Arizona county leads nation in identifying indigent remains

Key Takeaways

When a person dies, and no friend or family member claims them, their remains go to their local government. Often, a county will arrange for the body to be buried or cremated. Sometimes, its donated to medial research. 

In Pima County, Ariz., the Office of the Medical Examiner stores them as skeletal remains, and does everything in its power to connect them to a loved one or next of kin through its Indigent Interment Program as a way to provide a sense of closure to the death. 

The county stores skeletal remains “just in an air-conditioned space, they don’t have to be refrigerated,” said Greg Hess, Pima County chief medical examiner. “We have between 500 to 600 sets of skeletal remains in boxes, and we curate them, almost like a museum or a forensic anthropology department would.”

Until 2018, Pima County cremated unidentified remains, but once a body is cremated, it can’t be examined. And once a body is buried, to take an additional sample for DNA or to try and make an identification, it has to be exhumed, which is expensive, according to Hess. Storing skeletal remains is also overall more cost effective for the county than cremating or burying a body, he added. 

The Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner stores the largest amount of unidentified remains of any county in the country, which can largely be attributed to the number of unidentified migrants who die in the county’s desert environment after crossing the border. 

“We have more unidentified remains than other places, because of just the nature of the environment,” Hess said. “It’s really hot and dry and people die outside, and their remains are not protected from the environment. They’ll decompose and become skeletal remains relatively quickly.”

Migrant deaths make up only around 200 or fewer of the roughly 4,500-5,000 deaths reported to the medical examiner office each year, so it’s not a costly effort, it just is disproportionately represented in unidentified deaths, because all of the migrants are unidentified, according to Hess. The DNA work the medical examiner office does is not paid for by the county, and is funded through grants, the families who are looking to identify a loved one or various organizations, Hess said. 

Some counties use newspaper advertisements to try and identify unclaimed remains, which Hess said is an outdated practice. “When’s the last time you read the newspaper?” he asked. Pima County uses social media to search for next of kin and also uses software products that law enforcement agencies might use, he said.

“We try to find associations to somebody’s name and look for next of kin, if for some reason it’s not immediately obvious,” Hess said. “Like there’s so many guys at home and they don’t have pictures on the mantle of relatives or who knew they were missing to begin with? All these things come into play.”

When dealing with migrant deaths, it’s a different story, Hess said. Because of the nature of the death and the fact that the person was entering the United States illegally, the families who are looking for their loved one often distrust the government, so families will sometimes reach out individually or through non-governmental organizations, like the Colibri Center, which has Missing Migrant Forms families can fill out on its website, as well as an “Active Search” guide to help people searching for missing migrants.

It’s also more complicated with migrant deaths, because to repatriate remains to another country, the deceased person’s home country needs to be involved as well, so the medical examiner office works with consulates on its investigations, Hess said. The consulates also make connections between the medical examiner and people looking for their loved ones.

“That’s how we figure out how we can identify them — anything from fingerprints to distinctive tattoos to, if you just have skeletal remains, it’s DNA, that’s the only way you can identify people when you have that,” Hess said. “So, every case is a little bit different, and can be really quick, or it could take a really long time, depending on the circumstance.”

It’s “pretty common” for the Office of the Medical Examiner to identify indigent remains and make a connection to next of kin — it happens roughly once a month or so, according to Hess.

Pima County devoted roughly $4 million in America Rescue Plan dollars toward equipment for the Indigent Interment Program, which will be used in the Office of the Medical Examiner’s new 34,000 square-foot, $45 million facility, which opened in October. Pima County’s Office of the Medical Examiner also serves the nearby Apache, Cochise, Graham, La Paz and Santa Cruz counties.

“I think a lot of [the funding] had to do with building in the capital and infrastructure to be able to be more responsive to situations of a community that is our size, and then understanding that we’re providing services and support to our smaller jurisdictions as well,” said Pima County Chair Adelita Grijalva. “I think that the capital investments with using ARPA are going to pay dividends in streamlining a lot of services and being able to be more responsive.”

The old facility, which the Office of the Medical Examiner outgrew, was a “stark contrast” to the new building, which includes anthropology labs where staff will examine and investigate remains, a crematorium (for both identified human remains and the remains of animals that have died at the Pima Animal Care Center) and a room for family members to identify their deceased loves ones, according to Grijalva.

Grijalva said she’s “very proud” of Pima County being a national leader in working to identify unclaimed remains, both to aid in unsolved crimes and to provide any possible sense of closure to families.

“Wherever they come from, this is unfortunately [where they died],” Grijalva said. “They didn’t get to their final destination. And I think that for so many people that have unanswered questions, being compassionate about trying to reunify and bring some closure to those families is really important.”