Montgomery County wants families to reclaim their unclaimed dead

Posted Sept. X, 2019

Ten years ago, the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office directed that the ashes of Benjamin Harrison be given to his niece.

Last month, First Deputy Coroner Alexander Balacki found that long-forgotten letter. But Harrison, who died in 2009 at age 51, is still among the unclaimed dead in county storage.

So Balacki decided to look for Harrison’s niece to see if she was still interested in having her uncle’s remains.

He also wondered if other families might want a second chance to be reunite the cremains of their deceased loved ones.

Last week, Balacki launched what he described as a long-term project to give relatives who terminated legal rights to deceased family members’ remains the opportunity to take them home now. The program will target relatives of unclaimed individuals who have been deceased at least five years, and waive the $750 fee typically charged to reimburse the county for its cremation costs.

More than half of the 117 unclaimed dead stored at the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office have identified next-of-kin, who either declined to claim the body and authorized a county-paid cremation, or failed to respond to requests to authorize a county cremation, according to Balacki.

Last year 14 bodies went unclaimed in the county, down from a nine-year record high of 19 in 2017. Between 2007 and 2012, the county reported 22 unclaimed dead; the number jumped to 75 between 2013 and last year, according to coroner data.

According to Balacki, the unique reunification effort was inspired by this news organization’s ongoing “Unclaimed” project, which is looking at the invisible, but growing, burden of unclaimed dead on local governments and attempting to learn more about the lives of the more than 300 unclaimed dead in Bucks and Montgomery counties and Burlington County, New Jersey.

“I don’t think I’d be doing it if it wasn’t for our collaboration,” Balacki said. “I realized that we needed to have more readily available information on these (cremains), who they are.”

After he learned Harrison and another man appeared to serve in the U.S. military, which may make them eligible for a free burial with military honors in a veterans’ cemetery, Balacki went back to the old case files where he discovered the letter about Harrison’s niece.

He tracked down an address for the niece and Harrison’s sister, but has not received a response. He is now working with a local veterans organization to determine Harrison’s eligibility for a military burial. This news organization found documentation that Harrison served in the U.S. Army for 11 months in 1977-78.

Montco 1st Deputy Coroner Alex Balacki

This news organization also reviewed unclaimed dead case files in the county and found notes where family members requested cremated remains, which were then brought to Balacki’s attention.

One of the main reasons the dead go unclaimed is surviving family cannot afford the cost to bury or cremate them or the family is estranged, according to Pennsylvania coroners. Family members are under no legal obligation to claim the dead and in Pennsylvania a person is legally deemed unclaimed if no family comes forward 36 hours after death. Most Pennsylvania counties charge relatives who authorize a county-paid cremation a fee to claim the ashes.

Coroner staff will focus on two to three cases a week, where they will attempt to reach family members, Balacki said. His office is also investigating possibly securing a burial site or place to scatter ashes of the dead who remain unclaimed.

Later this month Montgomery County plans to bury three people who were among its unclaimed — a husband and wife at the Washington Crossing National Veterans’ Cemetery in Bucks County, and a 73-year-old man who died in 2014 and whose family authorized a county cremation; Balacki learned the man’s parents are buried at a Souderton cemetery, which has agreed to inter his remains.