NEW ORLEANS - Water is unforgiving to the dead and by the time the crews arrived, the men were missing their eyes.
Carefully, the workers slipped them into black, zippered bags, placed them inside a van and drove them 70 miles to an emergency morgue which had been set up inside a refrigerated tent. Over the months that followed, investigators cut them, prodded them, photographed them, X-rayed them and removed pieces of their DNA, all in an attempt to coax their bodies into spitting out names.
In neat rows beside them are the coffins of 27 other anonymous souls, their bodies stuck in a forensic purgatory unknown, unclaimed and unable to be buried more than 15 months after Hurricane Katrina made landfall.
