SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) – Dr. James C. Metts Jr., a Savannah physician whose four decades serving as an elected coroner earned him a small part in the bestselling book “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” has died at age 88.
Metts died Monday at his Savannah home, where he had been under hospice care, Betty Ann Brannen of Brannen-Kennedy Funeral Homes said Wednesday.
During his 40 years as Chatham County coroner, Metts juggled a hectic schedule. By day, he worked as a physician at a clinic treating poor and uninsured patients. At night, and whatever odd hours police called him, he turned up at the scenes of homicides and other suspicious deaths in his role as coroner.
“With his practice of medicine and the coroner’s job, Jimmy never slept very much,” Savannah attorney Sonny Seiler, a friend of Metts’ since kindergarten, told The Associated Press in 2013. “You could find him almost any time of day, but you weren’t going to find him home in bed.”
Metts was first elected coroner when the job came open in 1972. He never faced opposition for re-election, and resigned from office in 2012 at age 81.