A mix-up at the city Medical Examiner’s Office resulted in cremation of the wrong body — again.
The bodies of two Hispanic men with the same first and last names lay in the Bronx morgue this month, sources told The Post.
One man’s family had requested his cremation. But the ME released the other man’s body to a Queens crematorium.
The ME’s Office blamed the undertaker.
“The funeral director from the crematorium selected the wrong decedent and erroneously cremated the wrong person,” said Julie Bolcer, an ME’s Office spokeswoman.
But insiders said the ME’s Office screwed up.
“When a funeral director comes to our facility to pick up a body, our morgue technicians don’t just say to them, ‘The freezers are over there — go get it,’ ” a source said.
“We are responsible for making sure we release the correct body to a funeral home. Ultimately, it’s our office’s fault.”
Even if two bodies have the same name, each has a distinct ME case number, which is on paperwork given to the funeral director.
“Our office is supposed to get the body with the right ME number,” the source said, comparing it to a hospital ID bracelet.
Bolcer said the funeral director noticed the goof — but it was too late.
“Once he became aware of his mistake, he contacted our office and corrective actions were taken,” Bolcer said.
The person erroneously cremated had no known next of kin, she added.
The mix-up follows a series of botched body-handling incidents recently reported by The Post:
- The ME mistakenly cremated a 65-year-old black man with the same last name as a white man who was supposed to be cremated.
- An 85-year-old woman’s body was mistakenly sent to a medical school for student dissection.
- Staff lost the body of a 71-year-old Upper West Side woman, forcing the ME to exhume at least 300 corpses in a Bronx potter’s field in a fruitless search.
At least two morgue employees have been suspended and other staffers allegedly told to clam up.
“There are a lot of closed-door meetings, shutting things down as far as access to information, and threatening people not to release anything to the press,” an insider said.