Crime & Punishment: Connecticut Police Officer Accused of Robbing a Dying Man

Sixty-eight-year-old Metro North employee Myron Johnson died a very sad death when he passed away alone in his Bridgeport apartment on Christmas Day of 2007. Johnson's body sat in the morgue for eight months as no one claimed it. Finally, Brenda Ortiz, director of Bridgeport's Community Funeral Chapels stepped up and gave Johnson the most lavish burial possible, with a state-of-the-art stainless steel casket and vault to place beneath a granite headstone in Park Cemetery. (Still, no one came to the funeral.) Ortiz claims she was making up for Johnson's sad fate, but her motives were called into question when she submitted an itemized bill to a probate court, seeking $64,000 from Johnson's $141,000 estate. (Ortiz knew he had money; Johnson had $795 in cash on him when she picked up the body.) The judge only gave her the usual $1,800 for claiming an unclaimed body, but the Connecticut Post reports Ortiz is now trying again with a bill for $34,000.

By Nick Keppler

December 4, 2012