WORCESTER – Just after noon on this overcast Thursday, aging mortician Peter A. Stefan sat in his second-floor office, small wreaths of smoke curling lazily from his well-worn pipe, as a longtime trusted employee, Lonewolf Smith, puffed a cigarette at a desk several feet away.

The air smelled of Captain Black, the particular brand of tobacco Mr. Stefan favored this day. It’s a very different smell than the one city officials say recently permeated Graham Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Parlors: the “horrific” stench of nine unclaimed bodies decomposing in the basement.

“We had no idea he picked up (all) these bodies,” Karyn E. Clark, the city’s public health director, said later that afternoon on a conference call at City Hall, laying out a sequence of events that ultimately led her to ask state licensing officials to investigate.

The state Division of Professional Licensure confirmed Friday it is "working in cooperation with the city of Worcester to investigate this matter and ensure that the funeral home and the funeral director are complying with all applicable rules, regulations and statutes."

It noted that no issues were identified at the parlor during a March inspection.

Ms. Clark and other city officials say Mr. Stefan this summer improperly stockpiled decomposing bodies that no one had claimed in a room that was not suited for them, causing the bodies to decompose to a gelatinous state that gave off horrendous odors and attracted flies.

State regulations require a funeral home that picks up a body to, after 50 hours’ custody, keep it at a maximum of 39 degrees or else be embalmed, but neither of those things were done with the offending bodies, officials noted.

While the bodies have since been sent to the crematorium, and a public health nuisance order issued against Graham Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Parlors has been abated, state licensing officials are still investigating what happened, a process that can result in disciplinary action.

Sitting beneath the intense light of an adjustable LED lamp Thursday, a wisp of smoke rising from a nearby ashtray, Mr. Stefan did not appear overly concerned. In fact, he’s asked the city to consider an alternative – allowing him to store bodies in a shipping container in his parking lot.

“We’re insulating it now,” Mr. Stefan said before showing a reporter inside the 9-foot-tall, 20-foot-long stainless steel shipping container where he hopes to store the bodies that no one else wants.

The longtime mortician – known nationally for burying Boston marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and locally for burying the poor – says he believes it morally imperative that society dispose of the dead, which is why he says he takes bodies that others won’t.

But local health officials say they were shocked at the state of the bodies they found on Sept. 3, as well as the room they were in, which they said, other than featuring largely decomposed bodies, was generally unclean.

The temperature inside the room was measured at 65 degrees, they said, and fluids from the bodies had leaked on the floor, where material had been placed to try to soak them up.

Amanda M. Wilson, director of the city’s Division of Housing and Health Inspections, said she took video of flies coming in and out of vents in the back of the funeral home, where an overwhelming stench wafted into the air.

Neighbors had complained about the smell, she said, and after viewing the property, she issued a public health nuisance order.

The officials said that while they appreciate all Mr. Stefan has done for the poor and local hospitals – accepting bodies many others would not – they did not believe he appreciated the gravity of the situation, continuing to accept bodies even after being ordered not to.

Mr. Stefan describes the situation a different way, saying that while he doesn’t wish to insult the city, he believes the problem sprang from delayed implementation of a state law that allows boards of health to order unclaimed bodies cremated after 30 days.

Mr. Stefan – who says he loses money burying such "abandoned" bodies – said he’d hoped to have cremation permits in hand soon after the Board of Health adopted the law unanimously on May 6.

He says the city Law Department, for reasons he does not know, took nearly four months to issue its final blessing, a delay he says led to the advanced decomposition and attending smells.

It was not clear Friday what specifically led to the delay. Ms. Clark said the Law Department has many priorities it has to get to, and noted she specifically told Mr. Stefan at the May meeting to hold off until the Law Department reviewed the matter.

Board of Health officials had previously been concerned about the fact that many religions disfavor cremation, with one noting that if family members later found out a loved one had been cremated, it could be “salt in the wound.”

City officials pointed out there is nothing that would have prevented Mr. Stefan from burying the bodies. If he accepted them, they noted, he had a legal responsibility to dispose of them properly.

They added that while Mr. Stefan called them frequently to ask about the final approval – and did self-report odor issues in August - he did not make it clear how many bodies he was storing or their conditions, and understated the number of bodies in the basement when inspectors arrived Sept. 3.

Mr. Stefan said he believed city officials were asking about the number of abandoned bodies – there were nine – and added that nine other bodies that were in the basement were stored in the normal course of business and not relevant to the discussion.

He conceded that the law requires bodies to be refrigerated or embalmed, saying he believes the law used to be different. He argued that when he picked up the abandoned bodies, they were beyond a state where they could be embalmed.

“You can’t embalm a body that’s been dead for eight months,” he said.

Many of the bodies that sat decomposing in his basement this summer came from UMass Memorial Medical Center, which he says routinely asks him to take bodies out of concern for public health that arise with corpses they have stored for many months.

He wondered aloud whether it was worse for public health for the bodies to be decomposing in his unrefrigerated basement, or to be decomposing in the refrigerated morgue at UMass, where, he reasoned, more was at stake by virtue of its status as a hospital.

In an email Friday, Ms. Clark wrote, "A temperature controlled environment along with policies and procedures and trained personnel to properly deal with decomposing bodies and fluids in a hospital morgue is the appropriate venue for this versus an unrefrigerated 65-degree basement with (a) 400 gal oil leak."

As state officials investigate what happened, Mr. Stefan says any action against him might end up creating a worse public hazard.

“The question is – if I don’t take these, who does?” Mr. Stefan asked.

The law

The Board of Health, after some concerns, voted to begin taking advantage of the law on May 6, 10 month after the Legislature, on the urging of Mr. Stefan, passed it.

At that meeting, Ms. Clark told Mr. Stefan and UMass Memorial that the city wanted to create its own form for cremation of unclaimed bodies, at which time the process could begin.

The form was delivered to Mr. Stefan Aug. 27 – nearly four months later, an interval the city says was caused by doing its due diligence.

Mr. Stefan, however, noted that the law itself states, “there shall be no liability for a board of health or an employee, agent, or licensee thereof that authorizes the disposal of unclaimed remains in accordance with this section.”

Asked whether there were specific legal hangups that were considered, the city noted its top lawyer was not in the office Friday, and said the department, as it does in all cases where new legislation is passed, had to do its due diligence to implement a new process.

A timeline produced by the city shows that Mr. Stefan picked up multiple bodies from UMass after May 6, and called the city repeatedly asking when the cremation forms would be available.

Although he complained that he had bodies ready to be cremated, and eventually self-reported odors and bugs, Ms. Clark said nothing prepared the city for what it found when it inspected the home initially in late August and with a state investigator on Sept. 3.

She said that Mr. Stefan told them there were nine bodies in the basement, but inspectors found at least 18.

Both city and state inspectors told Mr. Stefan to stop accepting bodies, she said, yet they learned later that Mr. Stefan picked up two more abandoned bodies from UMass just days later.

Mr. Stefan said in an interview Thursday that the two bodies were not abandoned, but collected in the normal course of business - an assertion contradicted by emails the city provided Friday.

The emails show that UMass staff told the city both bodies had been abandoned, and vowed to not release any more to him.

Informed of the emails, and of the names of the people he picked up, Mr. Stefan said he had misunderstood the day before which bodies a reporter was asking about.

He said he did pick the two bodies up, but only transported them to the crematorium, not to his funeral home.

In a statement issued in response to a request for comment, UMass wrote that Mr. Stefan "has been a constant figure in trying to help address the issue of unclaimed bodies in the region.

"During these encounters the expectation has always been that the decedent’s remains would be handled properly and in a timely manner in accordance with established local ordinances and guidelines.”

Ms. Clark noted it appeared that Mr. Stefan ran afoul of the law that requires funeral homes to inter, refrigerate or embalm bodies within 50 hours, and said it was unfortunate that the bodies in his care had decomposed so badly.

Mr. Stefan repeated that had the city provided the forms earlier, the bodies would have been cremated and the issue moot.

Mr. Stefan said he believes cities and towns across the state ought to be adopting the new regulations en masse, adding that he thinks state officials have not done enough to spread awareness about the new law.

“This has to go statewide,” he said, so that more funeral homes might consider taking abandoned bodies.

As it is, Mr. Stefan says, he’s one of the only directors who will pick up bodies left in nursing homes, rooming houses or other places where the ability of the mortician to be paid is in doubt.

Financial disincentive

The small number of funeral directors willing to take abandoned bodies reflects, Mr. Stefan says, the poor rate of return the state gives those who bury the poor.

The $1,100 the state gives funeral homes hasn’t been raised in more than three decades, he said, and since burials cost more than cremations, many homes aren’t interested.

Adding to the problem, he said, is that the state medical examiner’s office recently doubled a fee it charges to view a body before cremation from $100 to $200.

“It’s outrageous,” Mr. Stefan said of the hike, noting that, in some cases, the medical examiner has already performed an autopsy on the deceased, making the second charge, he said, double-dipping.

The fee hike is one of many aspects of the funeral oversight process in the state that Mr. Stefan pans as “unfair, unpractical and unworkable.”

He believes that until the regulations are changed to make it more financially feasible for funeral directors to take on abandoned bodies, he will continue to be one of the only ones in the state to do so.

“We’ll let anybody use it,” Mr. Stefan said, pipe in hand, as he walked inside the shipping container he hopes will be approved to store bodies.

Ms. Wilson said Thursday that she is not sure whether storing bodies inside such a container would be legal. She said she has inquired about the legality with the state, and has informed Mr. Stefan that “some kind” of permit would be needed before that could happen.

His name is one of only about a half dozen state officials can call when they need help disposing of a body, which could place officials considering sanctions in an awkward position.

“You have done God’s work,” Ms. Clark told Mr. Stefan at the May 6 Board of Health meeting, where officials acknowledged the many services Mr. Stefan has performed for the poor.

In addition to accepting welfare cases, Mr. Stefan collects donations for the poor at his funeral home, and tries to help people afford things like prescription drugs.

He also is known for creating spectacles in and around City Hall for various causes, such as dissuading people from using heroin by placing a giant needle in front of a casket.

“I couldn’t have done it without (Graham Putnam),” Mary Gleason of Worcester said of burying a son who was born premature at one such event, noting that Mr. Stefan offered her a price she could afford.