A medical examiner lost her mind. Well, not her’s, but someones. Hit the jump for the full story.
DM – A grieving sister was told on the eve of her sister’s funeral that her brain had been removed, giving her little choice but to bury her sister without the organ.
The Medical Examiner’s Office in Brooklyn allegedly lost the brain of a woman in her 60s while performing an autopsy on her.
The woman died unexpectedly in January.
The New York Post exclusively reported that the woman’s sister was told the day before the funeral that the Medical Examiner had removed the brain.
It was too late to cancel the service, so the sister had no choice but to bury her sister without her brain.
Funeral director Alexandra Mosca called the ME’s office last week, after the sister still hadn’t received the death certificate, autopsy report, or brain.
According to the Post, they told Ms Mosca that they couldn’t find it.
‘Where is it? Nobody knows,’ Ms Mosca said. ‘They said they would have to locate it and get back to me.’
The funeral director placed a follow-up call two days later.
She was told ‘they found the brain after all,’ but only, as Ms Mosca said, because ‘I made such a ruckus.’
The ME’s office gives next-of-kin several options if an organ is removed during autopsy: leave the body in the morgue until the autopsy is complete, pick up the organ later, or relinquish claim to it entirely.
The letter detailing these options is first passed along to the funeral director.
However, the letter notes that if a family member is unsure of how to proceed, the organs will become property of the ME’s office.
The Post notes that next-of-kin have legal rights – the body of the deceased always belongs to the next-of-kin.
However, nowhere in the letter is this point made clear.
The sister is unsure of what she wants to do with her sibling’s brain.
While she could exhume her sister and bury it with the body, bury it next to the coffin, or relinquish it to the ME’s office, none of those options eases her grief.
An ME spokesperson did not respond to MailOnline’s call for comments.
