West Virginia’s Medical Examiner has a growing challenge with bodies that have not been claimed, some since the 1970s, and many are stacking up in a freezer.
The Medical Examiner’s Office has been keeping 247 remains of people who died under circumstances that required investigation. They are being kept because they haven’t been identified or because they have not been claimed by family. Moreover, the office is in a legal no man’s land with no clear legal guidance on what to do.
The bodies may be cremated if they are deemed to not be aspects of evidence in a criminal case. But they are placed in a freezer if they might still be part of the criminal evidence record.
In both circumstances, the number of bodies in storage just keeps going up.
“I was a little shocked by it,” Delegate Brandon Steele, R-Raleigh, said after the presentation of an audit on the Medical Examiner’s growing number of retained bodies.
Of the total, 49 remain unidentified and are in frozen storage.
The remaining 198 are unclaimed even though the identity is known — but next of kin has not been identified or cannot be identified. In some cases, next of kin has refused the remains.
Of those, 162 have been cremated and remain in storage on shelves at the Medical Examiner’s Office. And another 36 of the unclaimed bodies are in frozen storage.
So, that means a total of 85 are in a freezer at the Medical Examiner’s Office, stacked as carefully as possible.
“Trends from recent decades suggest these numbers will continue to rise,” research analyst Bryan Phillips told lawmakers.
Because the freezer is overcrowded, “it requires that remains be stacked on top of each other, and there is no space for additional shelving,” according to a report presented today by the Legislature’s Performance Evaluation and Research Division.
Legislative auditors noted that at the Office of Chief Medical Examiner “special care is taken to prevent damage to any of the remains when stacking them. Many of these decedents may never be identified or claimed and will remain in the OCME’s custody indefinitely.”
The Medical Examiner’s Office investigates deaths that are unnatural or unexplained. Reasons include deaths by violence or suicide, sudden deaths when the person otherwise appeared to be in good health, unattended deaths, deaths of inmates or deaths from diseases that might constitute a threat to public health.
The remains are supposed to be kept indefinitely if they remain unidentified or if a next of kin isn’t available to authorize their release.
That is because state code does not authorize the Medical Examiner to dispose of them. Separate state rules, the legislative auditors concluded, describe disposal methods that state code does not authorize.
The Legislative Auditor is recommending that state code should be amended to allow the Department of Health and Human Resources to establish ways to dispose of the remains.
Lawmakers considering the audit agreed to pursue the issue during the upcoming regular session.
Steele wondered if the challenge goes farther than the Medical Examiner’s Office, extending to the local level too.
“Should we be looking at legislation to assist counties and the state?” Steele asked. “If we were to contemplate legislation to do some type of burial site, do we need to enable counties to do the same thing?”
Phillips responded that the scope of the audit was only at the state level.
Steele also asked if the Medical Examiner’s physical space is adequate, particularly the cold storage space.
Matt Izzo, chief administrator for the Medical Examiner, responded that observations about the physical space — including the freezer — are part of a separate but related examination of the office.
The audit showed that the Medical Examiner has 4 bodies remaining from the 1970s, four from the 1980s, eight from the 1990s, 38 from the 2000s, 150 from the 2010s and 44 from the decade that has just begun.
Senate President Craig Blair asked if other states are experiencing similar issues.
“What are other states doing? Are there other states with solutions to problems like this?” asked Blair, R-Berkeley.
Possibilities mentioned during the legislative meeting Monday afternoon included a “potter’s field” or mausoleum or some other type of interim internment space that would allow remains to be claimed at a later date.
Those options could still provide enough flexibility to relieve the freezer space at the Medical Examiner while also allowing for the possibility of the bodies being identified or claimed later.
The report concluded, “Finding alternatives will retain the dignity of the decedents’ remains for their possible release to their families.”