Lionell Dotson’s sisters were killed in MOVE bombing. Now, the city has denied his simple request to retrieve their remains | Opinion

Lionell Dotson Sr. is familiar with grief. He has lost so much. When he was just 8 years old, the Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on a residential home on Osage Avenue, murdering 11 people, including his two sisters.

He’s had to carry that loss with him. Even decades later, Dotson, 45, has been unable to heal from what happened on May 13, 1985. But he’s tried his best to move forward from the depraved bombing that targeted members of MOVE, a West Philadelphia-based Black liberation and activist group.

So when he learned last April that the remains of his older sister, Katricia Dotson, were being held by the Penn Museum, a deep wound was torn open.

A few weeks later, the city announced that additional remains of MOVE victims had been discovered in the Medical Examiner’s Office. Although then-Health Commissioner Thomas Farley, who resigned after this incident, had ordered the remains to be destroyed in 2017, an employee had disobeyed him, leaving the MOVE victims’ remains, including Katricia and Zanetta, on a shelf in the office.

» READ MORE: Penn Museum owes reparations for previously holding remains of a MOVE bombing victim | Opinion

With each new revelation, each new discovery of how his family had been, again, disrespected, Dotson’s grief felt new and raw all over again. “It’s very, very painful,” he said.

In the week that followed, the Mayor’s Office retained Dechert LLP and Keir Bradford-Grey, a partner at the law firm Montgomery McCracken LLP, to investigate the chain of custody of the remains held at the Medical Examiner’s Office.

It is unlikely that the city will release the remains of Dotson’s sisters until after the investigation is complete and the official findings have been released — but when it does, Dotson wants to be there.

He’s asked the city to cover his expenses to come to Philadelphia — he lives in Fayetteville, N.C. — so that he can carefully observe and be present for the city turning over the bone fragments, bodily tissue, and other specimens into the care of a funeral home where they will be cremated. “I want to physically be there and sign the paperwork over, releasing my sisters’ remains into the care of the funeral home,” he told me.

According to Kevin Lessard, director of communications for Mayor Jim Kenney, the city offered to pay the funeral home fees and then the funeral home would handle getting the cremated remains to Dotson. When I asked about the travel expenses, Lessard told me via email: “It is correct that Mr. Dotson made a broader request that was declined.”

Dotson is understandably offended that, after decades of mishandling, the city would not facilitate his request to ensure that his family members’ remains are finally treated with respect . Yet Lessard also told me that “the issues arising with respect to the MOVE remains are unprecedented and not contemplated in the policies of the [medical examiner’s] office.”

If that’s the case, why won’t the city pay a relatively small sum for Dotson to ensure that his sisters are taken care of?

“Paying for travel and lodging so Lionell Dotson can ensure his sisters’ remains can be respectfully laid to rest is the least the city can do.”

Dotson alleges that this is just another instance of systemic racism penalizing his family.

“Had this been a white family, they’d be treated with dignity,” he said. Now, Dotson wants a public apology from Mayor Kenney for further disrespecting his family and for the city to enact policies to ensure that this never happens again.

It’s easy to understand why Dotson would have a hard time trusting Philadelphia officials. After all, he was just a small child when the MOVE bombing happened, and in the years that followed, he’s been lied to repeatedly about the whereabouts of his family’s remains. Katricia and Zanetta were buried on Dec. 14, 1985, after their remains were claimed by Isaac Dotson, their uncle. The family did not know that parts of them were withheld by the Medical Examiner’s Office and that then-Assistant Medical Examiner Robert Segal had given some of Katricia’s remains to Alan Mann, a University of Pennsylvania anthropology professor who was hired by the city to examine them after the bombing.

For Dotson, each new revelation has been excruciatingly painful. “The city of Philadelphia is always gon’ be a root cause of why my sisters are no longer here,” Dotson said. “They’re my loved ones, who I wish I could’ve gotten to know dearly.”

Dotson’s pain has been compounded by the death of his mother, Consuewella Dotson, who passed away in June, just weeks after the city revealed her children’s remains had been retained by the Medical Examiner’s Office.

» READ MORE: City of Philadelphia should thoroughly investigate the MOVE remains’ broken chain of custody | Opinion

It is reprehensible that the city, responsible for enacting deadly violence on Katricia, Zanetta, and nine others, has denied Dotson the act of traveling to gather his precious sisters, to ensure that they are — finally — laid to rest with the respect they deserve.

That his sisters’ body parts were kept as anatomical “trophies” by academics and left in a desolate refrigerated area in the Medical Examiner’s Office, while their families believed that they were interred, is just one more indignity that Dotson and his family have been forced to endure.

Paying for travel and lodging so that Lionell Dotson can ensure his sisters’ remains can be respectfully laid to rest is the least the city can do. After decades of harm, this arguably inexpensive step would be one small effort to show that Philadelphia is committed to a process of reconciliation from an unfathomable hurt, from a wound that can never really heal.

Abdul-Aliy Muhammad, whose previous reporting revealed the Penn Museum’s holding of MOVE remains, is an organizer and writer born and raised in West Philadelphia. @MxAbdulAliy