Mortuary technicians play with corpses

By CHUCK BENNETT & IKIMULISA LIVINGSTON

Last Updated: 7:46 AM, February 15, 2010
Posted: 4:22 AM, February 15, 2010

Ghouls are at play in the city's morgues.

The people employed to respectfully handle the remains of the deceased have instead turned cadavers and body parts into macabre playthings, The Post has learned.

And they shockingly documented their depraved foolery in photos taken as keepsakes.

Grinning mortuary technicians use corpses as props in dozens of disturbing Polaroids obtained by The Post.

Perhaps most disturbing of all is mortuary technician Kaihl Brassfield holding a severed head in a classic Heisman Trophy football pose.

"It was stupid," Brassfield, 35, told The Post. "It was just the culture there. Everyone was doing it."

The creepy pictures, some undated and others from 2004, show Brassfield and unidentified co-workers hamming it up. "It was foolish," he conceded. "Now I'm older. It stopped."

Brassfield, a $35,000-a- year technician at the Brooklyn morgue of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, had been out of work on disability, but was suspended without pay after inquiries by The Post.

He says that for several years, everyone working in the Staten Island and Brooklyn morgues, from cops to coroners, participated in the gory games.

But in recent years, after the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner took over from the Health and Hospitals Corp., staff got more professional, Brassfield said.

"We are looking into the allegations," said Office of the Chief Medical Examiner spokeswoman Ellen Borakove. "This is the antithesis of the mission of our agency to always treat families and decedents with the utmost respect and sensitivity."

The probe by the office's inspector-general began after the queries were made about the photos, and the city's Department of Investigation has begun interviewing ME employees.

Brassfield said the photos were stolen in November. He said he received calls blackmailing him in December, but refused to pay.

From: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/fun_eral_games_mJmNmzTeYJV8JV0hMdH1GN