Reclaiming dead gives closure for Bucks, Montgomery, Burlington counties families

Marcel Sol sat in a New Jersey morgue for 142 days.

His cousin found him only after she saw his name listed among the unclaimed dead in a county where Sol did not live.

Tammy Tyler waited longer. She died in 2012. The Montgomery County Coroner’s Office cremated her body and kept the ashes in storage until earlier this year, when her now adult daughter reclaimed them.

Henry C. Weller waited even longer than that. The Levittown man died nearly a decade ago, but his niece didn’t find out until earlier this year, when she saw someone with the same name listed among Bucks County’s unclaimed dead.

Sol, Tyler and Weller are among a dozen people, so far, whose bodies were claimed from morgues in Bucks and Montgomery counties in Pennsylvania and Burlington County, New Jersey, in the months following the publication of “The Unclaimed,” an ongoing series examining the invisible burden of abandoned dead on local governments, communities and families.

The stories of the unclaimed dead share many common threads: poverty, addiction, isolation and estrangement. The families, too, often share a strong desire for answers and reconciliation, according to psychologists.

“Curiosity and connection are strong in our species and they come together in the disappearance of a family member, loved one or friend,” said Frank Farley, a professor of psychological studies in education at Temple University in Philadelphia. “Death is closure of a life and we will often feel how can we say goodbye and express our feelings fully if we know nothing of that death.”

'A really sweet kid’

New Jersey residents Christine and Seth Drucker believe they never would learned what happened to Marcel Sol, 35, if they had not found his name listed on this news organization’s website as among the unclaimed dead in the Burlington County Medical Examiner’s Office.

Sol died of a heroin overdose May 15, 2019, at a Burlington County home of an acquaintance, according to Seth Drucker, a lifelong friend, whose wife is Sol’s cousin.

No one with the medical examiner’s office contacted them as next of kin, Drucker said.

The couple, who live near Princeton, said they had been financially supporting Sol on and off for years. He was an only child and his parents are both dead, Drucker said.

For much of his life, Sol struggled with substance abuse and mental health issues, Drucker said. Everyone else in the family had written him off.

Drucker said he and his wife most recently lost touch with Sol about 18 months before his death after Sol completed a mental health program near them and moved to Camden, where he lost his cellphone.

Two weeks before he died, the couple tracked Sol to a Camden hospital where he was a patient.

“He definitely sounded more out of it than he typically did,” Drucker said.

The couple told Sol that he could move in with them after the hospital released him, Drucker said, adding he gave Sol his cellphone number. Sol never called.

Christina Drucker started searching online to see if she could find Sol when she saw a message posted on his Facebook page that read, “Rest in Peace.”

Immediately, the couple called the Camden County morgue, but they had no information on Sol. They tracked down his girlfriend in Camden, but she wasn’t helpful, either.

Later, the couple later learned that Sol had no identification on him when police found him dead. Police got his name from the homeowner and a medication bottle Sol had on him.

Burlington County confirmed that it released Sol’s body on Oct. 17, after which the couple had him cremated, Drucker said. The couple plan to spread his ashes in the woods near their home, since Sol was always happiest working outside.

The couple will always remember Sol as a good man who led a difficult life.

“He was a really sweet kid. That will always be my image of him,” Seth Drucker said. “He always had a good sense of humor about everything. He was never one to point the finger. Despite everything, he owned up to all his shortcomings. He really just wanted to be independent to live his own life but unfortunately didn’t have the tools to do it.”

'Doing the right thing’

Margaret barely remembers her uncle Henry. Most of those memories revolved around Christmas visits and a shared birthday. She recalled him as a loner who never married or had children.

Then, earlier this year, she saw the name Henry C. Weller online listed among the unclaimed dead in Bucks County.

Could he be Uncle Henry?

She had not thought about her uncle in years. She broke ties with some family members years ago, said Margaret, who did not want her full name used.

The Bucks County Coroner’s office confirmed that Weller was her Uncle Henry. Margaret learned he had a history of severe cardiac disease including seven minor heart attacks. He died at age 57.

The coroner’s office told Margaret that it could not locate a sister, his next of kin, to see if the family wanted to claim the body. It made sense to Margaret because that sister died 10 years earlier. His parents, her grandparents, were also dead.

“Henry did have two other sisters alive at that time,” she added. “I’m not sure why he did not try to look further.”

As soon as she confirmed the remains were her uncle, Margaret decided to pay the $350 fee (the cost of a county cremation in 2010) and bring her uncle home. The family has a cemetery plot where she plans to have him remains interred, she said.

“I barely knew my uncle, but I loved my grandmother very much and she loved him always, no matter what,” Margaret said. "For me this is about doing the right thing. I want to do what my heart tells me is the right thing to do. Who knows, maybe this is my ripple in the universe. It makes me feel better already.”

Connecting the living and dead

The growing number of elderly living longer alone, the increase in fractured and dispersed families, and growing social isolation are factors that contribute to anonymous deaths and the need for the government to intercede, said Farley, the Temple University psychologist.

Family members may be less inclined to take responsibility if they believe someone else will, a psychological phenomenon known as diffusion of responsibility, according to Farley.

“Some people may hope someone else will take care of the complex business of claiming the body of a relative or friend, the paperwork required, and the subsequent effort and expense to arrange for last rites,” he added. “Some people might feel it’s kind of creepy to be thrust into the role of claiming a dead body and dealing with the complex fallout of that, particularly, perhaps if the departed was not very close.”

Farley added that governments should do more to make the public aware of the existence of unclaimed cadavers and ashes.

“This is the information age, the digital age, where most of us are increasingly living online and notices of such governmental activity and information are just a click away,” he said. “Such information is easy to dispense and should be done so vigorously.”

Earlier this year, the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office launched a new, long-term project allowing family members who previously terminated legal rights to a deceased relative to reclaim them. The office is waving its $750 cremation fee for individuals who have been unclaimed for at least five years, which accounts for about half of their 108 unclaimed as of late December.

The most common reason families say they cannot claim a deceased family member is a lack of money for burial or cremation, according to county coroners.

Family reconnected

John Simmers lost his father at age 12. His mother, Tammy Tyler, died at age 37 in 2012. John was 17. His little sister Hazel was 14.

John, who now lives in Delaware, and Hazel grew up in foster homes and barely knew their mother, who had a history of mental illness, chronic health problems and homelessness, according to Montgomery County Coroner records.

“My mom was just in and out of our lives,” John said recently in a phone conversation. “I was 13 years old the last time I saw my mother. My feelings, I had locked down like a tackle box.”

They did not know their mom was dead until earlier this year. A pastor at a Bryn Athyn church contacted John Simmers after seeing Tyler’s name listed online as among the Montgomery County unclaimed dead.

At the time, Tyler refused to provide next of kin information to Huntington Valley nursing home where she lived in the months before her death, according to coroner records. She had two living sisters, but neither could financially accept responsibility, and they authorized a county cremation, according to records.

Among the papers in Tyler’s coroner file was a handwritten note from one of her sisters. It requested her remains and death certificate be forwarded to the family.

The date on the note was September 2012, a month after Tyler died.

Hazel Simmers retrieved Tyler’s ashes last month, the Montgomery County Coroner’s office confirmed.

The siblings plan to scatter some of Tyler’s ashes in a park where they played together as a family, John Simmers said.

“I wish she and I could have had a different story,” he added. “I literally have no answer as to why my mom wasn’t more involved in our lives. For years, I asked myself, was I a bad kid? Did I do something wrong? I realize now, she couldn’t be a mother to us. One day, I believe I will know why she did what she did.”

Staff writer James McGinnis contributed to this story.

Where we are getting our information on the unclaimed dead

Earlier this year, the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office opened its unclaimed dead files allowing a reporter to dig deeper into the lives of the abandoned dead and the county efforts to get next of kin to take responsibility.

This news organization sought similar information from the Bucks County Coroner’s Office, which denied a Right to Know request. The denial was appealed and earlier this month the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records ruled the news organization can have access to some of those records in January.

The Burlington County Medical Examiner’s Office has not yet responded to an Open Public Records Act request for similar access to its unclaimed dead records.

If you have information about someone on our list, please contact Jo Ciavaglia at 215-949-4181.

This story originally appeared in the Bucks County Courier Times on Dec. 27, 2019.

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Montgomery, Bucks, Burlington county families find relatives, closure