Criminal - One Troy

Episode Date: June 14, 2024

The Lawrence H. Woodward funeral home in Brooklyn has been run by one family for generations, and has handled many funerals for victims of violent crime. When we visited, one funeral director told us, “I don’t think people understand when you’re dealing with a victim who’s been shot – we see these things. It’s a mental toll on the person that has to now look at this gunshot victim and put them back together.” Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. Sign up for Criminal Plus to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, members-only merch, and more. Learn more and sign up here. Listen back through our archives at youtube.com/criminalpodcast. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I was a kid. I couldn't even tell you the first time. I was a little girl. I mean, growing up around a funeral home, for me, this is every day. Kendall Lindsay is a funeral director at the Lawrence H. Woodward Funeral Home in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Her grandfather had the funeral home built almost 50 years ago, and the family has been in the funeral business ever since. We met her there a few months ago. What was it like to grow up in a family that owned a funeral home? I mean, when you were a little kid.

Weird. It's weird. It is because your whole life, I had, my mother was here, my grandmother and grandfather were here. My aunt was here at that time. My cousins were here. Where did we go after school? The funeral home. Where did you come on Saturday? I had Girl Scouts down the block.

I went from Girl Scouts to this building. It was my life. You can't plan trips because somebody has to be at the funeral home. When you were growing up, did the hearse ever come to pick you up from school? Yes, you only got to finish. The hearse came to pick us all up from school. When my mother was in school, the hearse picked her up from school too. It's almost like a stepping stone for me and the funeral director's kid

getting picked up in the hearse. Kendall showed me where she and the other kids in the family would play hide and seek. So in this room, when it was a reposing room, they had like, you know, you turn off the lights, you got little fold-up chairs, and you run around, hide. In that room, too, most kids play at their parents' job. No different than you going to work with mom and dad, and you got to keep yourself busy. We had to keep ourselves busy. What do you do after you're done doing homework and you ain't got nothing to do when you're a little kid? You play hide and go seek. So you've hidden all over this place?

Yeah, I still walk through this building in the pitch black. It's not so funny, it's so natural for you to be around bodies where I'm thinking... Wow. Weird. Like how, yeah. For me, this is every day. I mean, it's still a deceased person, but everybody has a date. Everybody has a time. This is one of our chapels. It's a smaller, but I knew it's chapel. Oh, this is the small chapel? Yeah. This is pretty big.

Well, I mean, it's big compared to some other places, but it's small for us. This is our larger chapel. It doubles into that room as well. So on a good day, we open up both sides and you can fit up to 500 people in here. Do you often have funerals that have 500? No, not always. Everybody's funeral is different. You can have a young person here.

We can only be 20 people. We've had funerals where it was only two people. Most of our funerals range 20 to maybe 150. So it depends. If it's a funeral for a violent crime, and it's a young person, it's a lot of people. Kendall says she's helped out with a lot of funerals for victims of violent crime,

and so has her mother and grandparents before her. She says that a lot of us think about the work that police and medical examiners do after someone has been killed, but that what takes place in a funeral home is also significant. A way to show care and respect and remember someone as they were. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Tell me about when a body is brought here. What is the process? From the moment a family arrives or from death, what happens?

So at the time of passing, I tell everybody, call 911. Don't call us first. Unless your loved one has been under hospice care, end-of-life care, don't call us first. Unless your loved one has been under hospice care, end-of-life care, don't call us first. Always call the police. Once the police have given us the clear to come get your loved one or if they've not given us the clear, sometimes the case may have to go to the medical examiner for whatever the case.

If you have not been under a doctor's care in the last six months, you're going to the medical examiner. They have to find out what happened to you. If you go to the medical examiner. They have to find out what happened to you. After, if you go to the medical examiner or if you get released from the hospital, you go to the embalming facility. We no longer embalm on the premises. It's very carcinogenic.

It's a health hazard. It smells up to high heaven. And you got to get that done. I call it spa treatments. Come here, they go down here. Have you embalmed bodies? In fact, become a funeral director, a part of the training we go through is we have to embalm. So, yes, I have been embalming.

Not my favorite thing to do, honestly. It's a really physical thing, isn't it? I mean, it's— The whole job is physical, though. You have to be able to lift up the human remains, and everybody's not liftable. But embalming is more so mental. You have to know where you're going.

You have to know the human arterial system. You need to know where the veins go. The physical aspect is when they come here, and now we gotta dress them. There is, you know, we all stand up and put on our clothes. My deceased can't stand up. We have to stand them up. We have to move you. We have to prop you up. We have to lift your legs.

Everybody is not a size two, right? Everybody's not even a size 10. So when you have a range of people you're dealing with, and I'm 4'11", I'm very short. I'm the shortest person in this building. I have to be able to lift a person up to 200 pounds. I have to work out. One of my funeral directors, I've seen her lift people bigger than that. That's when it becomes physical. And is makeup applied after a body is dressed and in the casket? You never want to put makeup on a body before.

I know traditionally we would put makeup on and then get dressed. Yeah, no, no, no. Because of how we have to dress them, they have to be fully dressed. We put plastic on them to protect their clothing. Sometimes things happen. People, I hate to say it, they purge. You know, it's a part of the process. And you don't want their clothes to get messed up. You want to make sure everything is perfect. That's the last time anybody is going to see this loved one. Kendall works at Lawrence H. Woodward with her mother, Linda Thompson Lindsay. Her aunt used to work there too. We're all mothers.

So it's hard for us to have another mother in our situation and they've lost their child to a violent crime. It's really hard when you're dealing with anybody, even if it's not a mother. If you're dealing with a wife whose husband was walking down the street and something happened to him, he had nothing to do with it, but he got shot. What do I tell this person? That takes a lot. I don't think people understand when you're dealing with a victim who's been shot, whether they've been shot in their face or in their body, we see these things. It's a mental toll on the person that has to now look at this gunshot victim and put them back together. It really affects the people who do the job. She said,

We see things that people in the hospital never see. Nobody thinks of having to work with putting this person back together who's been shot. Then I have to go back home to my child and cook dinner. If violent criminals had to sit in that room with us, putting these people back together, I think there would be less crime. I really wish people could come see

what their guns are doing to people. After a person, I hate to say it, after a person has been shot, they got to go to the medical examiner. The medical examiner performs an autopsy. They don't always put you back together in the best way. You come from the medical examiner, you go to a funeral home, they have to now put you back together in the best way. You come from the medical examiner, you go to a funeral home,

they have to now put you back together. They have to now go back where the medical examiner has gone, and they have to fix all of that. That is not easy. And to deal with it constantly. I had a baby here, and that was my case, and I had to get him dressed. In July 2020, one-year-old DeVell Gardner Jr. was shot and killed by a stray bullet while sitting in his stroller at a barbecue in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Two men had jumped out of an SUV and started shooting.

Nice family. Too young. One years old. That hurt. Cocomelon casket. What do I tell a mother? And I got a baby, too. A teddy bear and an Elmo doll were placed on the casket during the service. Kendall says she often stays close with the family she works with, like the mother of Ahmaud Perkins, who was shot and killed on his 45th birthday. Everybody was prepared to celebrate a birthday.

They weren't prepared to be here for a funeral. What was his funeral like? It was good. A lot of his friends came because he was from the neighborhood. A lot of his friends came. His mom was here. His kids were here. They showed a lot of his friends came because he was from the neighborhood. A lot of his friends came. His mom was here. His kids were here. They showed a lot of love.

They celebrated his life. I like celebrations of life because life is to be celebrated. But it was hard. You know, his mother, I still get calls from her like, yeah, why? Why? And it's not fair to these people. Now, nobody should have that question, why my child? Why my husband?

Why my anything? We did Jasmine Figueroa. Who is she? A few months ago, a young lady was shot outside her building in front of her daughter. And her friend was shot as well. And the person that shot her killed himself. That was Miss Jasmine. Her kid was so nice.

Her family was so nice. you're hearing about these people, Jasmine, on the news while their body is right here at the funeral home? So in Jasmine's case, I heard about it on the news before they came in to make arrangements. It wasn't until they came in to make arrangements and they were just asking questions. They didn't tell me no names. It wasn't until we sat down to do the paperwork that I'm getting a name. And then it's like, I'm so sorry. Well, what can I say? I'm so sorry. Like, we're hearing about it on the news.

You're seeing the pictures. But you don't know. And again, outside of sorry, what do I have to offer you other than trying to make your loved one look good? No gunshot victim is, I hate to say it, pretty. That's not a pretty thing, you know. It pulverizes. You know, it doesn't matter where you get shot at. If you get shot in your abdomen, your organs are destroyed.

If you get shot in your face, that's a piece of, you know, depends on where. If you get shot in the head, depends on what kind of weapon you get shot by. They, it doesn't matter. Whether there's a Glock 9, an AR, a shotgun,

a gun is meant to harm people. So anytime somebody has been a victim of that weapon, the skin around there is damaged. The emotional trauma, especially if it's a facial wound, we can try and fix it, but that don't mean it's going to be perfect. You're never going to look the way you did before. Right? All right? And I really, I hate to say it, but I really wish people that have killed somebody

could see what their person looked like. I really do. They need to see the damage of what they've done to these people. In 2016, a 23-year-old named Imani Miller was found dead in Canarsie, Brooklyn. He'd been shot in the head, and he also had multiple cuts. There were two Ws that had been carved into his left cheek and lip. Imani's mother brought his body to Lawrence H. Woodward

and asked them, just make him look like himself. I want people to remember him the way he lived, not the way he died. I know the family personally, so it was hard because it was a few people who was involved. They really wanted to disfigure him so he could not be viewable. This is Simona Ross, who prepared Imani Miller's body. But of course, I worked for days so that the family can have their final view and see him. And it was not only one type of infliction, it was different types of, well, a gun or a knife or different types of things, but they really tried to mutilate him. And I had to bring that back to give closure to that family.

And it took you days? It took me about a couple days. It took my time. You know, sometimes you may see something that's, okay, I don't like that. I want to go back and keep rebuilding. You don't want to rush in anything like this. You want to make sure it takes the time to get it done. And it's not always easy, but like I said, do the best I can to get as close as possible. When a reporter asked Kendall's mother, Linda Thompson Lindsay, about the case, she said,

death is never pretty, and often people die looking their worst. We'll never replace him, but it's a chance for a mother to see her son die with dignity. What do you do to make a gunshot wound disappear on someone so that it isn't noticeable? What are the steps? Every case is different. So it's also about using, restoring waxes, molds. If it's really deep, you have to go in with netting to try to, you know, sew off and, you know, close up and then, you know, using molds to try to, like flesh tone to bring it back, to give back the look, and then also now adding color, you know, to match and come close to their complexion.

So it can take, there's multiple, multiple steps. You really want to try your best to get as close as possible. If you always ask for photos so I can see what I'm doing, to try to make sure I get hit those marks. Every case is different. Every case is different. Every case is different. Well, what's the most important thing to you when someone comes in here who has been a victim of violence?

What do you see as your obligation to them, the things that you want to get right? You want to make them feel that you've found a place where someone cares enough that we're going to care for you. Kendall's mother, Linda Thompson Lindsay. Secondly, we're going to care for your loved one. And many a time, you get families in where the death occurred and the person has been so maimed or disfigured that they go, oh, no, we're going to close the casket. We're going to close the casket. We're going to close the casket. And we would say, well, let us see what we can do.

And I have to say, 95% of the time, we are able to bring that person back, and the families are so grateful. They're thankful that somebody took the time. And they may not know, yeah, it took three days because you can only do but so much and then you have to step aside. Then you have to come back to it, because it's mentally draining to do that type of work and just like, stay at it, stay at it. You got to get away from it, because sometimes you look and you're perplexed as to, hmm, what's my next step? There's no book on how am I going to fix this? Because you have to care that you want to do this, not just for the family, but it gives you a self-satisfaction

that I was able to help a family. It's bad enough that he's gone or she's gone, but at least they've had an opportunity to grieve. You know, that they're looking at someone that looks like the person that they knew. You don't want their last look to be sloppy. You don't want their last look to be sloppy. You don't want their last look to be uncomfortable. We, this firm, prefers our descendants to go out looking like they're asleep. You don't want to see somebody that looks angry.

And sometimes people do sleep angry. I'm one of them. But you don't want to see that in the casket. If you come and you're here to visit mom, you want mom to look like she's comfortable, that she's restful, that whatever her problem was leading up to this time, it don't exist no more. We'll be right back.

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a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. The Lawrence H. Woodward Funeral Home opened in Bed-Stuy more than 100 years ago, in 1923. After its original owner died in 1961, it was taken over by Melvin D. Thompson, Kendall's grandfather. Kendall told us that at the time, there weren't a lot of black people in the funeral industry, and that Melvin saw a need. He asked his wife to go to mortuary school, too. At the time, she was the only woman in her class.

Eventually, she worked with Melvin and became manager of the funeral home. In the 1970s, he designed and built a new building for the funeral home near the original one, which is where we visited. We are the family funeral home for a lot of this community, especially since this building has been around. The building is on a tree-lined street, across from a huge parking lot. It's all brick and almost looks like it could be a school, except there are very few windows. It's so well known that its address, 1 Troy, is in song lyrics and is a shorthand reference in the area for a funeral home.

You may not know us as Lawrence H. Wilber. She in a home, but you know one, Troy. We've buried grandmothers. We've buried mothers. We've buried aunts, uncles, the whole family. And we are a central point. Everything else around us may be changing, but this building has not.

People can come in here and say, yeah, those are the same bricks from 1970, whatever. The parking lot, same parking lot. Nothing in this neighborhood has stayed the same. Nothing. We are steady. So for us, it's a staple. Everybody knows this building.

When the funeral was being built, I was in high school. I was already in high school. Linda Thompson Lindsay remembers her father deciding to build the new funeral home. He said, look, I'm building this building and I think it would be a good idea for you to get your license. And so I said, okay. And he would bring the plans. He would bring the plans home, and he would lay them across him and my mom's bed to like, come here, take a look. Because, I mean, we lived in a house, but we didn't have a whole lot of space. So he spread it all out.

And he's like, and so this is the plans and da-da-da. And he's like, that's going to be that. I'm going to have an office, and that's going to be for the large chapels for the funerals, which so gave us the ability to have space for six viewings, which in the 80s, we utilized a lot. Why? Because of AIDS, because of the crack epidemic, there were a lot of deaths.

And people needed a space. It really was a lot of traffic. We were here until 9 o'clock at night, even mortuary school. In mortuary school, I would come from Manhattan, and he said, Well, you know, what time can you get here, 4 o'clock? Okay, so you're going to answer the phones. Come on, answer the phones. And I'd be there until 8.30, 9 o'clock? Okay, so you're going to answer the phones. Come on, answer the phones. And I'd be there till 8.30, 9 o'clock. It was a new facility. So everybody wanted to come to the

new facility. So you had deaths immediately. We had a lot of police officers who were shot. We had five victims. You had murders. You had all sorts of things and continuous, continuous, continuous. Right now, the big thing here is this fentanyl, and that's been around for quite some time. We know about it because it comes in on the toxicology on a lot of pending death certificates. When the toxins come back and they'll show you that the person had fentanyl, heroin, cocaine. All those things still going on. Is there any difference? I mean, of course not in the type of service that a family is given, but doing this for as long as you have,

dealing with the family of a victim of crime as opposed to an illness, in the way that they're processing, in the way that you are having to speak with them? Well, I would say, first of all, no one expects someone to die violently. That violence brings a lot of anger, a lot of why. Also, I think sometimes guilt. Sometimes you're guilty because you meant to do this or you meant to not. But I think that happens now in a lot of deaf's period. They meant to do this. They were going to do that and they didn't do that. So then when you

wind up, a lot is unsaid. You're in many circumstances the last person that this person will spend real time with. And a lot of families take it out on us because we are the last people. Funeral director, Simona Ross. And so sometimes their grief and their anger comes out at us because we are the last ones and they don't want to be here. So sometimes whatever they're feeling, they'll take it out on us usually. So I've been yelled at, cursed at many times. It's okay.

There is no class to deal with angry clients who want to yell at you. Kendall Lindsey. People aren't so nice lately. There's a lot of anger out here, and I don't know if this is from COVID or if it's just emotions are running high. I know everything's expensive as all get out. So that could be it. Inflation.

But it's a lot of anger. And sometimes it translates. If you're suffering from a death and you really like this person, you don't realize how angry you are being to other people. And a lot of times we get that anger. I was even thinking about this yesterday. During COVID, we thanked a lot of our medical personnels. And I'm all for that. I think they did a fabulous job. A lot of people are here because of them. But what about the sanitation workers? Your grocery store people? Everybody had to get up and go to work still. They didn't get no accolades for it.

Or the funeral directors. Or the funeral directors. We was in those trailers. You know, the morgue techs, they had to load those trailers up. We didn't get acknowledged like the medical staff did. Kendall says that sometimes it feels like people don't see funeral directors as normal people. Her mother has said that they can be seen as coffin chasers. Her aunt has said grim reapers. Her aunt has also said that she's felt self-conscious being seen shopping or drinking or laughing. Like enjoying herself could somehow be seen as disrespectful.

It's hard. It's hard and we are normal people. I think that's the biggest thing. I think funeral directors have this air that we're either untouchable or we can't be spoken to. That's not us. We are normal, everyday people. We have friends. We have families. We just want to do a good job. It's a job that needs to get done. We'll be right back. Are you looking to eat healthier, but you still find yourself occasionally rebounding with junk food and empty calories?

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So these are all of the caskets? Yeah, these are some of the caskets we sell. Now, I've never, can I, so I... You can go ahead, touch it. So, okay, so the bottom of a casket is, it's kind of like a mattress. It's not hard. It's like a bed. It's like a bed. We put you to sleep.

Exactly. You want to see what you're getting. And we customize caskets, so caskets on the outside can be customized. We get your name here. We can get stuff put on the top. What is it like when you bring a family in this room? When they see the casket, does it make it more real for them? I mean, when you get to this point of the arrangement, it's now very real.

Most people, you know, it depends. When you're going through the mourning process, it's a shock, especially if it was a death that you were not anticipating. So when you're not anticipating and you have to come in this room and then you're seeing all of these caskets, you're like, well, what do I pick? What do I like? So you just pick what you, your heart says pick. Everybody does not need to go in the Citadel. This is a very expensive casket. Now, this casket's $34,000. Yes.

It's a wonderful casket. It's very, very heavy. And the only person that has gone in this casket has been the owner. So when he passed, he said he wanted this casket. And so we got it for him. So he was the only person that I know of that has been buried in this casket. When Melvin D. Thompson died in 2015, Linda and her sister arranged their father's funeral. And then Linda and her sister took over the business. It's one of a shrinking number of Black-owned family funeral homes in the

country. There are fewer family-orientated funeral homes now as opposed to the larger firms being taken over by large corporations or conglomerates. So we are in the neighborhood. We just want to try to do our best for whomever comes through our doors. Funeral homes were some of the first black-owned businesses established after the abolition of slavery. According to the Library of Congress, the funeral business didn't really exist before the Civil War.

A death was handled by the family in the home. During the war, soldiers' bodies needed to be preserved for transportation back home to be buried, and the service became an industry. The industry was segregated, and black-owned funeral homes became important centers of community. During the Civil Rights era, they provided bail funds for protesters and spaces for meetings. Hurses were used to transport civil rights leaders around the South without attracting attention, so they'd be safer. And large-scale funerals caught the country's attention. Like 14-year-old Emmett Till's service, which his mother insisted be open casket, so, quote, the world could see what they did to my boy after he'd been lynched. Funerals, historically black.

We have funerals, but as we all know, during slave history, we got a little parcel on the ground. We didn't get a tombstone. Nobody acknowledged us. It was, oh, there's Cousin Ed over there, and that's Aunt Sarah over here. It wasn't a big thing. When we got the opportunity to make it a big thing, we did. Funerals are a celebration of the life you have lived.

For us, if that's Aunt Sarah, and Aunt Sarah took care of half the family, everybody went to her for a pound cake, why won't we celebrate that? This is our African-American history calendar that my dad started putting out since 1969. A gentleman came to him and offered him African American history calendar. It was something new, and he thought it was a great idea because most of the time our history seems to be evaded. It doesn't seem to say that we did anything.

When my dad went to school, he was one of two black young boys in high school. And he was told that everybody contributed to America and everything else in his sans the black man. And he found that to be very disheartening, and he knew he was a hardworking gentleman. So anyway, once he got into the funeral industry himself, we have given out up to 80,000 calendars a year

to the community, the churches, just so that our history can just be put out there. This year's calendar features people like Ralph Johnson Bunch, who was one of the creators of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950. And Granville Taylor Woods, who had more than 50 patents in his name, including one for the electric figure-eight roller coaster at Coney Island. The Lawrence H. Woodward Funeral Home works to preserve history in another way, too, by

keeping records and obituaries all the way back to the funeral home's beginnings. Kendall has said that sometimes, for African American families, this is the only place where records are kept. So much of Black history has been destroyed, we make sure it is not forgotten. A lot of times our history is not told in textbooks, and we don't always know it. We don't always have records. I am a history buff, and I spend a lot of time on Ancestry.com. And most of the records I got came from a death record, a funeral, or an obituary.

We try and keep that because, again, a lot of people don't know. If you were a baby and your mother passed away in 1982, you don't have any records on your mom. You don't know anything. If you know that she died at this state and she went to this funeral home, hey, do you have an obituary? And we've had that happen where people are like, hey, do you have a copy of Mom's obituary from 1984? It's like, yeah, sure, hold on. Let me go pull it for you. And so they could get some kind of clearance, some kind of idea.

We need our records. I have buried three generations. That's when I realized I'm getting old because I have buried three generations. A lot of people say, Linda, when I go, I'm coming back here, and you guys got to take care of me. Promise me. I say, sure. And unfortunately, I have to say, it's dwindling down.

My time is almost finished. I've got about 15 more people who I have said, sure, you know, and it used to be a whole lot more. And we have buried all these people. So it is a lot. We all do know that this is a calling. This is not something for everybody that can do and handle. You have to really be in love with this profession and dedicated to this profession in order for you to do it. Sometimes I wonder, I sit there and I'm like, wow, did we, we did all of that. You know, we,

you know, we did all of that and we still are standing. Do you hope that your children... No. No, no, no. My daughter's in fashion. She likes art. I'm all for her going in that direction. I think she'll have a happier life going in that direction. If I am the last generation here, it will be it. I am not trying to force this on my kid. You have to come into this field because your heart calls you into this.

Because if your heart's not in it, you're not going to want to do this. Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sajico, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, and Megan Kinane. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com

and you can sign up for our newsletter at thisiscriminal.com slash newsletter we hope you'll join our new membership program Criminal Plus once you sign up you can listen to Criminal episodes without any ads and you'll get bonus episodes with me

and Criminal co-creator Lauren Spohr, too. To learn more, go to thisiscriminal.com slash plus. We're on Facebook and Twitter at Criminal Show and Instagram at criminal underscore podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com slash criminal podcast. Criminal is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

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