Every year, hundreds of people are buried in New York's Potter's Field, on a small island in the Long Island Sound, but the families of the deceased are forbidden to visit. The Investigators' Jim Hoffer has the story of grief and frustration. Not only are visits to Potters Field not allowed, there's also no access to its burial records. The names and vital information of who is buried there are kept under lock and key. Our investigation found families struggling against bureaucracy in their desperate search for missing loved ones.
Hart Island is a tiny one-mile long patch of land just east of the Bronx in Long Island Sound.
For nearly 150 years it's been the final resting place for the city's poor, its forgotten and often, unidentified. Fifteen hundred bodies buried in Potter's Field on the island each year. Montenaro's sister spent months trying to find where her brother had been buried. She made calls to the medical examiner, to funeral homes. She sent dozens of e-mails, until she finally traced him to Potter's Field.