(dramatic tune) - [Interviewer] So, how
are you feeling today? - Nervous, but here we are, in beautiful Worcester, Massachusetts. So, there's no turning back now. - [News Reader] Under
investigation for the bodies it was keeping in the basement. - [News Reader] An investigation
found the improper storage of decomposing bodies. - This funeral director
admits the situation did get away from him. Some neighbors complained about a smell and the City Of Worcester
issued a public nuisance order. - It was a rather shocking
kind of inspection. - [News Reader] At least
nine decomposing bodies. - On a cold day in
Worcester, Massachusetts, I went to visit Peter Stefan, at the funeral home he
has owned since 1975. I wasn't entirely sure how much Peter was going to be willing to talk with me about the recent events and accusations, mortician to mortician. I also know how much Peter
has done for his community and that his side of the
story deserves to be told. This is such a beautifully
preserved historic home, that it really doesn't seem to me like the kind of place that what
happened could have happened. You may know the name Peter
Stefan, in connection to the Boston Marathon
bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev. We've talked before about Peter's role in the secret burial of Tsarnaev. Facing death threats, protestors,
rocks thrown at his staff. Peter is known as the man
who cares for the dead that no other funeral home will take. Unclaimed bodies, the
indigent dead, criminals. Peter will not refuse a body or a family this one final dignity. He has said, "We bury the
dead, that's what we do, "doesn't matter who it is. "I can't separate the
sins from the sinners." The Worcester police department
has been quoted as saying, "When there's no family, "our procedure has been
to call funeral homes "until one agrees to
dispose of the deceased." In the past, this has often
been Peter's mortuary, Graham, Putnam and Mahoney. But a willingness to care
for every single body that comes his way, has caused more than a
little controversy for Peter. In September of 2019, neighbors reported a bad smell
coming from his funeral home. Upon investigation,
nine improperly stored, unclaimed bodies were
found to be decomposing in the funeral homes basement. Peter had accepted the bodies from UMass Memorial Medical Center on May 29th, and some had been dead for over a year. They stayed at Graham, Putnam and Mahoney through the hot months of the summer. If this channel has taught you anything, it's that there are lots of bad
funeral directors out there. Funeral directors who lie, steal, disrespect bodies and families. Funeral directors who endanger
the well being of the public. The question for me was, what do you do when you find
out someone you look up to, someone who's done so
much for his community has been accused of being one of those bad funeral directors? And that's why I went to Worcester. - [Interviewer] How do you
reconcile what you know about peter versus all the
stuff that's happened recently? - I think that what people
don't understand about abandoned and unclaimed
bodies in the United States, is that there are thousands
of them at any given time. Piled up in the back
of a cooler somewhere. You're never supposed to leave bodies to just decompose in your basement. But on the other hand, nine bodies versus the
scale of this problem and the scale of the bureaucracy, and the scale to which these
people are not being cared for, versus everything else Peter
has done for his community. It's hard to reconcile and I don't know if we're gonna get closer today or not. I'd met Peter before at
conferences and talks, but being in his funeral home gave me a fuller understanding of him. The walls are lined with plaques thanking him or awarding
him for his service. Every photograph or trinket
or painting had a story. A story that usually included
someone that Peter helped. Heading away from the warmth
of the homes public areas, we headed downstairs into the basement, were we found not unclaimed bodies, but the unclaimed, cremated
remains he's been storing. Many that pre-date him, back to the turn of the 20th century. This led to a conversation
about the states lack of support regarding cremation of unclaimed bodies. - These are cremated remains that probably go back over 50 or 75 years. Behind me is probably 100 years. People just don't claim them, the reason being, they don't
know what to do with them. They can't bury them, they don't know if they can scatter them, a way to scatter them, it's
difficult to do that these days. So people leave them because
they don't know what to do. Eventually, we're gonna have
some sort of a group burial, rather than than keep
here in the basement. - We've been planning that for a while. - These are from the 1950s. - Back here in the closet they go back to the 1890s and 1900s. - See, in ashes now comes
through in a powder form, easy to scatter, what you have
here is basically bone chips. - Bones, yeah. - Over here we have infants
ashes that haven't been claimed. I have people call me and they'll say, "We just rented an apartment
and found a box in the closet." And people can't afford
to bury them at six, seven, eight, nine, $1000 a cemetery. - How many ashes do you think you have? - Between upstairs and down
here, probably 300, over 300. - It's obvious that Peter
can not stop himself from taking on the indigent
dead that needed a place to be, but the big question is, why did Peter agree to take those bodies if he knew he didn't have the space? The short answer is that
Peter was under the impression that the state of Massachusetts
would promptly authorize the cremation of the bodies. He never expected to
have to hold on to them as long as he did. Bureaucracy reared its ugly head, the city's public health
director told Peter not to cremate the bodies
until the city law department gave him the authorization forms. It took four months for
the city law department to produce those forms, after action had already
been taken against Peter. - They came after me, for
two months I battled them. Finally beat them. The city dragged their soles, the state dragged their soles and I was found guilty for one thing. 'Cause I waited for the
city to do something, so I'm as guilty as they were. That's easy. But the fact is, it wasn't
willful, I was waiting for them. - We reached out to the Worcester
Division of Public Health, about Peter's case but
they didn't wanna comment. But part of their argument against Peter was that he should not be accepting all the bodies that he does. That he should turn some away. Dr. Michael Hirsh, the City of Worcester's
medical director said, "While Peter's heart
was in the right place, "he should not have taken
the nine bodies in May." Hirsh said that, "Funeral homes should take
turns accepting bodies," that Peter "Shouldn't take them all." Leaving anyone behind is something Peter vehemently disagrees with. - How the hell do you turn them away? How do you get a telephone call, someone says well there's no money. I can't help you, to then go back and
watch the football game. How do you do that? Can't. I've often said, "Money's only
good for what good it'll do." - Like it or not, other funeral homes
will get the phone call, find out there's no money and
refuse to pick up the body. But, that's not entirely their fault. To be frank, why is it the
job of private businesses to subsidies the state in
taking care of our dead? Peter does it, but that doesn't mean
everybody else has to do it. - What are you supposed to
do, welfare gives you $1100, they haven't changed that for 37 years, that's totally hopeless. The state doesn't care,
there's no question about it. If they do care, tell me
where, 'cause I don't see it. We have abandoned people out. Local hospitals, they've been
over since last April and May. The city just sits around any
nobody wants to do anything. It's all geared, it's
the war against the poor. I don't care who it is,
that's how I call it. - With the low amount of
money given to funeral homes to help with low income
burials or cremations, very often funeral directors like Peter end up paying many of the
costs out of their own pockets. No wonder it's not always
easy to get funeral homes to take turns taking unclaimed bodies. They simply can't afford it. Peter took us to their
current body storage unit, which only holds three bodies. I'm used to California, where body refrigeration units
at crematories are massive, holding dozens of bodies at a time. All of a sudden it made much more sense why those nine bodies were
unrefrigerated last summer. There just wasn't any
refrigeration available. By the time Peter got them, the bodies had been dead for so long that he couldn't embalm them either. There's now a new unit
being constructed outside, that will hold additional bodies. - This is just a three person unit. - Three person, yeah. - So this is what you had
prior to the new unit upstairs. So obviously you have all
of these unclaimed bodies, the three person unit is not gonna-- - No.
- Do what it needs to do. - That out there will hold 15 to 17. - But I couldn't help wondering if the larger storage unit
could be a slippery slope. Do you worry that now
that you have room for 17, that you're gonna become
like someone obsessed with stray cats and it's just
going to be more and more, because you're already someone
who cares so much about this? - It wouldn't matter, I'd do it anyway. The idea is just to make
it more easier to do, I'm not gonna turn them down. You can't leave them,
as I told these people. It's somebody's father, mother,
sister, brother or child. It's unconscionable
disrespectful to leave deceased human beings around for
seven or eight months. - What needs to happen to change it? - Well, if they raised the welfare fee, like where it should be at. I did a cost of living index on it, it should be about 2900, if
you get 2500 out of them, a lot of the funeral homes
would pick up these people. And if some of these city's and towns, which most are doing, would
sign the cremation form, makes it easy. The abandoned party problem goes away. But you can't leave it
at $1100 for 37 years and inflate what the funerals are paying when they do put the bill in. But I went by the word and I
have all the public records to show that this city drags it's toes, no question about it. They waited, waited and waited
and they waited too long. So everybody was tryna' find a way out to put the blame game. Who cares about the blame
game, just get it done. Coming after me is a waste of time, I've been doing it for years. It's not something I started a year ago. - I'm standing in the shell
of what will ultimately be a 15 person body cooler on the
property of the funeral home. There's gonna be back-up generators and it will be able to stay within the Massachusetts legal limit
of storing un-embalmed bodies between 34 degrees and
39 degrees Fahrenheit. Peter wants to be able to use this space, not only for the unclaimed
bodies but potentially if there's some sort of
mass fatality situation, it will be an option there as well. This is the sort of thing of course that you really wish he had
had before this all happened, so those nine bodies had somewhere to be. What it comes down to is that
body storage is a problem. It's a problem in
Worcester, Massachusetts, it's a problem all
across the united states. Creating more coolers, more morgues, that's a great first step, but that doesn't help
the process move faster. It doesn't mean there's more money to take care of these people, and it's gonna continue to be a problem. After spending the day at the funeral home am I any closer to reconciling
the two sons of Peter Stefan? Not to put to neat a bow on this, but yes, I think I can reconcile the two. Not because I necessarily
agree with what he did, Peter himself takes responsibility
for waiting too long, but because I understand
why he did what he did. Because as a soldier in
the war against the poor, as he calls it, he couldn't
not take those bodies. And once he did, his hands were tied. I really don't mean these
to be fighting words against the state of Massachusetts, I am but sun weekend
vegetarian from California. But this is a problem everywhere. This is not a Peter Stefan problem, this is a funeral industry, government and Department
Of Public Health problem. It's a problem that we don't, as a society, seem to
be too outraged about. Because of the choices he made, Peters license was suspended
for a period of time and then re-instated with a
two year stayed suspension. That basically means the
state will monitor and report on Peter, to ensure he's
in compliance with the law. This may seem like something
a bad funeral director would be forced to do, but Peter
actually likes it this way. He wants the government to
see what's been going on. In my opinion Peter Stefan is not one of the bad funeral directors, he just cares less about
objects and his reputation, and more about helping
those in need of his care. Which is rare and a little
startling to be around. In a good way. This video was made
with generous donations from death enthusiasts just like you. - Let's speak about the
times a lady come in here, husband died. Didn't have any money, so I said, "Look, we have a suit here." Says, "It's a very loud tie. "He's looked at ties." "You don't like the tie?" "Ah, too bright." I said, "Do you like my tie?" And I took my tie off and put it on him, she calls me three times a year to thank me for changing the ties.
I wonder if he's able to cope with the spike from the COVID-19 pandemic now? Seems inevitable that there would be more cases of poor clients whose family members succumbed to the virus
I was just thinking cities could seize abandoned property under Eminent domain and use a limited number for storage of those cremains. They could even operate storage and disposition for unclaimed bodies.