Woman’s body was in coroner’s freezer for 26 years. Babies were left for years, too.
Helen Stigall may have been dead for more than a year when her body was discovered on an abandoned bus on Lexington’s Henry Street in 1989.
Stigall’s body was mostly skeletal at the time her remains were discovered. On the bus, Lexington police found documents that belonged to Stigall, who was believed to be homeless and had prior arrests for alcohol intoxication, according to the police file obtained by the Lexington Herald-Leader and WKYT through an Open Records Act request. They contacted relatives of Stigall, but the relatives had no dental records to confirm it was her, according to the report.
The body was autopsied, and police later concluded Stigall’s death was not suspicious.
When Melissa Neale started as a deputy coroner at the Fayette County Coroner’s office in 2015, she was horrified to discover that Stigall’s skeletal remains were still in the coroner’s cooler — 26 years after she was found.
Neale learned that Stigall wasn’t the only body that had been kept in the coroner’s cooler for years. In 2015, two fetuses found in a Lexington cemetery in 2009 were also still in the coroner’s cooler waiting to be buried six years after they were found.
It bothered Neale, who resigned from the office in June 2017.
“Right now you can leave bodies in the cooler for 6 years, 26 years, 13 years, however long you want, and no one cares,” Neale said.
According to documents from the coroner’s office, Stigall was buried in August 2015. The two fetuses were buried in May 2015. Fayette County Coroner Gary Ginn was first elected in 2002. At the time he was elected, Stigall’s body had already been in the cooler for 13 years. But it took another 13 years for her to be buried. Neale said Ginn buried Stigall and the two fetuses through the county’s indigent burial program after a deputy coroner revamped that program, which uses city money to bury poor people.
“It didn’t just bother me, it bothered a lot of people,” Neale said. “It’s not out of sight out of mind, it’s someone’s family member, that’s why it bothers me so much.”
The coroners who held the office between 1989 and 2002 are no longer alive.
Ginn was coroner during the six years the fetuses were kept in cold storage.
Ginn said there were questions about the identities of all three of the bodies. That’s why they decided to keep the bodies for so long rather than bury them.
“They were unidentified people,” Ginn said. “We have the facilities in Fayette County to keep these individuals behind locked doors and with respect. Because Ms. Stigall was held for so long we were eventually able to identify her through DNA evidence and bury her in a marked grave.”
Ginn said they kept the two fetuses for six years because they believed that the mothers would eventually come forward. When no one came forward, Ginn decided to bury them.
Grave marker of two baby girls, whose remains were discovered in a cemetery in Fayette Co. in 2009, but not buried until 2015, at Evergreen Memorial Gardens in Paris.
When asked why he didn’t take DNA samples from the two fetuses and bury them sooner, Ginn said he thought it was more respectful to keep them as long as he could. Exhuming bodies is expensive and cost-prohibitive.
“Disinterment is very costly and the government would not pay for it; the families would have to pay for it,” Ginn said.
When Stigall’s body was discovered in 1989, DNA testing was not used. It was only much later that authorities were able to get DNA and get a definitive match with a relative. But that relative did not have money to bury Stigall. Ginn said the DNA match was done in 2015 but he didn’t know when the DNA sample was taken.
“I prefer the family make the final disposition call rather than bury them and have to have disinterment,” Ginn said.
One of the state’s leading experts on death investigations said failing to bury a body after 26 years is not a crime. But it is extremely unusual.
David Jones helped create and was the executive director of the Kentucky Medical Examiner’s office from 1973 to 2002. Jones has conducted death investigations in every county in Kentucky and pushed for coroners to receive additional training. Now semi-retired, Jones has trained and helped coroners with death investigations for nearly 40 years.
Jones said it typically takes a month at most for the identity of the victim, the manner and the cause of death to be determined and the body released for burial.
Even if it’s a murder or questionable death, the body is typically released or buried as soon as possible.
“I don’t know why you would want to do that,” Jones said of keeping a body for 26 years or even six years. “Most coroners wouldn’t even think of doing something like that because they need the space."”
Jones said tissue samples could have been taken from the two babies. That tissue could have been used to establish a DNA match if a parent ever came forward. It wasn’t necessary to keep the bodies, he said.
This is not the first time Ginn has been in trouble for failing to bury bodies. In 2015, he retired from the University of Kentucky’s body bequeathal program after an audit revealed he had failed to bury bodies that had been donated to UK’s Medical School . That audit showed Ginn, who worked as coroner and at UK until 2015, had failed to bury bodies sometimes for three to five years.
But Ginn said the department that oversaw the body bequeathal program did not fund it properly. There was a delay in disposing of those remains because of the lack of funding, Ginn said.
After the audit was released, the chairman of the department who oversaw the body bequeathal program stepped down. The program is now run by a different academic department, Ginn said. The university also changed the way it funded the program.
In recent months, there have been other questions raised about Ginn’s behavior.
The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Human Rights Commission has an open investigation against Ginn for alleged sexual harassment. That investigation was prompted after the city of Lexington human resources department substantiated six of 13 allegations against Ginn for sexually explicit and inappropriate comments, according to a November memo. WKYT was the first to report on the investigation.
However, the city found that the coroner is an elected county-wide official, and the city’s human resource department does not have “authority to direct the coroner or his employees” regarding best practices. The city referred the case to the Human Rights Commission. Some of the allegations that were substantiated included Ginn making inappropriate comments about female anchors on the ‘Today’ show. He referred to a male individual on TV as having “pink c---sucker lips” among other comments.
Ray Sexton, the executive director of the human rights commission, said the sexual harassment investigation is ongoing.
Neale reported the sexual harassment concerns to the city when she left the office in June 2017. Neale said she did so because of her concerns about the oversight of the office.
Neale said she also told the city’s human resources department about Stigall and the two babies at the same time she reported the sexual harassment allegations. Neale said she was told the city had no oversight over the coroner’s office and the city could not investigate.
“But the city oversees the indigent burial program,” Neale said.
Susan Straub, a spokeswoman for the city of Lexington, said “ the human resources investigation was into sexual harassment. Your question should be addressed to the coroner.”
According to documents from the coroner’s office, Stigall and the two fetuses were buried at Evergreen Memory Gardens in Bourbon County using tax-payer dollars the city uses to bury poor people. Court documents show that a public administrator had signed off on Stigall’s burial on Jan. 28, 2015. It was seven months later, in August 2015, when Stigall’s body was buried at Evergreen, according to burial documents.
Multiple attempts to find Stigall’s family were unsuccessful.
According to the Lexington Police report, Stigall was likely homeless and living in what appeared to be a 1950s-era former YMCA bus at the time of her death. Fire department personnel had to use a crowbar to open the rear door on the bus where her body was found “on numerous pieces of clothing in bedding material.” The report said the body “consisted of little more than skeletal remains.” Neighbors told police they thought the bus had been in the yard for two to three years and that homeless people were living in other vehicles on that lot.
An autopsy showed several broken ribs but “it could not be determined if the ribs were broken before or after death,” according to the police report.
“It is not believed that the death was a result of a criminal act, however, until the body can be identified, this report shall remain pending,” according to a police report dated Nov. 30, 1990.
Lexington Police also struggled to determine why two fetuses were left in a Lexington cemetery less than five days a part in 2009. The first fetus was found on March 26, 2009, at Hillcrest Cemetery off of Versailles Road by a woman walking her dog. On March 30, a man collecting aluminum cans found a second fetus on a dry, clean blanket not far from where the first fetus was found.
An autopsy showed the fetus found March 26 was female and at about 22 weeks gestation. The coroner’s office said the second fetus also was female and at 20 to 23 weeks gestation.
Neither fetus could have survived outside the womb, according to the coroner’s office. Lexington Police said at the time that they believed the two fetuses were likely delivered early and that it was not a homicide investigation.
Lexington Police never determined how the fetuses got to the cemetery.
The two babies are buried together at Evergreen. Their tiny grave is marked by a shoe-box-sized, black flat marker: “In Loving Memory. Baby Girls. March 30, 2009.”
Beth Musgrave: 859-231-3205, @HLCityhall
This story was originally published March 29, 2018 at 11:29 AM with the headline "Woman’s body was in coroner’s freezer for 26 years. Babies were left for years, too.."