The DOC estimates that there are approximately 850,000 bodies interred on Hart Island, each one of them unclaimed or unwanted. The island’s ledger is a catalog of forgotten lives and tragic deaths. Suicide victims pulled from the Hudson River. Homebound elderly found dead of starvation or heatstroke in their apartments. Stillborn infants whose parents couldn’t afford to bury them. Teenage runaways beaten to death. Homeless addicts who overdosed in condemned buildings. New York is where they all happened to die, but they came from across this country and around the world. Although owned and
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