Relatives and friends of a Bronx man who died of COVID-19 have told of their agonizing five weeks trying to find a way to dispose of his body – which at one point went missing, and was found decomposing in an unrefrigerated U-Haul outside a Brooklyn funeral home.
Nathaniel Hallman, 72, deacon of Church of the Meek Baptist in Harlem, died on April 17 amid New York’s coronavirus peak.
His wife of 42 years, Mitzi, 63, told the Wall Street Journal that her husband, who had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, caught the virus while at a rehabilitation center in the Bronx.
He had been taken there in February, after a hospital stay for pneumonia.
Nathaniel Hallman, 72, deacon of Church of the Meek in Harlem, died April 17 from COVID-19
Nathaniel and Mitzi Hallman were married for 42 years, and were devoted to their church
She was told on April 8 that he had tested positive for coronavirus, and the following day he was moved next door to St. Barnabas Hospital.
The entire hospital had been converted into an intensive-care unit for coronavirus patients, and the city’s emergency-management office had dispatched two refrigerated trucks to store overflow from the hospital morgue.
When Mitzi Hallman reached her husband on the phone, he said, ‘I love you. Don’t worry about me. Take care of yourself.’
He died on the single worst day of the pandemic in the U.S., with 2,614 deaths nationwide.
In New York City that day, 3,580 people were diagnosed with COVID-19, and 903 checked into hospitals.
Hallman was one of 384 who died, and the city’s funeral homes were overwhelmed.
His goddaughter, Hope Dukes, took charge of the funeral arrangements.
She called more than 20 funeral homes, but found that every one was filled to capacity.
Hallman suffered from Parkinson’s in the later years of his life, which weakened his body
Dukes, 37, called an old friend of the family, Rev. Marshall Morton Sr., pastor at Unity Baptist Church in Norwalk, Connecticut, and asked for advice.
Rev. Morton put her in touch with James Robinson, who runs a funeral home in Neptune City, New Jersey.
Robinson, Dukes said, asked the reverend to hire a New York funeral director willing to transport the body from St. Barnabas Hospital to the mortuary in Neptune City.
Hallman’s body was collected on April 23 and driven to Robinson’s funeral home in Neptune City, but Robinson was not there and another funeral director at the home said he could not accept the body.
Robinson, finally reached by phone, told Rev. Morton and Dukes to take the body to Brooklyn, where it ended up in the Flatlands neighborhood, at the Andrew T. Cleckley Funeral Services.
Robinson worked out of both the Cleckley office and in New Jersey.
Hallman’s body was taken from the Bronx to New Jersey to this funeral home in Brooklyn
Bodies were left to decompose inside hired U-Haul trucks, or piled on the floor of the home
The night after Hallman’s body was delivered to Brooklyn, Robinson sent a text to Rev. Morton, which the WSJ viewed.
‘I cant take on no more Bodies we have 124 bodies in a refrigerated truck cant do it,’ wrote Robinson.
Rev. Morton, alarmed, replied: ‘But I brought the body to Brooklyn already you should’ve told me that upfront. I know you’re busy I know you have a lot of bodies but once you told me you can help me I’m taking you at your word please the family is depending on me.’
Robinson responded: ‘Ok leave the bodie there I’ll take care of him send some money for the Cremation were is the permit.’
Rev. Morton sent him $500 to pay for the costs.
Six days later, on April 29, police raided the Brookly funeral home and found dozens of bodies decomposing in unrefrigerated U-Haul rental trucks and on the floor of the nearby funeral home.
Workers at the funeral home are pictured on April 29 moving the bodies out of the U-Hauls
Hallman’s body had been left inside a U-Haul for six days, and his family are now suing
Hallman’s widow and Dukes had no idea whether he was among them. But Dukes, worried sick by the reports on the news of the grim discovery, became suspicious.
The city’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner had removed 61 bodies from the Cleckley funeral home, but found no record of Hallman being among them.
Eventually they located Hallman’s body, which had been wrongly labeled.
Hallman was cremated on May 26, some 39 days after his death.
Hallman was finally cremated after 39 days
Last month, Mitzi Hallman and Dukes sued Robinson and Cleckley in New York state court, seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
Hallman’s body, the complaint said, was ‘left there to rot and decay.’
The plaintiffs demanded a jury trial in the Bronx.
Robinson insisted to the paper that he was not responsible.
‘I never had possession of that body,’ he said. ‘I am not on any paperwork pertaining to that body in any capacity.
‘Rev. Morton is lying. I never told him to bring no body. I told him to change the paperwork and then you can bring the body to me.’
Robinson said he plans to ‘sue the s*** out of’ Rev. Morton and Dukes, and said he would seek compensation from newspapers that print his name.
‘You’re going to build me a new funeral home,’ he said in a telephone interview with the Journal.