June 20, 2004

GALVESTON — It has been almost a decade since Anita de la Cruz’s husband, Jose, drowned while fishing in Galveston Bay, an accident that changed her life forever.

But recently while looking through funeral home records in preparation to secure the burial plot next to her husband’s, de la Cruz discovered what she believed must have been another terrible accident. Funeral home documents showed that Jose de la Cruz had been buried without his hands.

“They told me at the funeral home I’d have to call the coroner’s office,” said de la Cruz. “At that point, I was thinking there was some kind of foul play involved. Like maybe that’s why he drowned — he didn’t have hands.”

A call to the Galveston County Medical Examiner’s Office, though, revealed that Jose de la Cruz’s hands were intact when his remains were brought in for examination there. The appendages had been removed and sent away for fingerprinting in order to prove the man’s identity during autopsy.

Anita de la Cruz said she was shocked and wondered what had become of her husband’s hands. A few days later, she was surprised again.

“About four days after, they called and told me they had found his hands,” she said. “They were sitting in a jar with his name on it in the refrigerator at the medical examiner’s.”

The removal of the hands was performed by former head medical examiner William Korndorffer, who was succeeded by Dr. Harvey Pustilnik years ago. Pustilnik said that de la Cruz’s hands were removed and sent away to fingerprinting experts, a common practice utilized by small-town examiners.

“If a scientific identification needs to be made, you have to have the fingerprints done,” said Pustilnik. “Back then, our office didn’t have a fingerprint specialist in-house. That’s why the hands would have had to be sent off to another agency.”

Pustilnik explained that even though de la Cruz’s body was brought into the ME’s office with his wallet and identification, a more thorough check would be needed in case a family member or insurance investigator challenged the identity of the remains.

“Just because you have an object like a driver’s license with you that could be placed with your body by anybody doesn’t make you that person,” said Pustilnik. “That’s one of the least reliable sources of identification for us, but one of the best ways to get a starting point. But dental or fingerprint confirmation is needed to make a truly scientific identification.”

A Texas Department of Public Safety spokeswoman said that its crime lab in Austin received somewhere around four tissue samples of hands and fingers from medical examiners around the state each year for fingerprinting.

Pustilnik said that de la Cruz’s remains were released to his family for funeral arrangements before his hands had returned from the lab.

“To retain the body here for several weeks when you have a pretty good idea who it is and the family wants to have their services for the deceased, I don’t know if the family would be too appreciative of that,” he said.

Pustilnik said that his office has retained a large number of tissue samples from patients over the years since a Houston television station aired an expose of Korndorffer’s sample storage practices in 1993.

“The county back in early ’90s ordered that Dr. Korndorffer no longer dispose of any tissues and that he keep the tissues here in the office,” said Pustilnik. “We haven’t disposed of any more tissues since then.”

Pustilnik said that Anita de la Cruz can have a funeral home pick up her husband’s hands for her anytime she likes. De la Cruz, however, is more interested in shedding light on the strange situation.

“I understand that other body parts are still up there,” she said. “I just want to get the word out to other families who might be able to recover parts of their loved ones’ bodies.”

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