Libero Marinelli Jr.’s journey from a public hospital to a for-profit body broker demonstrates the peril of an industry with little regulation, an NBC News investigation foundLast year, Karen Wandel received an alarming message: Her father had died more than five months earlier in a South Carolina hospital and, when no family claimed his body, the hospital sent it to be used for medical research. Wandel had a strained relationship with her father, Libero Marinelli Jr.
Since 2020, a community college in North Carolina has received 43 unclaimed bodies from local welfare agencies and medical examiners to teach embalming to funeral services students. In Pennsylvania, a state body-donation program that distributes human remains to medical schools said that it had received 58 unclaimed bodies from county coroners, medical examiners, hospitals and other facilities since 2019.
Karen Wandel hadn't spoke to her father in years but said she would have claimed his body if someone had told her he'd died. Marinelli grew up in New Jersey, joined the Army, attended law school and served several years as a military lawyer during the Vietnam War. He told his daughter that an assignment representing a soldier who had fired on his own unit nearly broke him, and sparked a drinking habit that developed into alcoholism.
Caring for her mother inspired Wandel to volunteer at a hospice. “I found the idea of people dying without dignity or without somebody there to listen to them and hold their hand really offensive,” she said.Despite their disagreements, Marinelli tried to stay in Wandel's life, including walking her down the aisle at her wedding. 80 on June 29, 2022, Marinelli received calls from his younger sister and brother.
After Marinelli’s death, an employee at the hospital told the Spartanburg County Coroner’s Office that Marinelli had relatives but that “he doesn’t want anybody notified and we haven’t been able to find them,” according to a phone recording provided by the coroner’s office in response to a records request. The coroner’s office didn’t get involved in the search for Marinelli’s family because he died of natural causes.
As Wandel grappled with the finality of her father’s death, and the realization that they would never reconcile, she also began wondering about the “donation,” which surprised her. She assumed that his body had ended up at a medical school, where it would have been used to educate future doctors and scientists.
Marinelli’s funeral was held on a warm, breezy afternoon in April 2023. An Army honor guard thanked Wandel for her father’s service and presented her with a folded flag. She wept as she took it in her hands.
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