Speaker 1: Hi there, um. I'm calling because I'm trying to track
Speaker 1: down some information about my mother's partner who died in
Speaker 1: two My mom has been waiting thirty seven years to
Speaker 1: say goodbye to Billy. I guess my questions she They
Speaker 1: called her to identify the body. She came back back
Speaker 1: in the summer of nine two. My mom says after
Speaker 1: she went to identify Billy's body, she learned that without
Speaker 1: her permission, he'd been sent to a cemetery where people
Speaker 1: are buried in mass graves by the city and they said, oh,
Speaker 1: we send him to a potter's field. She never knew where.
Speaker 1: So I'm on the phone with the Office of the
Speaker 1: Chief Medical Examiner here in New York. Under what circumstances
Speaker 1: would a body be sent to a potter's field? From you, guys,
Speaker 1: if we were unable to contact any family members or friends,
Speaker 1: or no one came forward to make arrangements for a person,
Speaker 1: or if we did reach someone and they made the
Speaker 1: request to have the person buried at the city cemetery
Speaker 1: on Hart Island, Hard Island. So Hard Island is the
Speaker 1: potter's field for the city of New York. According to
Speaker 1: the Medical Examiner's Office, Billy has to be buried on
Speaker 1: Hart Island. The only problem is when I searched the
Speaker 1: city's Heart Island database, Heightsman nothing, William Heightsman nothing. There
Speaker 1: is no William Heightsman. But then what's going on? What
Speaker 1: it's the Hard Island look Up Service. Look Heightman, William
Speaker 1: thirty seven years old. Date of death June two at
Speaker 1: Cabrini Medical Center. He's buried at plot number one thirty six.
Speaker 1: I just fucking found Billy Heightman. There's no z and
Speaker 1: that's why we haven't been able to find him this
Speaker 1: whole time. Oh my god, this whole thing was just
Speaker 1: a misspelling. I fucking found Billy today on the show
Speaker 1: Heart Island from Crime Town. I'm io till it right,
Speaker 1: and this is the ballad of Billy Balls. I got
Speaker 1: the number of the Potter's Field and on the other
Speaker 1: end it was the Great Diggers, and I says, where
Speaker 1: is the body of William Heitzman? And they laughed, they laughed.
Speaker 1: I remember just the raw feeling of the fucking pain
Speaker 1: of I agree, and I would like to not remember
Speaker 1: that feeling. Quiz. The only thing this stopped it was
Speaker 1: you being born? All right, We're gonna find that, We're
Speaker 1: gonna find Okay, okay, Chapter eleven, there's someone under this ground. Well,
Speaker 1: not too far away from the bright and dazzling lights
Speaker 1: of Times Square in the New York City skyline lines
Speaker 1: one of America's darkest secrets. Almost one million people buried
Speaker 1: here since the eighteen hundreds on just over one d acres.
Speaker 1: Potter's failed on. Heart Island is a small patch of
Speaker 1: land in the easternmost parts of the Bronx. Can you
Speaker 1: describe physically what Heart Island looks and feels and sounds like? Oh,
Speaker 1: it's it's the least developed part of New York City, right,
Speaker 1: so it's truly this rural landscape. Melinda Hunt is an
Speaker 1: artist and the founding director of the Heart Island Project,
Speaker 1: a nonprofit working the catalog and tell the stories of
Speaker 1: the people buried there. She spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: on the island. There aren't any markers, so it doesn't
Speaker 1: feel like what we call a traditional cemetery private cemetery, right,
Speaker 1: because there aren't all these markers. So it's just it's
Speaker 1: a bird sanctuary. There's herds of de here, as these
Speaker 1: red raccoons. It's just all this wildlife there because people
Speaker 1: aren't there very much, and you're out in the Long
Speaker 1: Island Sound that sailboats going by, and it's just this
Speaker 1: really meaningful place because so many people are buried there.
Speaker 1: It's actually the country's largest natural burial ground, and it's
Speaker 1: a very sustainable ecological system of burials, except that it's
Speaker 1: managed by the penal system, which isn't very interested in ecology.
Speaker 1: Heart Island is run by the Department of Correction, the
Speaker 1: agency best known for overseeing the city's prisons. Over the years,
Speaker 1: it was home to a missile base, an insane asylum,
Speaker 1: and a tuberculosis hospital, but the island only housed abandoned
Speaker 1: buildings and dead bodies. So when a body leaves a
Speaker 1: hospital and goes to Heart Island, who buries it? How
Speaker 1: is How does it get there? What is the process
Speaker 1: of entry? For a billy. The body is put in
Speaker 1: the pine box at the morgue and loaded into a
Speaker 1: refrigerator truck and driven to Heart Island, And the moment
Speaker 1: that vehicle drives onto Heart Island, all of those bodies
Speaker 1: become property of the Department of Correction, And so they
Speaker 1: drive to the grave site and a bus of prisoners
Speaker 1: arrives at the grave site. They dig these gigantic trenches
Speaker 1: where you put people in an organized trench. It's a grid.
Speaker 1: So that's how it's done. Inmates from Rikers Islands, a
Speaker 1: nearby jail, did the trenches and bury the bodies. I
Speaker 1: was in five months in Hot Island and I buried
Speaker 1: well over seven hundred bodies. And that's not even you're
Speaker 1: gonna say babies. This is a former Riker's inmate who
Speaker 1: Melinda interviewed for a documentary she made called Heart Island
Speaker 1: is an American Cemetery. We were like the elite crew
Speaker 1: and there would be people that would get on that,
Speaker 1: you know, on that detail, and they would show up
Speaker 1: one day and they would quit, Uh, just say they
Speaker 1: couldn't do it, you know, because it wasn't so easy,
Speaker 1: you know, took a lot of you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: they were dead people. It's inherently shameful to have prisoners burying.
Speaker 1: The dad Melinda say, is that because the Department of
Speaker 1: Correction or d C is in charge of Heart Island,
Speaker 1: there's a shroud of shame around it and the people
Speaker 1: buried there. That's the purpose of the penal system. It's
Speaker 1: a deterrent based on shame, and so the shame creates
Speaker 1: um stigma. You can't celebrate a life if it's tainted.
Speaker 1: You're not going to go out say oh, this person
Speaker 1: is such a great person, and yeah, they were buried
Speaker 1: by the d C. It's just that those two things
Speaker 1: don't go together. Let's say you're in the position of
Speaker 1: my mother. You are the long term life partner but
Speaker 1: not legally recognized life partner of someone. Can you walk
Speaker 1: us through the process of what would have happened and
Speaker 1: like kind of what she would have encountered. Um, Well,
Speaker 1: if she went to identify she was providing a service
Speaker 1: to the city and then told well, but you have
Speaker 1: no further rights, and my mother would not have had
Speaker 1: the right to claim his body, not in n Basically,
Speaker 1: the city would have tried to find it next of kin,
Speaker 1: and they probably already tried to do that when he
Speaker 1: was at Cabrini. We have a theory about how this
Speaker 1: might have gone down. I asked Billy's daughter Amanda about
Speaker 1: it the first time we met. She did say, which
Speaker 1: I think is a really important big clue, but the
Speaker 1: Morgue did call her grandma when Billy died because Amanda
Speaker 1: is technically the next of kin. She was seven, so
Speaker 1: the grandma didn't want anything to do with it and
Speaker 1: told him to funk off. As her legal guardian. Amanda's
Speaker 1: grandmother did have the right to make the decision that
Speaker 1: sent Billy to Heart Island. My mom, as Billy's longtime girlfriend,
Speaker 1: didn't have egal rights to him in and based on
Speaker 1: the Heart Island rules, I'm not sure she has the
Speaker 1: right to visit him today near Kitty Department of Corrections,
Speaker 1: Hart Island either. Um. I'm calling because my mother is
Speaker 1: the long term partner of somebody who we believe is
Speaker 1: buried on Heart Island, but they were not legally married. Um,
Speaker 1: and I'm trying to figure out how I can get
Speaker 1: her onto the island to finally say goodbye to him.
Speaker 1: She can just or you can request for visit. We
Speaker 1: don't ask for proof and friends do visit, Oh their friends,
Speaker 1: you know. Not to discredit her. God, that's so humane,
Speaker 1: that's so and so unexpected from the DC to me
Speaker 1: scheduling a physic she was more like his wife if
Speaker 1: they were together for a long time, So I would
Speaker 1: definitely schedule her for family or loved one type visit
Speaker 1: where she would just go and actually stand where he
Speaker 1: or she is in grieve and mourn in that way.
Speaker 1: And that's just a call that you're able to make,
Speaker 1: right exactly. We have to trust that there was a
Speaker 1: relationship and that she would want to be clothed. Wow. Okay,
Speaker 1: what is your name? Mrs Calvert? Wow? Ms Calvert? Thank
Speaker 1: you a million times over. Thank you, thank you, thank you,
Speaker 1: No problem. You guys have a great day too. Wow.
Speaker 1: Whoa dude? What? I cannot believe what just happened. I
Speaker 1: can't believe what has happened. You realize what this means, right?
Speaker 1: This means there's no obstacle to my mother getting to
Speaker 1: say goodbye to the love of her life, which she
Speaker 1: has been waiting to do for thirty seven fucking years.
Speaker 1: What are we doing right now? Where are we going?
Speaker 1: We're walking to my mom's house, where I'm going to
Speaker 1: tell her that I found Billy's body and that she
Speaker 1: can go visit him with no restrictions. Today is just
Speaker 1: about telling my mom that we found Billy. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to hit her with the police report or push
Speaker 1: her for any information. I just want to give her
Speaker 1: a chance to process this. It's big I'm away. I'm
Speaker 1: so happy to see you, Mark Mine. Look at you
Speaker 1: a little pastel colors. Oh god, my mom doesn't know
Speaker 1: why I'm here. I asked her to sit down, but anyway, goad, um,
Speaker 1: well I have I have some some news. Yes, I
Speaker 1: found Billy's body. Oh my god. She clenches my hand
Speaker 1: as she closes her eyes and puts her head down.
Speaker 1: He's on hard Island. I'm like, having what kinds of
Speaker 1: just take it very fucking slow. Yeah. Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: go see him many time you want see. We'll visit
Speaker 1: his area. It's great. Okay, Okay, you're squeezing my hand
Speaker 1: really tight right now, Oh my god. Yeah, okay, mm hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If something's open forever and nothing is ever final, eyes
Speaker 1: or or people don't come together to go through this
Speaker 1: ritual and the ceremony thing, something's just not right. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's kind of on a metaphysical plane. I don't know
Speaker 1: how to fucking talk about it, but something's been eating me,
Speaker 1: and that's what it is. It's just one of those things.
Speaker 1: You gotta do it, that's all you feel like. Maybe
Speaker 1: it will let you and us close the chapter and
Speaker 1: start something new. Probably, I hope so I'm ready to go.
Speaker 1: My bag is fucking packed for a few years now,
Speaker 1: you know. So I'm sorry what you heard? What I says?
Speaker 1: Where are you going? I'm need to go to where wherever?
Speaker 1: We're gonna go next. Next we're going to Heart Island.
Speaker 1: That's after the breaks. Oh there she is right there. Okay.
Speaker 1: Hold on a hazy spring morning Austin, My fiance Rachel
Speaker 1: and I picked my mom up at her apartment. Hey,
Speaker 1: my boy, Hey mama, We're about to drive to the
Speaker 1: Bronx to catch a ferry to Heart Island. It's nice
Speaker 1: as being her. My mom's dressed all in black with
Speaker 1: big sunglasses covering her face. She's wearing her nicest pants,
Speaker 1: high heels, and a knee length coat. Jasha looks good. Mom. Wow,
Speaker 1: it's a foggy days creepy it just got off Yeah wow,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's total London fog. After a half
Speaker 1: hour drive, we find ourselves at a place called City Island.
Speaker 1: The ferry to Heart Island leaves from here. Salt Air.
Speaker 1: Nice it is, huh. It's basically like a suburban fishing town.
Speaker 1: It's a quaint little village vibe, but everything is covered
Speaker 1: in mist. My mom carry is with her a white
Speaker 1: envelope that she plans to bring to Billy. I'm smuggling possible.
Speaker 1: They're worry. We walked towards a dock that's fenced off
Speaker 1: and locked, and there's a big Department of Corrections badge
Speaker 1: logo and it says restricted area. It also has a
Speaker 1: big sign that says end the fucking end of the line. Man,
Speaker 1: Oh God, hold my hand, my body. The mist is
Speaker 1: so thick we can't see anything past the dock. A
Speaker 1: man in a city uniform approaches from the other side
Speaker 1: of the fence. Good morning. The fence slides open and
Speaker 1: we walk onto an old dock with wide wooden planks.
Speaker 1: We sign in for the visit as the sky brightens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh wow, wow. The fog just cleared, and the island
Speaker 1: is suddenly like I could probably throw a baseball to it.
Speaker 1: The mist starts to rise and we see Heart Island
Speaker 1: for the first time, a narrow strip of land covered
Speaker 1: in barren trees. How how are you doing? Mom'm fucked up?
Speaker 1: What do you think? You know? It's the look at
Speaker 1: these weird little islands and you want to swim there,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to swim to that place. Uh,
Speaker 1: what once you have to do with the recording device? Please?
Speaker 1: Is please? Now Austin has to put his mic back
Speaker 1: in the car. But I'm wearing a wire, I'm sure
Speaker 1: not sending it off. To put it off, we walk
Speaker 1: onto an industrial looking fairy with a crowd of about
Speaker 1: fifteen other people visiting loved ones. The boat inches towards
Speaker 1: the island. I just can't believe how horror movie esque
Speaker 1: it is. An island of dead people, hundred feet away
Speaker 1: from an island of living people, all abandoned, and it's
Speaker 1: literally coated and missed. It's just like I imagined that.
Speaker 1: In just a few minutes, we've arrived. The dock workers
Speaker 1: secure the ferry. We were all said, folks get Dotting
Speaker 1: the shoreline are little Catholic statues, baby angels, and a
Speaker 1: Virgin Mary, all painted white, stare at us as we disembark.
Speaker 1: My mom is silent. She's flanked herself with my fiance
Speaker 1: Rachel and me and clutches both of our hands. Ahead
Speaker 1: is a big white bus with corrections stamped along the side.
Speaker 1: Got to get on the corrections the white bus. Wow,
Speaker 1: wherever you want a cup? The island is devastating around
Speaker 1: us or half crumbled brick and plaster buildings. An old
Speaker 1: boat sits rotting, a crow has nested on top of
Speaker 1: a dilapidated shed. Everything feels dead except the animals that
Speaker 1: run wild here you do. Canadians on the island are
Speaker 1: Canadian geese, so you can see them. She's a nesting season.
Speaker 1: They get quite aggressive. The bus creeps forward. It's the
Speaker 1: north end of the island and got it. The trees
Speaker 1: look like tim Burton trees the like reach out in
Speaker 1: every direction, rounding a corner. We come to an open
Speaker 1: field with little white concrete blocks placed every twenty ft
Speaker 1: or so marking a rudimentary grid. We're here. What do
Speaker 1: you want, mom? You want us to go with you?
Speaker 1: You want to go in her? You want us to
Speaker 1: go with you? Right? Yeah, mama, Okay, this was a
Speaker 1: surprisingly gentle corrections officer leads us off the bus and
Speaker 1: into a muddy field. It sits just next to a
Speaker 1: rocky beach where large pieces of trash, plastic bins, and
Speaker 1: wooden crates have washed up. You're going to be good
Speaker 1: with those heels in the soft earth. I don't know
Speaker 1: I got your flip pops if you need them. My
Speaker 1: mom's heels sink into the ground as the officer consults
Speaker 1: a cemetery diagram and settles on a spot. He says,
Speaker 1: Billy is roughly in this area, under the patchy grass
Speaker 1: right there. Is it this way or that way? So
Speaker 1: he's right here. Thank you, thank you. He says he
Speaker 1: thinks Billy's head is pointing in the direction of the water.
Speaker 1: He apologizes for our loss and ambles towards the beach,
Speaker 1: leaving us in privacy. Rachel and I clear the bottle
Speaker 1: caps and trash that the tide has washed up over Billy.
Speaker 1: My mom stares at the mulchy earth so um roll
Speaker 1: that there's someone under this ground and you would never
Speaker 1: know it. And her She takes out that white envelope
Speaker 1: she smuggled in. It's filled with seeds or planting some
Speaker 1: some flowers. Break them up. Okay, the season, you know
Speaker 1: you gotta break them like this. Okay. She bends over
Speaker 1: at the waist and starts ripping back the grass. My
Speaker 1: mom is digging with her fingers into the earth. Not
Speaker 1: more and more and more. You want to give me
Speaker 1: some more? Yeah, just cover cover, cover him with flour.
Speaker 1: My mom is digging with her fingers. It looks as
Speaker 1: though she's caressing Billy's chest and she's digging right on
Speaker 1: top of where they said his chest would be. She's
Speaker 1: digging with her fingers. I feel like I could just
Speaker 1: keep going in there. He's gonna be right there. The birds,
Speaker 1: and I say, it sounds as the birds you want
Speaker 1: to leave you alone for a minute with them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could leave me alone for just a few minutes. Maybe.
Speaker 1: I love your mama. I love you too, Go too far,
Speaker 1: We'll be right here. I've been around bird why it
Speaker 1: was all my life when I was drawing up my brother.
Speaker 1: Birds always really mostly harmless. Will birds are all over?
Speaker 1: Where do you keep a whispers? Isn't bad pronounced aviary?
Speaker 1: I'm just calling me owhere? Okay, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't I don't know. M Are you happy with cane um?
Speaker 1: I guess it's just something that you gotta do. You know,
Speaker 1: I wish he wasn't fucking dead. If what he is,
Speaker 1: he's dead, you know? Yeah, Oh, this is so so creepy.
Speaker 1: You feel like this puts an end to something, knowing
Speaker 1: where he is, having found him, and I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's just creepy. I I don't know what to say.
Speaker 1: I can't talk about it. I don't know the answer
Speaker 1: to anything. Okay. In fact, I woke up today realizing
Speaker 1: that I'm completely still food and that I don't know
Speaker 1: the answer to anything. What are you talking about? I
Speaker 1: don't know. Don't ask me any more questions. That's what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. I always said he could just count
Speaker 1: with that. Yeah. Ah, he wants to go with us
Speaker 1: till his spirit let's go. Okay, how you know, my mom?
Speaker 1: I feel worse than ever now. Ah, like my gouts
Speaker 1: are being scraped off from the inside. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I told you, just don't ask me anything. I don't
Speaker 1: know anything. I'm sorry you feel that my mom suity
Speaker 1: don't great? All right? Bye? Bye? Heavy sick. It was
Speaker 1: horrible when she cried. Is it? Is it feeling like
Speaker 1: the your mom's reaction is different than than what you
Speaker 1: had thought it would be. Hearing her cry like that
Speaker 1: in the back seat, like that's raw. Ship, m I
Speaker 1: don't know how to do the right thing for her.
Speaker 1: I thought that taking her to Hart Island was it.
Speaker 1: Ship and movies is so neat, you know, go to
Speaker 1: the grave and you lay the flowers and it fades
Speaker 1: to black, and everybody just feels satisfied and reconciled. But
Speaker 1: real life isn't like that. Even if you can find
Speaker 1: the grave, it might not scratch the itch of reconciling
Speaker 1: that somebody was killed. When I started this whole thing,
Speaker 1: I thought that this day taking my mom to say
Speaker 1: goodbye to Billy would be the end of the story.
Speaker 1: But it's clearly not. My mom still feels like there
Speaker 1: was an injustice against Billy, that he was wrongfully killed.
Speaker 1: When I was younger, I started making a list, a
Speaker 1: list of questions I would ask the cop who shot
Speaker 1: Billy if I could ever find him. I thought there
Speaker 1: was no way I would ever get the chance. I
Speaker 1: was wrong. Austin talked to me for a sec. Yes, Hello, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's good. That's good. Okay, I'm gonna call Mr Holy
Speaker 1: sh It next week. The undercover Cop Crimetown is Zack
Speaker 1: Stewart Pontier and Mark Smirling. The Ballad of Billy Balls
Speaker 1: is hosted by me I Oh Till It Right and
Speaker 1: made in partnership with Kaden's thirteen. You can find me
Speaker 1: on the Internet. Umio loves you on everything. Say Hello,
Speaker 1: and if you want to know more about my story,
Speaker 1: you can pick up my memoir Darling Days. We also
Speaker 1: want to hear from you. We have a voicemail set
Speaker 1: up for you to call us. Here's Candice. I have
Speaker 1: this family story that I've always wanted to look into,
Speaker 1: and it involved a sister I don't know, and my
Speaker 1: mom was supposed to give up her child. But I'm
Speaker 1: terrified to ask my mom more questions because of the
Speaker 1: emotional impact it might have on her. And I just
Speaker 1: want to know any advice you might have for breaking
Speaker 1: the ice. It's sort of always doing the thing I've
Speaker 1: really really wanted to look into, and I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people have a similar story. Thanks for that, Candice.
Speaker 1: You know my best advice is to just take it
Speaker 1: really slow and approach it with a lot of compassion
Speaker 1: and tenderness. And anybody else, if you have a family
Speaker 1: mystery solved or unsolved, we'd love to hear about it.
Speaker 1: Call us and leave us a voicemail at five seven
Speaker 1: oh three nine to nine zero, seriously, call right now.
Speaker 1: You can also get into our discussion forum on our website,
Speaker 1: The Ballad of Billie Balls dot com, and that the
Speaker 1: show is produced by me, Kevin Sheppard, and Ryan Swigert.
Speaker 1: Our senior producer is Austin Mitchell. Editing by Zack Stewart
Speaker 1: Contier and Mark Smirling. Fact checking by Jennifer Blackman. This
Speaker 1: episode was mixed by Kenny Qcack. Music and sound designed
Speaker 1: by Kenny qcac two. Our title track is Dark Allies
Speaker 1: by Light Asylum. Archival research by Brennan Reese. Thanks to
Speaker 1: Daniella Aria, my Fiance Rachel, Emily Wiederman, Green Card Pictures,
Speaker 1: Alessandro Sentauro, Bill Clegg, Ben Davis, Orn Rosenbaum, and the
Speaker 1: team at Cadence thirteen, and special thanks to Mrs Calvert
Speaker 1: at the e o C for honoring love and of
Speaker 1: course my mom, without whom none of this would be possible.
Speaker 1: M