Shock: Unclaimed Latino bodies delivered to University of North Texas Health Science Center

A controversial report from Texas revealed that for five years, Dallas and Tarrant counties sent unclaimed bodies, mostly Latino, to the University of North Texas Health Sciences Center in Fort Worth.

The NBC News investigation called “Dealing the Dead” indicates that, since 2019, more than 830 bodies were embalmed and stored in freezers, while about 1,520 were cremated due to their state of decomposition or testing positive for infectious diseases.

Some of the embalmed bodies were selected for the training of future doctors and nurses, and others were rented to medical schools, the United States Army, and companies that sell health-related technologies for profit.

Shortly after an NBC News investigation revealed last month that at least a dozen North Texas families did not know what happened to their missing relatives, the Health Sciences Center stopped using unclaimed bodies, laid off to the officials running his body donation program and apologized to the affected families.

Since that report, more people revealed that their family members were also handed over to the medical program without proper consent. These families not only discovered that their loved ones were studied, but also rented to different institutions.

In an effort to help families find answers, NBC News is publishing the names of more than 1,800 people whose bodies were delivered to the Health Sciences Center by Dallas and Tarrant counties since 2019. The database is based in spreadsheets of unclaimed bodies obtained through open records requests from county medical examiners.

Most of the names on the list had not previously been made public. Tarrant County does not routinely publish the names of unclaimed bodies in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUS), the only national database of missing, unidentified and unclaimed persons that allows limited access to the public, allowing family members to take a more proactive role in the search for their missing loved ones. Dallas County began posting names into the system in December.

NBC News could not independently confirm the accuracy of the information provided by the counties, so it may include misspellings of names or other errors. The list also does not include the names of a few dozen unclaimed people whose bodies were provided to the Health Science Center by other Texas counties.

The NBC News investigation remains ongoing. A list of unclaimed bodies sent to the UNT Health Sciences Center since 2019 can be found at this link.