the records could show that.”
Their father was cross-the-street scary looking, Rose Burkert said with a laugh. He usually sported a ponytail and wore a leather jacket or vest. He always had a motorcycle. He worked in the oil fields, operated a crane, spent a year as a chicken farmer in Texas and went on disability after he injured his back.
When Rose and Daisy were growing up, he always had a beer in his hand, but he still got up and went to work every day at 6 a.m., they said.
Daisy Burkert called Deputy Warden Williams at least five times since Dec. 17 to ask for Mr. Burkert’s medical records, she said Thursday. They spoke once, and the deputy warden said the records would be released to the executor of the will or next of kin.
But when Daisy told Ms. Williams that she was the next of kin, Deputy Warden Williams then said she’d need to consult with the legal department — and that was the last Ms. Burkert heard from the jail until Thursday.
“I feel like they’re just giving us the runaround,” Daisy Burkert said. “I get that it’s the holidays, but there should be someone else next in line to handle these issues.”
Bret Grote, legal director of the Abolitionist Law Center, a nonprofit law firm, on Thursday called on the county to improve its procedures after an inmate dies and suggested the county should change its policies to require a full autopsy anytime an inmate dies.
“It’s the obligation of the county to do a full, transparent autopsy and to seek out family to provide them information about what happened, not to make it a game of hide-and-seek,” he said. “When you are depriving people of their liberty and bringing them in pursuant to criminal law enforcement function, the state takes on more responsibility, not less.”
Deputy Warden Williams said in the statement that the jail is limited by federal medical privacy laws as to what it can release after an inmate dies.
Shelly Bradbury: 412-263-1999, sbradbury@post-gazette.com or follow @ShellyBradbury on Twitter.
First Published: December 27, 2018, 10:30 p.m.
