THEY DIED IN STATE CUSTODY, BUT THE NIGHTMARE WAS JUST BEGINNING. A bombshell investigation reveals a SHOCKING and SYSTEMATIC scheme where American prisons are holding corpses HOSTAGE, weaponizing grief to bury the truth. Steven Kidd Jr. died NINE DAYS before his release. His mother, Teresa Henderson, received a callous chaplain’s call and then a WALL OF SILENCE. “I felt suspicious,” she said. The state held his body, starved her of answers, and forced her into a horrific choice: bankrupt herself for an independent autopsy or accept their story and cremate her son. She chose cremation. Her son arrived home in a PRIORITY MAIL BOX.
This is not an anomaly. It is POLICY. Across the nation, thousands of families are being PUNISHED for their loved one’s incarceration BEYOND THE GRAVE. Internal documents expose a web of cruel procedures designed for one purpose: INSTITUTIONAL SELF-PRESERVATION. Bodies are locked down as “crime scenes” for months. Personal effects are withheld as “evidence.” Families are given IMPOSSIBLE deadlines—as little as 48 hours—to claim remains or the state DISPOSES OF THE BODY. The financial burden is crushing, deliberately targeting the poor. “The system is broken. The families should not be punished. We did nothing,” said Donald Prutting, who battled for weeks to reclaim his brother’s body.
Experts confirm the grim reality. “It’s the human perspective that’s missing here,” said death investigator Paul Parker. UCLA professor Terence Keel is blunter: “By weaponizing both time and weaponizing the money against them, it’s another way to make sure that the state covers its back.” These departments operate in a constitutional void, facing zero accountability for the psychological torture they inflict on the bereaved. They treat grieving families not as victims, but as POTENTIAL LITIGANTS to be managed and neutralized.
While lawmakers propose feeble reforms, the machinery of bureaucratic cruelty grinds on, turning final rites into a final indignity. The message from the system is clear: once they have you, you—and your family—are property FOREVER. The sentence does not end at death.
Edited for Kayitsi.com
