![Bones from a suspected mass grave in Afghanistan. [Massoud Hossaini/Getty Images]](https://images.dailycaller.com/image/width=960,height=411,fit=cover,f=auto/https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-75120084-1.jpg "Bones from a suspected mass grave in Afghanistan. [Massoud Hossaini/Getty Images]")
New York University (NYU) has been forced to issue an awkward apology after it was discovered the school dumped donated cadavers into mass graves, violating promises the school gave to donors.
The mistake was first reported Friday by The New York Times. The paper identified several people who signed contracts agreeing to donate their bodies for scientific use upon their deaths. The contract told donors that after their body was used up they would cremate it and dispose of the ashes in an “appropriate and dignified manner.”
But instead, many of those bodies ended up in a mass grave on Hart Island, which New York uses as a burial place for the bodies of the unknown and the indigent.
In one case, NYU mishandled the body even though the deceased was also a major donor to the school. Marie Muscarnera donated almost $700,000 to the school upon her death in 2005, and gave the school her body as well to use as a cadaver. But despite the school agreeing to bury or cremate her in a dignified manner, after three years of using her cadaver, the school simply paid a funeral home $225 to ship what was left of her to a morgue in the Bronx. The morgue, in turn, packaged her in a pine box and then had her buried in a pauper’s grave on Hart Island, where graves are dug by prison inmates.
The Times notes that sending a body to Hart Island saves the school about $155 compared to cremating it (the burial itself is done at taxpayer expense), though NYU spokeswoman Lisa Greiner told the paper money wasn’t the reason for the decision.
“It really does not appear that any of these individuals were buried on Hart Island for any savings,” she said. Greiner suggested instead that many such burials occurred due to the sharing of cadavers between institutions, which caused corpses to be lost in the shuffle.
Greiner also said that NYU had changed its policies in recent years, so that cadavers are always cremated and not dispatched to mass graves. At the same time, though, she said the school didn’t know how many bodies had been left on Hart Island, and said school administrators were in the dark until the Times approached them about it.
Family members were similarly in the dark. Gael Smith Arnold, the daughter of one woman whose body was buried in a mass grave, told a local news outlet she had heard nothing about her mother’s fate until a Times reporter notified her.
“I was very shocked,” she said.
Send tips to blake@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.