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Man in wrong grave had been homeless |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Wednesday, 10 October 2007 |
BY MATTHEW CHAYES
A man buried with military honors earned by someone else was homeless and a handyman for a time and appears to have used that veteran's Social Security number since at least 1998, records show.
The possibility that an impostor is buried in Calverton National Cemetery came to light last week when survivors of Willie Hayes -- a Vietnam veteran who served from 1969 to 1970 and had just died -- were told they couldn't bury him at Calverton because someone with the same name, rank, Social Security number and dates of service has been buried there for nearly four years.
Calverton officials are continuing to piece together details about the man buried in 2003 as Willie Hayes. That man's body could be disinterred if the cemetery's investigation shows he is an impostor, Calverton's director, Michael Picerno, said Tuesday. The tombstone has already been removed and replaced with a green marker.
Officials hope that man did serve in the military so they won't have to reinter him somewhere else.
Administrators at the Kings Harbor Multicare Center in the Bronx, where the man who died in 2003 lived, told investigators that he probably lived on the streets before he moved there, Picerno said.
Investigators are focusing on a medical chart maintained at the nursing home showing a birth date for that man of 1943, not 1948, when the veteran who recently died was born, Picerno said.
The Hayes who died in 2003 had probably been homeless when he checked into St. Luke's Hospital in Morningside Heights in 1998. A hospital records clerk said Wednesday a Social Security number that Hayes used there matches one belonging to the man who just died.
And death records maintained by Patrick Guido, the undertaker who buried Hayes on Christmas Eve 2003, show he worked as a building handyman.
All the information for that Willie Hayes on those records matches data on an honorable discharge certificate issued to the Willie Hayes who died recently -- the same data that Calverton used to accept one man for burial in 2003 and initially reject another last week.
At Calverton, where about 6,000 are laid to rest every year, undertakers or next of kin provide information on the deceased to the cemetery, which checks it with the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Picerno said.
"We assume that people are operating in good faith when they call and request burial here," Picerno said.
The Hayes mix-up is the first time in American history something like this has happened, Picerno and a representative of the federal National Cemetery Administration said.
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/ny-livet1011,0,3314501.story
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