Bucks County Coroner's Office strives for unclaimed dead reunion with family

Peter and Judith Camiel died within weeks of each other three years ago. They were finally laid to rest earlier this month.

Camiel's estranged sister attended the memorial service Thursday at Washington Crossing National Cemetery in Upper Makefield. So did more than a dozen strangers, most of them military veterans.

Bucks County Coroner Meredith Buck was there, too, with members of her staff who had arranged the long-overdue interment after learning the couple had living relatives who had never been contacted after the Camiels' deaths.

Stories like this are why Buck made reuniting the county's unclaimed dead an immediate priority after learning about the problem shortly before taking over the office a year ago.

It’s a mission that has turned out to be a massive undertaking.

Buck, an attorney, inherited the remains of nearly 200 unclaimed dead, all but one added over the last 13 years. Last year, at least another 15 names were added, bringing the number to 200 adults and seven fetal remains.

The previous longtime coroner left no blueprint outlining what next-of-kin identification measures his office had undertaken with unclaimed decedents, Buck said. The two top deputies resigned or retired.

Six weeks after Buck assumed coroner duties, the COVID-19 crisis erupted. Her office has processed more than 1,000 additional virus-related deaths.

But in her first year, about 10 unclaimed names were removed from the list, Buck said.  Most died years earlier. Peter J. Camiel Jr. was one of two U.S. military veterans eligible for free burials.

“I believe that every effort should be made to reunite families, even in death, so they do not have to take the journey alone and can receive a dignified internment,” Buck said.

More: Unclaimed: Abandoned by family, taken in by strangers

Family unaware

The military burial for the Camiels took the Bucks County Coroner's office a little less than a month to arrange.

The couple had died nearly three weeks apart in 2017 at the Quakertown nursing home where they both lived. They listed each other as their next-of-kin contacts.

With no one else to claim them, the couple were cremated and their ashes stored at the county morgue.

But Judith, 70, and Peter, 80, each had living sisters who said neither the nursing home nor the coroner’s office notified them of their deaths.

Peter Camiel’s younger sister, Nina Owens, lives in neighboring Montgomery County.

Owens, 68, claims she didn’t find out that her brother was dead until last month, after she found his name and other basic information listed in an unclaimed dead database this news organization created in 2019.

Judith’s name was not in the database, which was created and updated using documents provided by the coroner offices under Right to Know requests.

Owens had stopped talking to her older brother Peter about a dozen years ago, but she still kept track of him through his wife’s sister, who spoke to them a few times a year.

Last year, though, Judith’s sister told Owens she hadn’t been able to reach Judith . She’d call, but the phone just rang.

When a woman finally answered, it wasn’t Judith. She told the sister she dialed the right number, but no, she didn’t know Judith or Peter Camiel.

The sister told Owens she reached out to the Quakertown nursing home where the couple lived, but they refused to give her any information about them.

So Owens decided to turn to the Internet. She typed her brother’s name into an online search engine.

“This is how I found out,” Owens said. “I wondered what was going on.”

Super sleuth

After Owens contacted the Bucks County Coroner’s Office, she learned that not only had her brother died, but so did his wife.

Owens mentioned to the coroner's office that her brother had served in the U.S. Army in the 1960s, where he was awarded a commendation medal for “outstanding leadership, strong initiative and professional competence.”

Their mom kept copies of his military discharge, birth certificate and other records, which were passed onto Owens. She provided copies to the coroner’s office.

The new deputy coroner who is assigned to track down next-of-kin and military service information confirmed Camiel and his wife were eligible for a free burial with military honors, which took place privately on Jan. 19.

Nine days later, Camiel was among three Vietnam War veterans remembered Thursday at the monthly unattended veteran service at Washington Crossing National Veterans Cemetery in Washington Crossing.

The brief, solemn ceremony was the second one Buck and her staff have attended since September, as part of the changes that she has implemented to remember the forgotten dead.

Bucks County’s enhanced efforts mirror those implemented in neighboring Montgomery County after the Unclaimed series began. At least 15 adults and 12 fetal remains in Montgomery County have been removed from the unclaimed rolls since 2019.

More: Pennsylvania coroners, medical examiners turning to the public for clues about unclaimed dead

Deputy Coroner Kristina Johnson — whom Buck calls her “super sleuth” — has put into place new policies including working with the county’s office of military affairs, Washington Crossing National Cemetery personnel and genealogical societies. The office uses highly secure databases and social media to search for leads on next-of-kin.

Johnson is also reopening old cases to determine if any unclaimed dead are military veterans and review every case again in an attempt to locate family.

“However, there is a delicate balance that needs to be weighed with that interest and the understanding there are situations where families have become estranged from the deceased for very personal and private reasons,” Buck added. “We must avoid rekindling painful memories for public dissemination.”

The office also has compiled an updated list of unclaimed dead in its possession. It includes the names of 12 people who died from 2009 to 2019 previously not provided to this news organization.

The complete list of names will be posted on the Bucks County Coroner’s website starting in February.

Buck is also moving forward with plans first proposed by her predecessor to designate a county location to inter the ashes of unclaimed, nonveteran remains. The plan includes holding an annual nondenominational ceremony.

“To give them a proper burial,” Buck said.

No answers

While she and Peter were not close growing up — he was 16 years old when Owens was born — she has good memories of him.

When she was a child he took her to coffee houses in Philadelphia where jazz musicians performed. Sometimes he performed, too.

“He was an excellent jazz pianist,” she said.

She was 6 years old, maybe 7, when Peter was in the Army during the early years of the Vietnam War.

He was injured in combat after an explosive went off while he was in a foxhole, Owens said. He had shrapnel pieces in his head and legs that could not be removed.

After her brother was discharged from military service, he went to work for the Philadelphia court system helping select jurors. Judith was his second wife. He had a son with his first wife, Barbara, who died at age 32, Owens said.

Despite their estrangement, she still loves her brother. She keeps a sepia-toned photo of him dressed in his Army uniform in her wallet.

Following the service Thursday, Owens thanked Buck and her staff for their efforts.

“I’m glad there is a conclusion to this now,” she said.

But Owens still wants to know why she was never contacted about her brother’s death.  A simple Internet search of his name would have offered clues.

Peter shared the same name as their father, who was a Pennsylvania state senator in the 1950s and '60s, and head of the Democratic party in Philadelphia for decades.

Peter J. Camiel Sr. has a Wikipedia page with links to his New York Times obituary.  There are links to her mother Nina’s online obituary that identifies Peter Jr. as her son.

“I don't know why they couldn't find me or any of my cousins,” Owens said. “I am not that hard to find. I want some answers.”

More: Unclaimed no more: Bucks man reunited with cousin whose remains were in lawyer's care for 20 years

About "The Unclaimed" series

In July 2019 this news organization published the first in its ongoing series examining the invisible burden of abandoned dead on local governments, communities and families. The series attempts to tell the stories of the unclaimed dead in Bucks and Montgomery counties and bring closure to families. An online database containing more than 300 names and profiles of individuals who are unclaimed in those counties. Since the start of the series, the cremated remains of at least 40 individuals have found final resting places or they have been reunited with family. Coroner offices in Bucks and Montgomery counties have also undertaken new measures to better identify next-of-kin and military service and they are currently reviewing old cases to determine if opportunities to find family were missed. 

More: Read our award-winning reporting and see a list of the Unclaimed Dead

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Bucks County Coroner's office giving a second change to unclaimed dead