Slain prison escapee Richard Matt will be buried in an unmarked grave upstate — because none of his relatives has claimed his body, officials said Wednesday.
The convicted murderer was no longer officially a ward of the state when he was fatally shot by a fed on Friday, so his corpse is now the responsibility of Franklin County, where he made his last stand, said Brian Langdon, one of the county’s coroners.
A Buffalo TV station reported that Matt’s son, Nicholas Harris, was planning to claim the body, but he missed a mid-Tuesday deadline, according to a spokeswoman for the hospital where it was sent after an autopsy in Albany.
Matt’s daughter said she didn’t want responsibility for her disgraced dad’s funeral, Alice Hyde Medical Center spokeswoman Megan Avery added.
Another Franklin County coroner, Bert Wilcox, said the county doesn’t have a potter’s field, so officials will have to buy Matt a plot at a local cemetery.
“They’ll probably go to the least-expensive one they can find,” he said. “The county won’t pay for a marker.”
Matt broke out of the Clinton Correctional Facility on June 6 along with convicted cop-killer David Sweat, who was shot and captured near the Canadian border on Sunday.