Whistle-blowers drew notice to mortuary trouble

Associated Press

WYOMING, Del.

The body of the Marine lay on a gurney at the Dover Air Force Base mortuary, an arm bone jutting out from the torso.

Embalming technician James Parsons wondered how he would be able to get the stiffened arm back into position so that a uniform could be put on the corpse for a viewing. Parsons and a co-worker asked their supervisor, Quinton “Randy” Keel, what to do, and he told them to take the arm off, then left, according to Parsons.

“I’m thinking, ‘This is just wrong. We shouldn’t be doing this,”’ Parsons recalled, contending that consent should have been obtained from the Marine’s family first.

Parsons refused to cut off the arm and instead stood and watched as his co-worker — a new employee still on probation — grabbed the saw and removed the limb, which was then placed alongside the Marine’s leg inside an undergarment that would be covered by his uniform.

After stewing for months about what happened, Parsons bypassed the military chain of command and reported the episode. He was one of three co-workers to complain about what they saw as callous or sloppy handling of remains at the main military mortuary for America’s war dead.

This week, the Air Force said it had punished three top officials at the Dover mortuary for “gross mismanagement,” including two instances in which body fragments from remains shipped home from Afghanistan were lost.

The investigators concluded that the removal of the Marine’s arm had not violated any rule or regulation. But the Air Force has changed procedures to ensure that a representative of the deceased’s service, in this case the Marine Corps, has a say in whether the family should be contacted before a body is altered so significantly.

All three whistle-blowers — Parsons, Mary Ellen Spera and William Zwicharowski — said in an interview Friday that the problems at the mortuary have since been fixed and that the families of fallen troops can be assured that the remains of their loved ones are being treated with respect.