27276: Hermantin(News)THE SINKING OF THE ESPERANCIA | TRAGEDY AT SEA (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

Leonie Hermantin

Miami Herald

Posted on Sun, Jan. 15, 2006


THE SINKING OF THE ESPERANCIA | TRAGEDY AT SEA
Twenty-four years after a group of Haitians washed ashore on South Florida 
beaches, 12 remain unidentified and unclaimed.

BY LUISA YANEZ
lyanez@MiamiHerald.com

The sea smashed the wooden freighter to bits, pulled the Haitians under water 
and then, day by day, spat their bodies back along condo-studded beaches from 
Broward to Palm Beach counties. Authorities recovered the bodies of 21 men and 
women, victims of the nighttime sinking of the 49-foot Esperancia on March 
1982.

Nine were mourned by loved ones.

But 12 others were lost in time, never claimed, never identified.

Today, they remain entries in the FLorida UnIdentified Decedents DataBase, a 
website created in 2002 and maintained by the state's 24 medical examiner 
districts and used by law enforcement officials in Florida and nationwide to 
match names with unclaimed bodies.

The bodies had spread out over 15 miles of beach over several days. At the time 
of the tragedy, the Broward Medical Examiner's Office, which took custody of 
all victims, said it would do everything possible to identify those who died on 
the freighter, a freighter whose name meant hope in Creole.

Edwina Johnson, now chief investigator, said she still remembers grief-stricken 
Haitians filing into her office, clutching photos of loved ones in their hands.

''We haven't handled so many deaths at once again,'' said the 21-year office 
veteran.

The medical examiner had to set up a refrigerated trailer in the rear of its 
building.

In the end, investigators had little information on the nameless dozen 
unclaimed.

Most victims had washed ashore nude, caked in sand. They had no fingerprints on 
file in the United States. The nine men and the three women appeared to be 
between the ages of 21 and 35; three of the males may have been as young as 11.

All the victims had meager personal effects, mainly the clothes not torn off by 
the pounding surf. Among the clues: One Haitian woman wore two yellow-metal 
band rings and two of the men carried keys in their pocket. Most washed ashore 
on Highland Beach and farther south.

What little information investigators finally culled from the victims is 
featured on the website.

Michael Britt, a supervisor of investigations for the Collier County Medical 
Examiner's Office, who maintains the website, holds little hope the Haitians 
will ever be identified.

''From my past experience, when you're dealing with individuals who do not have 
any family in this country, and the people searching for them live in a region 
like Haiti where they would not know how to navigate our legal system, it is 
very difficult to put a name to them,'' he said.

Funerals were donated for all the unidentified Haitians, who were buried at Our 
Lady Queen of Heaven Cemetery in North Lauderdale, said Teresa Martinez, a 
spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Miami.

A bronze marker notes how they died and their anonymity. It reads, in part, in 
English and Creole: ``In loving memory of those who lost their lives in search 
of freedom . . . and whose names are known to God alone.''

''These Haitians were a modern day incarnation of Lazarus dying at the doorstep 
of the richest nation in the world,'' said Father Thomas Wenski, an advocate of 
Dade's Haitian community who is now Bishop of the Diocese of Orlando.

Wenski recalled the tragedy of the Esperancia came only five months after 
another Haitian freighter, the Nativite, sank in the waters off Hillsboro Beach 
in Broward; the bodies of 33 washed ashore.

A day after the Esperancia sank, Dave McDaniel, 67, a retired school principal 
from Ohio, was walking on a Boca Raton beach with his son, Scott, then 11. They 
saw a line of bodies in the surf.

''We knew right away who they were,'' he said.






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