Arlington Cemetery’s Mishandling of Remains Prompts FBI Criminal Probe
Jerry Markon and Christian Davenport, The Washington Post (June 29, 2011)
The Justice Department is investigating the mishandling of remains at Arlington National Cemetery in a broad criminal inquiry that is also seeking evidence of possible contracting fraud and falsification of records, people familiar with the investigation said Tuesday

I have no idea who is going to make the documentary film about the rise and fall of Arlington National Cemetery but it is going to be a long and complicated movie. Twists and turns will emerge from nowhere and then suddenly it will turn out that the FBI was investigating the whole situation.

At this point, nothing which emerges from the ongoing and unstoppable Arlington cemetery train wreck surprises me. Nothing. The Washington Post has been singlehandedly leading the charge on this case and today’s story is a doozy:

The Justice Department is investigating the mishandling of remains at Arlington National Cemetery in a broad criminal inquiry that is also seeking evidence of possible contracting fraud and falsification of records, people familiar with the investigation said Tuesday.

A federal grand jury in Alexandria has been subpoenaing witnesses and records relating to the scandal at the nation’s most venerated military burial ground, sources said. The investigation, conducted by the FBI and the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, has been underway for at least six months, according to sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The Justice Department’s investigation significantly escalates the level of scrutiny faced by the cemetery, and the probe joins several ongoing inquiries by Congress, which last year passed a law mandating that the cemetery verify that remains are properly accounted for at every one of its 330,000 graves. The law also requires the Government Accountability Office to look into the cemetery’s contract management procedures, and whether the Army run cemetery should be turned over to the Department of Veterans Affairs, which oversees 131 national cemeteries.

So now we have FBI Agents, a federal grand jury handing out subpoenas, and increasingly obvious cases of multi-million dollar fraud.

Here’s the rub: it’s only going to get worse. That’s my guess after following this case since day one.

You can read all the previous Arlington Cemetery posts here.

The Death Reference Desk will of course follow this case until the end.

Warner to Introduce Bill to Revoke Reserved Plots at Arlington
Christian Davenport, The Washington Post (March 30, 2011)

A quick update on Arlington National Cemetery and its ongoing problems. The lead didn’t necessarily get buried in this most recent article from the Washington Post but the entire Arlington debacle just got a lot more interesting.

Here is the new wrinkle in this ongoing saga:

The list is 84 names long — mostly generals and colonels. There’s a sergeant major of the Army, a former assistant Army secretary, a Navy vice admiral, a former congressman.

They are VIPs with one of the most prestigious tickets in Washington: a reserved plot at Arlington National Cemetery, the nation’s premier military burial ground.

On Thursday, Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) is to introduce legislation that would revoke those reservations — made under an unofficial system that continued for decades in violation of Army policy — and force the cemetery to determine how many plots have been set aside.

In an interview Monday, Warner said he wanted to make sure that Arlington does not play favorites with its graves and that it does not honor any reservations made after 1962, when officials decided the cemetery’s coveted plots should be offered without regard to rank or status.

“It’s a disgrace that backroom deals were being made and some general might trump the rights of a fallen soldier from Iraq and Afghanistan,” Warner said.

He said he suspects the unofficial reservation system, in which generals and other top officials were promised choice spots by cemetery leaders, explains why the cemetery continued to rely on an antiquated and easily manipulated paper recordkeeping system.

Starting in 2002, the cemetery spent years and millions of dollars on the project to update the system but had nothing to show for it. Today, the cemetery still relies on a paper recordkeeping system, which shows, for example, that many choice gravesites are not available when they are. A House subcommittee has scheduled a hearing to investigate mismanagement at the cemetery.

In a nutshell, one of the key contributors to Arlington’s problems may have been this unofficial reservation system, which also explains how the computerized records system never got implemented.

I know that there has already been a Congressional investigation but I won’t be surprised if we see another.

Arlington Cemetery Struggles with Old Reservations
Christian Davenport, The Washington Post (March 21, 2011)
Officials at Arlington National Cemetery — still unable to fully account for who is buried where at the nation’s premier military resting place — are struggling to determine who has reserved plots and whether some of those grave sites are already in use.

Oh poor, sad black-hole-of-problems Arlington National Cemetery. One day, a book about running modern cemeteries will be written and in said book will be a chapter entitled Arlington National Cemetery: A Case Study in Totally Preventable Burial Disasters.

Last week, I posted another Washington Post article on the mass burial of ‘unknown’ urns.

And I now have a prediction: We have not yet reached the bottom of this continuing fall from postmortem grace. It boggles the imagination to imagine what will happen next, but I know that some new terrible development is on the way.

In all fairness, Arlington Cemetery’s new executive director, Kathryn Condon, is doing an impressive job of dealing with the multiple problems she inherited from the previous overseers. You can read about all of the problems confronting Arlington Cemetery here.

Here is the newest problem confronting Arlington, as taken from the Post article:

Officials at Arlington National Cemetery — still unable to fully account for who is buried where at the nation’s premier military resting place — are struggling to determine who has reserved plots and whether some of those grave sites are already in use.

Years of sloppy recordkeeping have left officials with no reliable data on how many reservations have been made for plots in the 624-acre cemetery. The problem — along with the discovery that an unofficial reservation system for VIPs continued for decades in violation of Army regulations — is yet another challenge for the cemetery’s new leaders.

Last year, Army investigators found that graves were mismarked and unmarked, that burial urns had been unearthed and dumped in a dirt pile, and that millions of dollars had been wasted on failed attempts to digitize the cemetery’s paper record system. As a result, the Army ousted the cemetery’s top two leaders, Superintendent John C. Metzler Jr. and his deputy, Thurman Higginbotham.

Since then, more problems have emerged, including the discovery of people buried in the wrong plots and a mass grave that held eight sets of cremated remains.

There isn’t much more to say, other than this newest problem will be added to all the other problems confronting Arlington Cemetery. At some point, it would be good to compile an entire list of everything that has gone wrong at Arlington…I’ll plan on this for the future.

Coincidentally, Meg posted information yesterday on some proposed legislation working its way through the United States Congress. The Bereaved Consumer’s Bill of Rights Act of 2011 was written to deal with the kinds of problems afflicting Arlington Cemetery. Sadly, this Bill would not encompass Veterans Affairs cemeteries, such as Arlington, so it’s up to the Federal Government to make the fixes.

This story will continue.

For First Time in Decades, Arlington National Cemetery Must Bury Multiple ‘Unknowns’
Christian Davenport, The Washington Post (March 06, 2011)
When the remains of a Vietnam War soldier buried in the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery were identified in 1998 using DNA, Pentagon officials proudly said that the days of interring service members as “Unknown” could well be over.

It is difficult to imagine the situation at Arlington National Cemetery getting any worse. But the bad news just keeps coming and coming. Hats off to the Washington Post, whose reporters have been rigorously following this case.

Here is the lead from the most recent Post article:

When the remains of a Vietnam War soldier buried in the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery were identified in 1998 using DNA, Pentagon officials proudly said that the days of interring service members as “Unknown” could well be over.

But now, for the first time in decades, the cemetery has multiple “unknowns” to bury – and it has itself to blame.

Criminal investigators looking into how eight sets of cremated remains ended up crowding a single grave have concluded that three of them are unidentifiable – not because of the brutality of combat, but because of actions at the cemetery.

The discovery of the mass grave in October came on the heels of a report by the Army Inspector General last summer that revealed widespread problems at the nation’s premier military burial ground: unmarked and mismarked graves, millions of dollars wasted in botched contracts to computerize its paper records, and at least four urns found in a pile of excess dirt.

Let us ponder this newest revelation: eight sets of unidentified, cremated human remains chucked into a single gravesite because of human negligence.

When Arlington Cemetery’s problems first came to light, I remember referring to the entire situation as a ‘Code Red’ alarm for any cemetery.

I’m not sure that even Code Red is an adequate description anymore.

One day, a final tally of all the mishandled burials might be known. But I’m not counting on it.

To read more about the Arlington National Cemetery debacle, click here.

Happy Homecoming for Widow Who Lived with Corpses
Authorities found out and took the embalmed corpses away. She is having a mausoleum built on her property to get them back.
Michael Rubinkam, Associated Press (January 04, 2011)

A quick update on the July story about 91-year-old Jean Stevens in Pennsylvania. Stevens, many people will recall, had been keeping the embalmed bodies of both her husband and twin sister in her home. Pennsylvania officials quickly determined that this was not an appropriate form of final disposition for the bodies and took them away. I wrote about the original case here.

Back in July I suggested that Pennsylvania authorities should think twice about prosecuting Stevens and, instead, help her build a mausoleum for the bodies.

And lo, if that isn’t exactly what happened. The AP explains:

The 91-year-old widow [Jean Stevens] who lived with the embalmed corpses of her husband and twin sister — until authorities found out and took them away — is hopeful they’ll be returned soon.

Workmen at Stevens’ rural property outside the northern Pennsylvania town of Wyalusing have been busy the past few months, erecting a gabled building with gray siding and a white door. It resembles an oversized shed, or a smaller version of Stevens’ detached garage.

In reality, it’s a mausoleum that Stevens intends as the final resting place of her husband of nearly 60 years, James Stevens, and her twin, June Stevens. And authorities have told her it’s the only way she can get them back.

So there you go. Jean Stevens will be re-united with her dead husband and sister, forevermore.

Restoring Arlington Cemetery
Washington Post Editorial Board (December 27, 2010)
What does it mean to restore accountability in the nation’s cemetery?

This is a good, succinct Washington Post Editorial on everything that’s gone wrong at Arlington Cemetery. This last year has been particularly bad for Arlington Cemetery and you can read Death Ref’s coverage of those problems here.

The Washington Post Editorial Board also mentions the fixes being implemented to help remedy the problems. One key improvement will be the the use of a computerized tracking system for all the graves. It is hard to believe, given Arlington Cemetery’s national significance, but before now all the graves were kept track of on pieces of paper.

That system didn’t work particularly well. In early December, for example, the Washington Post ran a story on 8 sets of cremated remains found buried in the same, single gravesite. What was most interesting about that specific case was that the US Military brought in an Army Anthropologist (who usually works on gravesite forensic investigations) to ascertain what happened.

So, on the whole, 2011 will be a tricky year for Arlington Cemetery.

Especially since US Military personnel continue to die overseas, and those individuals deserve what the Department of Defense calls a dignified transfer to the grave.

Portrait Emerges of Woman Whose Mummified Body was Found in Car
Joseph Serna, Los Angeles Times (October 28, 2010)

Last week I wrote about a California news item which involved the police finding a dead body in a car. A few days ago, the Los Angeles Times did a follow-up piece and as I suspected the emerging story is really sad. Death Ref has run several pieces on Death and the Economy and this most recent article fits the bill.

The Times provides this addendum to last week’s story:

The two women met last year at Mile Square Regional Park in Fountain Valley and were unlikely acquaintances. One was a Costa Mesa real estate agent, the other a homeless woman [Signe Margit] who frequented the park.

The real estate agent allowed the woman to sleep in her father’s old sedan.

But sometime in the last 10 months, the homeless woman died in the car. And for reasons that Costa Mesa police are still trying to determine, the real estate agent decided not to report the woman’s death to authorities. Detectives said she drove the car with the mummifying corpse covered with clothing in the passenger’s seat. She used baking powder to reduce the smell.

I decided to post a follow-up piece since so many dead body stories function as macabre fantasy tales without an actual ending. It seemed only appropriate to end this particular story with a fuller acknowledgement of the hard economic times many people now face.

Woman Drove Around With Mummified Body
Salvador Hernandez and Greg Hardesty, The Orange County Register (October 22, 2010)

I am a little surprised that only a few people sent me this recent decomposing-dead-body-in-the-news article. Like so many of the other dead body stories on Death Ref this particular California tale is both macabre and sad. Indeed, it looks as if the economic problems currently afflicting a great many Americans played a role here. We’ve got an entire Death Ref section devoted to just Death + the Economy items. This most recent story also reminds me, a little bit, of the Pennsylvania case from last July.

More than anything, the Orange County prosecutor will have to look at the California statutes which define how and when a corpse is mishandled.

I have a hunch that no legal action will be taken.

And in case anyone is wondering, the smell described by the Police is the result of the body’s decomposing fluids seeping into the car’s interior.

I know I know. Too much information.

Never Stop Learning.

2 Bodies Found in Wrong Plots at Arlington Cemetery
Christian Davenport, Washington Post (September 15, 2010)
Arlington National Cemetery officials discovered that two people were buried in the wrong plots after exhuming their remains last month, an Army official confirmed Tuesday.

More Details Emerge about Bodies Buried in Wrong Arlington Plots
Christian Davenport, Washington Post (September 21, 2010)
The mystery of missing bodies at the nation’s most hallowed military burial ground keeps getting more troubling.

Two more articles on the problems at Arlington National Cemetery recently ran in the Washington Post and the situation is going from bad to worse. Way worse.

These are two interrelated articles, separated by about a week and represent a huge problem for cemetery authorities.

The first article, published on September 15, 2010 leads with this scene:

Arlington National Cemetery officials discovered that two people were buried in the wrong plots after exhuming their remains last month, an Army official confirmed Tuesday.

It’s the first revelation of bodies being exhumed since the Army released an inspector general report in June that found extensive record-keeping problems at the nation’s premier military cemetery, including more than 100 unmarked graves, scores of grave sites with headstones that are not recorded on cemetery maps, and at least four burial urns that had been unearthed and dumped in an area where excess grave dirt is kept.

The cemetery took the extraordinary step of opening the grave of an Army staff sergeant after his wife heard the news about the cemetery’s problems and worried that her husband was buried in the wrong place.

When officials opened his grave three weeks ago, they found that someone else’s remains had been interred there, said Gary Tallman, an Army spokesman. The cemetery found the sergeant buried in a nearby plot under someone else’s headstone, his wife said in an interview.

Early on, when the problems at Arlington Cemetery first emerged, I suggested that mass disinterments might be required. This was partially in jest but I am beginning to think that it could happen since the second Post article on September 22, 2010 explains:

The mix-ups are the clearest evidence yet that the cemetery’s record-keeping problems, which were revealed in an Army inspector general’s report released in June, have led to people being buried in the wrong places. The inspector general investigation found more than 100 unmarked graves, scores of grave sites with headstones that are not recorded on cemetery maps, and at least four burial urns that had been unearthed and dumped in an area where excess grave dirt is kept.

After news of the report broke, retired Air Force Col. William C. Koch Jr. called the cemetery’s hotline to ask whether the remains of his wife, Jean, were buried where they were supposed to be, he said in an interview.

The cemetery assured him that everything was in order, and Koch said he was relieved. But last month, the cemetery called back. Officials were very sorry, he recalled them saying, but his wife’s coffin was found one grave over to the right in a plot that had been marked by a headstone for an Army staff sergeant. His wife’s plot, they said, was empty.

Cemetery officials opened the graves last month after the staff sergeant’s wife grew concerned that his remains had been interred in the wrong place. Even though cemetery officials assured her that her husband was in the correct grave, she wasn’t convinced and asked them to dig, as The Washington Post documented in an article last week. The staff sergeant’s wife spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity because she feared news of Arlington’s mistakes would mar her husband’s name.

Army officials then had a mystery on their hands: If the staff sergeant wasn’t in the plot that bore his headstone, where was he? After consulting their records, Arlington officials thought he was in the next grave over, which was troubling because that grave was marked by a headstone for Sally Rippert, the wife of a retired Navy commander.

When they opened that grave, they found two sets of remains: the staff sergeant’s coffin and, above it, Rippert’s urn.

These are all Code Red, worst case scenarios for ANY cemetery, let alone Arlington National Cemetery which handles military funerals.

At this point, it is hard to know what Arlington officials can do other than check every single grave. That is a total of 300,000 graves (give or take), with approximately 6,900 new funerals every year. Even if officials cut the total number in half, it’s still 150,000 graves that need checking and that would be a Herculean task.

You can read all of Death Ref’s Arlington Cemetery reports here.

At Arlington Cemetery, Years of Problems
Aaron C. Davis and Michael E. Ruane, The Washington Post (July 26, 2010)
From the graves of Supreme Court justices to a section for freed slaves, Arlington National Cemetery seems to have been egalitarian in its mistakes.

Arlington Cemetery Problems were Documented in 2005 but Never Fixed
Aaron C. Davis and Christian Davenport, The Washington Post (July 28, 2010)
Arlington National Cemetery officials knew more than five years ago that many burials did not match Arlington’s maps and paper records, according to documents released Tuesday by a Senate subcommittee investigating millions of dollars in botched contracts overseen by the Army.

As Many as 6,600 Arlington Graves Mixed Up
Anne Flaherty, Associated Press ( July 29, 2010)

Ex-Cemetery Official Takes Fifth
Christian Davenport and Aaron C. Davis, The Washington Post (July 30, 2010)
Invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, former Arlington National Cemetery deputy superintendent Thurman Higginbotham refused Thursday to answer U.S. senators’ questions about his role in approving millions of dollars’ worth of botched contracts at the nation’s most venerated…

Editorial: Arlington’s Broken Trust
The New York Times (August 02, 2010)
Families of the nation’s war dead should never have to endure mismarked graves and other injustices at Arlington National Cemetery.

The Arlington Cemetery story just keeps going and going. At this point, and based upon the reporting largely by the Washington Post, it looks like Arlington Cemetery is going to require a review of the entire cemetery.

I have no idea how that will work or how much money it will require but it’s going to get complicated.

The issues at Arlington Cemetery have gotten so complex that I have added an Arlington Cemetery tag so that people can directly follow the stories.

Two things happened last week: 1.) The former head of Arlington Cemetery testified before a US Senate Sub-committee and he plead the 5th Amendment on some question. The 5th Amendment. 2.) It’s become clear that no one knows how many graves are mis-labeled, incorrect, or non-existent.

These are not insignificant obstacles.

I’ll keep following the story as it develops.