Bucks and Montgomery counties have experienced significant increases in the number of individuals left unclaimed in county morgues over the last decade, according to the latest numbers.
In Montgomery County the number of unclaimed individuals peaked at 38 in 2020, and has remained in the high 20s each year since. In 2014, there were 11 unclaimed individuals.
Bucks County saw its highest number of unclaimed dead — 34 and 35 — in 2022 and 2023, the highest in a decade and more than double the number in 2014.
Since 2019, the Bucks County Courier Times and The Intelligencer's “Unclaimed”series has highlighted the growing national problem of unclaimed dead, which are typically the result of an inability for coroners and medical examiners to identify living next-of-kin willing to accept responsibility for final arrangements.
Do you recognize a name here?https://www.phillyburbs.com/storytelling/names-of-unclaimed-dead-bucks-county/
As part of the project, an online database was created to identify unclaimed remains in the possession of coroner offices in Bucks and Montgomery counties in Pennsylvania, and Burlington County in New Jersey.
The database includes information found about the individuals in an attempt to find someone who knew them and could claim their remains. It is updated several times a year when coroner offices release new lists or new information is verified. Names for Burlington County New Jersey were last updated in 2020.
As of late August, with the help of the project, the remains of at least 153 people have been removed from coroner offices over the last five years including some names listed for a decade or longer.
But more than 550 names remain. As of July, at least 19 individuals in Bucks County and three in Montgomery County remain unclaimed so far this year, according to coroner office data.
Following the publication of the series in 2019, coroner offices in Bucks and Montgomery counties adopted new practices including posting the names of abandoned and unclaimed dead in their possession and reviewing old cases to look for possible missed information about family or final arrangements.
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The remains removed from coroner offices since 2019 include more than 30 military veterans or spouses eligible for free interment in a veteran cemetery at the time of their deaths years earlier, but ended up overlooked.
The stories of unclaimed dead who were later claimed include:
- The longest unclaimed remains in Bucks County, a Bensalem man who died in 1999 and was buried with his parents in 2023.
- A Montgomery County man who prepaid for his final arrangements, but it went unnoticed until a reporter reviewed his 2013 coroner case file. The funeral home immediately claimed the man.
- A Montgomery County murder victim whose remains were unclaimed following her 2014 death. In 2021, a friend came forward on behalf of the woman’s adult daughter to claim her remains.
- A homeless man who died in 2011, whose adult son and granddaughter had been looking for him for decades after he walked out on his family.
Last year the Unclaimed project was featured in an “NBC News” series “Lost Rites,” which investigated how coroner offices in southern states failed to notify family before cremating and burying remains in pauper fields.
NBC identified the award-winning series as one of only two known U.S. media organizations routinely attempting to shed light on the problem of unclaimed dead in county morgues.
Why bodies go unclaimed With no next of kin, the dead tax county resources. How they end up in coroner offices.
Reporter Jo Ciavaglia can be reached at jciavaglia@gannett.com
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