The NYPD revealed that a human hand with only two fingers found Thursday by a Staten Island dog walker belonged to a woman buried in a nearby cemetery more than a decade ago.
The 42-year-old man and his dog found the hand with only two fingers – the index finger and thumb – Thursday in a forest near Amboy Rd. and Cunningham Rd. in the North Mount Loretto State Forest area, Charleston neighborhood, police sources said.
Fingerprints helped investigators determine that the hand belonged to a 63-year-old woman buried in 2011 at Resurrection Cemetery, about a mile away, the Daily News detailed.
The plot next to her grave was recently excavated on Feb. 27 for a new burial, police said. Authorities believe the excavation crew damaged his coffin and severed his right hand.
It is unclear at this time how the woman’s hand traveled about a mile to the site where it was discovered.
Mary Ellen Gerrity, executive director of the trustees of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, said today that they were cooperating with a police investigation into the matter. “It has come to our attention that the remains of a person buried here at Resurrection Cemetery were removed. Some parts of the deceased were discovered some distance from the cemetery. It is unclear what happened. That part is under investigation.”
“We are cooperating fully with the investigation. We are very upset with the family. We have been in communication with the family. We hope to rebury the remains as soon as possible. Our first concern is the privacy and care of the family. This is very upsetting to them,” he insisted. “There is a burial here every day of the week.”
Similarly, in January 2021, human remains were found in a Staten Island park next to a 2005 calendar. Months later, it was determined that the bones were those of a short man (between 4’11” and 5’5″), possibly Asian or Hispanic and that he had been murdered on an unspecified date. But so far, the victim has not been identified nor have there been any arrests.
In July 2021, NYPD reported human bones were found behind the city’s Department of Sanitation (DSNY) facility in New Springville, Staten Island.
Then, in March 2022, NYPD found the dismembered torso of a woman inside a grocery shopping cart on a Brooklyn street, less than a week after Nisaa Walcott (35), a missing mother in Harlem, was found dead in a plastic dumpster in The Bronx. A cousin of the victim was arrested on suspicion of her murder.