Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey listeners, we're sharing an episode today from the
Speaker 1: Unmarked Graveyard, a new series from our friends at the
Speaker 1: Radio Diaries podcast. The series tells the stories of people
Speaker 1: buried in America's largest public cemetery, New York City's Heart Island.
Speaker 1: I think anyone who loves The Last Archive is going
Speaker 1: to love these stories, personal narratives that tell the history
Speaker 1: of a place that's largely off limits to the public
Speaker 1: and full of secrets. As a New Yorker, I've always
Speaker 1: wondered about it, and I loved this series because of
Speaker 1: how attentively it brings these forgotten histories to life. It's
Speaker 1: really beautifully done, So please give it a listen, and
Speaker 1: if you like this story, check out the rest of
Speaker 1: the series on the Radio Diaries podcast. Here's the episode.
Speaker 2: In twenty seventeen, a man was buried on a narrow
Speaker 2: mile long island off the coast of the Bronx, New
Speaker 2: York City. He'd been dead for months, but the city
Speaker 2: hadn't figured out his name, so he was placed in
Speaker 2: a simple pine coffin that was stacked in a mass grave.
Speaker 2: The only marker was a white post that read plot
Speaker 2: three eighty three. Since eighteen sixty nine, more than a
Speaker 2: million people have been buried on Hart Island. It doesn't
Speaker 2: look like a typical cemetery. There are no headstones or plaques,
Speaker 2: just white posts with numbers on them. Each one marks
Speaker 2: a trench with about one hundred and fifty coffins inside.
Speaker 2: There's a broad range of people buried here, people whose
Speaker 2: families couldn't afford a private burial, people who couldn't be identified,
Speaker 2: and people who died in various waves of epidemics that
Speaker 2: swept the city. In the nineteen eighties, it was AIDS
Speaker 2: and most recently COVID nineteen, but for more than a century,
Speaker 2: Heart Island has been mostly off limits. This is the
Speaker 2: Unmarked Graveyard. New series from Radiodiaries, Where were untangling mysteries
Speaker 2: from Heart Island, America's largest public cemetery.
Speaker 1: I'm Joe Richmond.
Speaker 2: Over the next several weeks, We'll be bringing you stories
Speaker 2: about people who ended up on Heart Island, the lives
Speaker 2: they lived, and the people they left behind.
Speaker 3: There were thousands of questions, where's his family, where's his people?
Speaker 4: Did he?
Speaker 3: Playwright, novelist and author of Happy Island, Miss Dawn Powell.
Speaker 5: Uncle Caesar was strange from our family forty to fifty years.
Speaker 4: You can't help but wonder what her life has been.
Speaker 3: I never went back and I never looked.
Speaker 2: Awe him again. Today episode one, it's about the unidentified
Speaker 2: man buried in plot three eighty three. At the time
Speaker 2: he was buried, he actually had several people looking for him.
Speaker 2: He had lived two lives, in different places and under
Speaker 2: different names. We begin in inwood Long Island with his mom,
Speaker 2: who named him Neil.
Speaker 4: My name is Susan Robert and I'm Neil Harris's mom.
Speaker 4: I kept all of Neil's pictures and memorabilia. This is
Speaker 4: the Neil box. This is his father. I always saved
Speaker 4: the picture for Neil. Neil's father and I, unfortunately were
Speaker 4: just a one night stand. But things happen, and Neil happened.
Speaker 4: This was something that Neil wrote to me when he
Speaker 4: was little in school. My hero is my mom because
Speaker 4: she has always been there for me. She always brings
Speaker 4: me and my friends to Taco Bell and Pizza Hut.
Speaker 4: I remember when we didn't have a home or any money,
Speaker 4: and we were living with my aunt. After a while,
Speaker 4: she got a job and we got a home. And
Speaker 4: that's why my mom is my hero. Wife was good.
Speaker 4: Then I would come home and make a little dinner
Speaker 4: or whatever and redad and play a little video games.
Speaker 4: It was fun. He was cuddly. This was him sleeping
Speaker 4: with all the dogs, and the dogs adored him. We
Speaker 4: wound up calling him Doctor Doolittle because this kid loved
Speaker 4: the animals. And then as he got older, something switched.
Speaker 4: It like if somebody flipped the switch on him. One night,
Speaker 4: I heard him talking in his room and I thought, oh,
Speaker 4: he's got somebody over. So I knocked on the door
Speaker 4: and I said, who are you talking to? The ghost?
Speaker 4: And I'm like, what ghost? And then he started fighting
Speaker 4: and he's like, they are all over me, They're all
Speaker 4: over me. And I was in my office one day
Speaker 4: and came in and he's like mah, and he pushed
Speaker 4: me and I went flying across the room and he said,
Speaker 4: you don't think that I don't know. You're trying to
Speaker 4: poison me. He had a glare like he wanted to
Speaker 4: kill me. I was actually afraid of my son the
Speaker 4: first time in my life, and I said, I want
Speaker 4: to have him put in a hospital for psychiatric evaluation.
Speaker 4: He went and I spoke to the doctor and she
Speaker 4: said he is schizophrenic on medication. He's fine, she said,
Speaker 4: but he has asked to stop the medication, which is
Speaker 4: his right, and he has asked to be released. And
Speaker 4: if they sent him, he was twenty nine years old.
Speaker 4: I felt helpless. I felt like there was nobody there
Speaker 4: to help, nobody. And then one day he's like, I
Speaker 4: want you to drop me off at the hum With
Speaker 4: train station and he would sleep on the platform. When
Speaker 4: we pulled into the parking lot of the Inwig train station,
Speaker 4: he just got out, took his little backpack, threw it
Speaker 4: over his shoulder, walked away and never looked behind. And
Speaker 4: there was a cop sitting in the parking field there,
Speaker 4: and I got out and I said, that's my son
Speaker 4: and he wants to be here. He wants to be homeless.
Speaker 4: And the cop said to me, and it's is right,
Speaker 4: he said, but we'll check up on him. So I figured, okay,
Speaker 4: so I'll go every week. And the first time we
Speaker 4: went down, we looked and we did see him, but
Speaker 4: he walked away from me. And I was like, Neil, wait,
Speaker 4: I just want to give you money, and he stopped,
Speaker 4: took the money, and walked away. And that was the
Speaker 4: last time I saw him.
Speaker 6: My name's Joy Bergman and I live on the upper
Speaker 6: West side of Manhattan, and this is my dog, JJ Jay.
Speaker 6: Let's go every day, JJ and I are in Riverside Park.
Speaker 6: This is the bench where we would see Stephen in
Speaker 6: all weather, all times of day. He'd always be sitting
Speaker 6: bolt upright on the bench, big canvas rucksack at his feet,
Speaker 6: same clothes, same facial expression. Yeah, JJ, you remember Stephen.
Speaker 3: I'm Billy Billy Healy. I used to sit up at
Speaker 3: the corner there feed my little birds. And that's when
Speaker 3: I talked to him, and he told me that he
Speaker 3: was from Long Island and his name was Steven. It
Speaker 3: was like pulling teeth to get him to say anything.
Speaker 3: He was not a talker. He didn't seem to trust
Speaker 3: people much. At the time, I still wasn't sure if
Speaker 3: he was sleeping in the park because I see him
Speaker 3: sitting on the bench every day with his knapsack, but
Speaker 3: I never saw him sleep. So I called the Outreach
Speaker 3: for the Homeless. They went to talk to him and
Speaker 3: they told me Steven doesn't want any help.
Speaker 6: It was always kind of reassuring to see him because
Speaker 6: he was such a big guy and so gentle in
Speaker 6: his presence. He was a constant presence in the park,
Speaker 6: but a mysterious one. Couldn't quite figure out where he
Speaker 6: was from, what he was doing here, and why he
Speaker 6: just never left.
Speaker 4: Neil Harris was last seen and Inwood, New York, on
Speaker 4: December twelfth, twenty fourteen. He was last seen wearing a
Speaker 4: tan Carhart jacket but I could eat blue jeans, tan
Speaker 4: work boots and a backpack. If you have seen or
Speaker 4: no Nils whereabout. This was a missing person's flyer that
Speaker 4: we made and that went out every week every week
Speaker 4: like clockwork on Mondays Monday morning, on every social media
Speaker 4: platform that I could get my hands on. It went out,
Speaker 4: and then a year went by nothing and then another
Speaker 4: year still nothing.
Speaker 6: After about maybe a year of seeing him in the park,
Speaker 6: I was going to recycle some magazines or something one
Speaker 6: day and I said, oh, maybe I'll bring him to
Speaker 6: the guy in the park. Maybe like something to look at.
Speaker 6: So I would bring him periodically bags of magazines and
Speaker 6: I would see him as I walked away start looking
Speaker 6: through them with interest. He never said thank you. He
Speaker 6: just kind of gave me a half nod as I
Speaker 6: would approach.
Speaker 3: After seeing him for so long, and seeing there were
Speaker 3: some needy things, I told them, Oh, do you like
Speaker 3: pork ribs or do you like potato salad? I would
Speaker 3: ask him and he would say yes. So my wife
Speaker 3: would put something in the microwave of leftovers, and I
Speaker 3: would bring him a plastic container with a fog. And
Speaker 3: when it got real cold, I brought him a winter
Speaker 3: coat and he said, oh, no, I don't want When
Speaker 3: I have one in my pack, I said, do you
Speaker 3: like this? And I was wearing a burgundy hoodie and
Speaker 3: it had like fake fur inside or something. It was long,
Speaker 3: and he said, yeah, I like that. So he wore
Speaker 3: it for two years that.
Speaker 1: I know of.
Speaker 3: I know he died in it.
Speaker 5: My name is Jim Littlefield. I was formerly a director
Speaker 5: of security for the Trump Organization and ran security for
Speaker 5: four condominiums on Riverside Boulevard, luxury condominiums with Broadway actresses,
Speaker 5: baseball players of note. I believe it was around Easter time,
Speaker 5: early spring. I pulled up that morning and parked my car,
Speaker 5: and then I looked over and I noticed a backpack
Speaker 5: sitting on top of like a milk crate. And then
Speaker 5: I looked and I saw a person sitting down knees
Speaker 5: bent and his head was hunched down, almost as if
Speaker 5: in contemplative prayer. I thought, ah, maybe he's asleep, you know,
Speaker 5: poor guy, and go to let him stay there? Can
Speaker 5: I walk away and went to work. Next morning, I
Speaker 5: came back to work and I saw he basically in
Speaker 5: the same position, so I kind of yelled loud a fella,
Speaker 5: you are right. He didn't budge, and at that point
Speaker 5: I touched him and a seventy year old retired New
Speaker 5: York City police sergeant I know what rigor mortis feels like,
Speaker 5: and he was in it. This guy had reached at
Speaker 5: the end of the road, called nine to one one
Speaker 5: the police arrived. I was happy that I was able
Speaker 5: to do what I could do, and then went to work.
Speaker 5: I think I spoke to the police officer again a
Speaker 5: week or two later, and I said, identify that young
Speaker 5: man and he says he didn't, that he didn't think
Speaker 5: anybody did at that point.
Speaker 3: It was the next day I was told they found
Speaker 3: him dead. Right away, I said, was it trauma? Was
Speaker 3: he murdered, you know, with something bad done for him?
Speaker 3: And they said, absolutely, no trauma. It looked like he
Speaker 3: just had a hot attack or something.
Speaker 6: After he died, people put flowers on the bench where
Speaker 6: Steven would sit. They put signs up and cards. You know,
Speaker 6: when you live in a big city, there's the anonymity
Speaker 6: of the big city that I think we all sort
Speaker 6: of treasure. But then there are the constant presences, the
Speaker 6: people whose names you don't know but you see them
Speaker 6: every day. The guy who sells the fruit on the corner,
Speaker 6: the guy you see sweeping the sidewalk. These are people
Speaker 6: that become woven into your fabric of your experience in
Speaker 6: a neighborhood. And when one of them goes away, there
Speaker 6: is a loss.
Speaker 4: There is a loss.
Speaker 3: He was a sweet young man and many people have
Speaker 3: thought that about him. Rest in peace, Steven.
Speaker 7: My name is Jessica Brockington and I'm a journalist. I
Speaker 7: was living on seventieth Street. I have two little dogs
Speaker 7: and we would walk in Riverside Park. I felt sad
Speaker 7: that he had died. I felt sad that the bench
Speaker 7: was empty. You know. Maybe it's a year later, a
Speaker 7: year and a half, I'm looking in a database of
Speaker 7: missing persons and as I'm scrolling through the photos, I
Speaker 7: recognize a photo of Stephen and I thought, holy shit.
Speaker 7: I know that person, and it's got a name attached
Speaker 7: to it, Neil Harris Junior. So I take the name
Speaker 7: and I turn around and start googling it, and I
Speaker 7: find a Facebook profile. I was going through every single
Speaker 7: post on that Facebook page trying to figure out who's
Speaker 7: set it up. Who is Susan Hurlbert.
Speaker 4: Monday July second, twenty eighteen, Still missing, still praying, I'll
Speaker 4: never give up on.
Speaker 7: Noticing pretty quickly that Susan Hurlbert is posting a plea
Speaker 7: every Monday.
Speaker 4: Monday July sixteenth, still missing, Still praying. If seeing please
Speaker 4: tell him he is missing. Monday July twenty third, twenty eighteen,
Speaker 4: still missing. Still Monday August six still missing, still.
Speaker 7: Praying, and I'm completely obsessed with it at that point.
Speaker 4: Help me locate my son. I will never give up
Speaker 4: on you, Neil.
Speaker 7: I know that the person is dead, and I know
Speaker 7: that somewhere the New York City Police Department have information
Speaker 7: on him that would help her. But when I talked
Speaker 7: to the detective who had the case, he says that
Speaker 7: he's reviewed what he has in his files and the
Speaker 7: photos I've sent him, and he has decided that this
Speaker 7: is not the same person. So I called the organization
Speaker 7: that is helping Susan Harlbert put out missing persons posters
Speaker 7: and I tell the guy I don't want to upset
Speaker 7: her if it's not as sure as it should be.
Speaker 7: But he turns around and calls her immediately.
Speaker 4: And he's like, I have some information for you. Do
Speaker 4: you know a Jessica And I'm like, Jessica, no, and
Speaker 4: he's like, well, I think she knows where your son is.
Speaker 4: And I was really overjoyed. And he's like, well, if
Speaker 4: it is Neil, then he's deceased. And I'm like oh.
Speaker 4: And she called me and she said, okay, So there's
Speaker 4: this guy that's been sitting in Riverside Park and I'm like,
Speaker 4: Riverside Park? Where is that? She said, in Manhattan. It's
Speaker 4: on the West Side. I'm like, are you kidding me?
Speaker 4: Neil never he was petrified of the city. So she said,
Speaker 4: who's Neil. Then she's like, oh, that's right. I keep forgetting.
Speaker 7: She said, I know this guy is Stephen. That's what
Speaker 7: he called himself, right, And.
Speaker 4: I'm like Steven, she said, you know, I'm just going
Speaker 4: to tell you what I got from him. She said,
Speaker 4: I would walk through the park I have two dogs,
Speaker 4: and they would immediately run to him.
Speaker 7: And he'd just reached down and started petting them and
Speaker 7: kind of smiled and wasn't necessarily smiling at me, but
Speaker 7: was focused on the dogs.
Speaker 4: And I'm like, that's got to be Neil. And then
Speaker 4: I'm like arguing within my own head, my head, you know,
Speaker 4: saying no, no, no, and then saying maybe maybe no no, no,
Speaker 4: no no.
Speaker 7: And then I sent her the medical examiner's photo of
Speaker 7: her son after his autopsy.
Speaker 4: And the picture came up. He was more like disheveled.
Speaker 4: I could tell like he hadn't shaven in a while.
Speaker 4: But I know my son, and I knew as soon
Speaker 4: as I saw that picture that was my son. I
Speaker 4: felt like I couldn't catch my breath. He died from
Speaker 4: an ULCA. That's what they have down on the death certificate.
Speaker 4: Dear friends all together and dear neighbors. His real name
Speaker 4: was Neil.
Speaker 3: We in the neighborhood only knew him a Stephen.
Speaker 4: That was his adoptive name.
Speaker 7: There's a church on seventy fourth Street, a community church.
Speaker 7: The pastors there and the congregation there also knew Stephen,
Speaker 7: and they decided that they would have a service for him,
Speaker 7: Susan and her family, a bunch of his friends, and
Speaker 7: then all these people from the neighborhood came.
Speaker 4: I walked in and looking at all these people and
Speaker 4: I'm like, I don't know these people. Neil didn't know
Speaker 4: these people. And I said it to my sister. I said,
Speaker 4: you know, Neil didn't know them, and she looked at
Speaker 4: me and she said, well, obviously he did listen to
Speaker 4: what they're saying.
Speaker 5: I talked to him at least two or three times
Speaker 5: a week.
Speaker 3: When I didn't see him.
Speaker 5: I stopping after ray with Stephen, because he was always.
Speaker 6: Children came up to me and said, oh, we knew him.
Speaker 4: We said hello to him. He was after Neil no
Speaker 4: longer occupied his sprange, like we realized in the neighborhood
Speaker 4: how much he had become a part of the fabric
Speaker 4: of our lives. My husband nudged me and he said,
Speaker 4: get up there and say something. And I'm like, I
Speaker 4: don't know what to say. I haven't that good at this,
Speaker 4: not good, But I have to tell you, I said
Speaker 4: it from when I first heard from Jessica. You're all angels,
Speaker 4: every one of you who watched over my son. You
Speaker 4: take care of them, and that was all I ever prayed.
Speaker 1: For for four years.
Speaker 4: There are people that really really care, even if it's
Speaker 4: a stranger, they care. That's phenomenal. That was the only
Speaker 4: good feeling I came out of there with, because other
Speaker 4: than that, it was not good feelings. I was hurt
Speaker 4: that I was left out of his life as his mother.
Speaker 4: I kept saying I did something wrong? What did I
Speaker 4: do or what didn't I do? Everybody kept saying, well,
Speaker 4: at least now you have closure. There's no closure. I
Speaker 4: don't understand what people think when they say, well, at
Speaker 4: least now you know. I'd rather not know. I'd rather
Speaker 4: keep on looking.
Speaker 5: This is in the company, yes, yeah, this is the
Speaker 5: market right here where your loved one is very.
Speaker 4: So. This is Neil. That's Neil. Here. I am at
Speaker 4: Neil's gravesite. Finally, I still have your PlayStation, Neil. I
Speaker 4: love you, I miss you. When they first told me
Speaker 4: that he was here in Hart Island, I was pretty upset.
Speaker 4: I was like, oh disgusting, how could Oh my god.
Speaker 4: There are other bodies also in there with him, a
Speaker 4: bunch of them stacked together. And that's the only thing
Speaker 4: that's a little unsettling because I worry about is his
Speaker 4: neighbor a friendly neighbor. I know these things sound crazy,
Speaker 4: but these are the things that go through my mind.
Speaker 4: So yeah, thought about no, I gotta get him out
Speaker 4: of that. But then I remembered his father is also
Speaker 4: buried on Hart Island, buried down the block a little bit.
Speaker 4: I guess he died and the family couldn't afford to
Speaker 4: have a proper funeral or anything. Neil was only nine,
Speaker 4: and he did always say he wanted to come here.
Speaker 4: Neil always wanted a relationship with his father, and I'm
Speaker 4: my hope is that they're together now and they're developing
Speaker 4: a relationship and they're hanging out somewhere together. The trees
Speaker 4: are beautiful, it was water around. It's a very quiet,
Speaker 4: serene spot. And that was Neil, who was very quiet
Speaker 4: in life. So yeah, this is where he will remain.
Speaker 2: That was Susan Hurlbert, remembering her son Neil Harris Junior.
Speaker 2: It's only been a few years that family members have
Speaker 2: been allowed to visit Hart Island, and after decades of
Speaker 2: being largely inaccessible, the island is expected to open to
Speaker 2: the general public later this year. Our story about Neil
Speaker 2: Harris Junior was produced by Elisa Scarce. It was also
Speaker 2: an official selection at the twenty twenty three Tribeca Festival.
Speaker 2: Our team includes Nellie Gillis, Michaeh Hazel, Di, Na Engelstein,
Speaker 2: and myself. Our editors are Bench Piero and Deborah George.
Speaker 2: Sound mixing by Ben Shapiro. Special thanks to Jessica Brockington,
Speaker 2: who shared research and audio from her search for Neil
Speaker 2: Harris's family. This story would not have been possible without
Speaker 2: her work. We also couldn't make this series without the
Speaker 2: help of Melinda Hunt and the Heart Island Project. Visit
Speaker 2: heartiland dot net to learn more. And thanks to filmmaker
Speaker 2: Eric spink A Vacant Light for his recording of Neil's
Speaker 2: memorial service. Also Matthias Bossi and Stellwagon Sympinett for the
Speaker 2: song Plaintiff into Our broadcast partner nprs All Things Considered
Speaker 2: to hear more stories from the Unmarked Graveyard. Subscribe to
Speaker 2: Radio Diaries wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Joe Richmond.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.