Hello, I am a painter and would like to do a series on the inmates who work on the island. I was wandering if you would be willing to connect with me. I am especially interested in the way inmates are affected by their experiences on the potter's field. Please help me out if you can, as it is impossible now to visit the island.

thanks
Nick

I spent 10 months in rikers back in 02, I got to work on the hart island detail with Spider, Casarra and few other CO's. For what I was told that the CO's were suppose to be doing the digging and the burying of bodies but everytime the funeral company will come by to pick a body they will bring cartons of cigarettes to sort of bribe the inmates for the job we were doing. I was one of the lucky one that was part of the digging crew, the rest of the inmates were burying bodies in the other side, it was like 5 of us on the digging crew, CO will use the back hole to break the dirt, once we felt the smell of dead people will know that we were on the right spot. Back in 02 we dogged a 18 year old body, her name was Brazil Diaz, she got murder 18 years prior (one of the oldest bodies that was dogged out of hart island) her family thought that they had the body for all this years until I guess they found out that Brazil Diaz was a hart island, I can not tell you how many pic were taking by the CO's of us holding skulls and cross bones as a "kodak moment" it was sacrileges what was done there, how many mistakes were done on the papers were people were buried. It was for sure that was the best job to have if you was incarcerated, it paid $14 a week and you get to go out of rikers for a nice drive to long island every morning at 6am also if you were on the digging crew you will get the "new Yorkers" (Newport, marlboro and camel cigarrets from the funeral homes) Everytime we'll get back to rikers other inmates will scream..."there's the hart island crew, they smell like dead people" and yes we did, if you were there you'll know how dead people smells. I'm a lot tuffer than a lot of the other guys but still put an impresion in my life that time I spent at hart island. There's a lot more stories that I like to forget, I just hope that thing are done a lot different than what it was some years ago, this people deserve to have a resting peaceful place to be, I doubt that has change cause it doesn't even look like a cementery looks more like what you see on TV about the war and then show the massive graves....that's what it looked back in 02, just big holes with dead people stack up on rows of 3 put on this massive graves.