Investigating a Grim Upper West Side Ritual of Spring

By Daniel Katzive

If you spend a lot of time on the shores of the Hudson River, particularly in the spring, you may know the drill. A 911 call goes out reporting a person is in the river. Local FDNY companies and the rescue truck rush to the scene, along with precinct patrol officers. A small fire boat zips up the river from the base in Chelsea.

Sometimes, the first responders get there in time to make a rescue, pulling a chilled and soaking victim from the water. Other times, the person in the water turns out to be a swimmer – they don’t actually want to be rescued. And sometimes the object in the water is not a person at all. But, all too often, rescuers arrive to find a human being well-past the point of resuscitation – a “floater” in the casually callous parlance of emergency services.

In those cases, responding fire fighters exit the scene and officers from the NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit or Harbor Patrol bring the deceased ashore and hand them over to investigators. After an initial examination, the body is brought back to the medical examiner’s office for an autopsy and further study.

Local publications like West Side Rag might report on the grim discovery, and sometimes the story is picked up by the major tabloids or local TV news. But some cases might go unreported altogether, particularly those discovered in out-of-the way spots or late at night.

A 2002 study by a group of pathologists working for New York City medical examiner’s office and published in Journal of Forensic Sciences supports an assertion often made by police officers and mariners: warming temperatures in spring and early summer tend to bring bodies to the surface. According to the report, most decedents were recovered in the spring as water temperature increases.

The NYPD’s public information team routinely confirms the basic details of these incidents to reporters who inquire, providing the gender and estimated age of the victim. These statements generally conclude by indicating “the deceased was turned over to the Medical Examiner, who will determine the cause of death.” Except in very unusual or high profile cases, such as the sad case of the Farea sisters in 2018, the story usually then goes cold with no further reports, leaving readers to perhaps wonder from time to time who the victim was and how they came to be dead on our beautiful stretch of shoreline.

The city does not track statistics on deceased people found in the river and there is no readily available record of these cases. To provide some context, West Side Rag reached out to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) of New York City for updates on the outcome of six cases we reported on at the time of discovery over the past several years. For each case, the OCME provided the cause (i.e., drowning) and manner of death (i.e., suicide, accident, etc.) and indicated whether the victim was identified. None of the deaths about which we inquired were deemed to be homicides.

Of the six cases, the two most recent remain unresolved. The NYPD confirmed that the investigation remains ongoing into a case from September 2024, in which a man was found in the Boat Basin marina with a bag of rocks tied around his waist. The Medical Examiner’s office told WSR the cause and manner of death in an earlier case from June 2024 is also “pending further study.” Of the remaining four cases, two were ruled suicides and two were of undetermined cause. Three of the four were ruled drownings and one suicide was found to be “blunt force trauma of torso,” which could relate to a jump from the George Washington Bridge. In one of the cases, from July 5, 2023, the decedent remains unidentified.

Our sample of cases is much too small to draw statistical conclusions. But the 2002 study mentioned earlier, which drew on internal medical examiner  records, found results somewhat similar to what we have observed more recently on the Upper West Side.

The study covered all bodies recovered in New York City’s 500-miles-plus waterways, not just the Hudson River, over the three years from 1997 to 2000. Of 123 deaths recovered from the water during that period, 52 were classified as suicides, 50 were undetermined,16 were found to be accidents, and only five were homicides.

The report notes that a positive identification of the victim is generally required to make a suicide determination. The identity of the victim was determined in 72% of the cases. Ethanol or illicit drugs were found in 53% of the accident cases, 41% of the suicide group, and 33% among deaths with undetermined causes.

Barbara Butcher, a death investigator who worked with New York City’s OCME for 22 years and is the author of the book What the Dead Know, explained in an interview with WSR that one of the challenges of investigating cases like this is the limited context available, in contrast to a more typical situation where a person is found where they died. “So identity is number one that gives us more context on who this person is and what their life is,” says Butcher.

If there is no ID or note on the body, investigators will try to use fingerprints to make an identification, according to Butcher. Dental records and DNA can also be used but, she explains, “we have to first have an idea who that person is,” in order to have a point of comparison. 

Difficulty in identifying the deceased is one reason why it can take a long time for the Medical Examiner’s office to make a determination on manner of death, even though autopsies are generally performed within 24 hours of discovery. “We are reluctant to just call it undetermined and let it go,” says Butcher. “It’s a dirty business and it’s a sad business, but we do our best to identify people and at least get them back to their families for proper burial.”

The water is cold now as we move into February, measured at 37.6 degrees Fahrenheit off Manhattan by the U.S. Geological Survey on January 30. But spring will be here soon, and among the good tidings that the warmer temperatures bring, we can also expect reminders on our shoreline of the sad path that some lives take in our city.

If you or someone you know is considering suicide, there are resources to help. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available 24 hours a day by calling 988. Its website offers services including a live chat.

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