A veteran’s corpse was sent across state lines before his family knew he was dead

One man's journey from a hospital in South Carolina to NovaShare, a body broker in North Carolina, demonstrates the peril of an industry with little regulation.

This article is part of “Dealing the Dead,” a series investigating the use of unclaimed bodies for medical research.

CORNELIUS, N.C. — Last year, Karen Wandel received an alarming message: Her father had died more than five months earlier in a South Carolina hospital and, when no family claimed his body, the hospital sent it to be used for medical research. 

Wandel had a strained relationship with her father, Libero Marinelli Jr., a widower, and hadn’t spoken to him in years. But as a lawyer in North Carolina, she wasn’t hard to find. Neither were Marinelli’s brother in California or sister in Massachusetts, who had kept in touch on birthdays and holidays. But they all learned of his death only after Marinelli’s brother sent him a Christmas card that was returned unopened. 

Wandel remains stunned by the treatment of her father, who, as a former Army service member, was entitled to be buried in a veterans’ cemetery but whose corpse instead was first sent to a body broker in another state.

Libero Marinelli Jr. served as an Army lawyer during the Vietnam War.Courtesy Karen Wandel“I just want somebody to look me in the eye and say, ‘What we did was wrong, and we are sorry. We are sorry to your family, and we’re sorry that your father suffered this indignity,’” Wandel said. “Particularly after he served his country.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/body-broker-novashare-veteran-south-carolina-rcna179789

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