Thursday, 4:30 PM
State releases unclaimed bodies
By Jonathan Saltzman, GLOBE STAFF
The state medical examiner’s office said Friday it is halfway through efforts to release more than 100 bodies that have been unclaimed, one for six years, and acknowledged that it had failed to ensure that corpses did not pile up in the overcrowded Boston headquarters.
By Friday, the office had released 53 unclaimed bodies and plans to release another 52 shortly in response to an order from state Public Safety Secretary Kevin M. Burke, according to Marcia S. Izzi, chief administrative officer of the medical examiner’s office.
Last month, Burke criticized Dr. Mark A. Flomenbaum, the state’s chief medical examiner, for stacking bodies three high on shelves and gurneys in the main cooler and for storing them in a refrigerated truck intended for bodies of disaster victims. He said that Flomenbaum had received money to expand storage space and that the state had eased regulations to help him release unclaimed bodies.
In the most detailed account of how the overcrowding happened, Izzi, the top aide to Flomenbaum, said Friday the office had inadequately reassigned the duties of monitoring unclaimed bodies after an employee retired last spring. Now, she said, the office is working frantically to turn the bodies over to state welfare officials, who handle funerals for the homeless, and to next of kin if they can be found.
‘‘There’s no doubt that we could have done a better job,’’ said Izzi, who has worked in the office six months. ‘‘Through this exercise, something like this won’t happen again.’’
