The Story Behind The Story

Okay, okay, okay. So many of you have wanted to know (to quote Paul Harvey) "the rest of the story" from my Haiti trip. So here goes.
If you remember, we (my producer, Myra and my photographer, Larry) spent a week in Port au Prince back in 1998 as part of an investigation for KCBS-TV in L.A. We were focusing on insurance fraud-- specifically, people who take out life insurance policies then go to a third world country and fake their deaths. Their relatives then collect on the policies. Haiti has a huge black market/fake funeral industry to service this scam. We flew there to - in part - show how easy it is for one to "die" in Haiti.
We first flew to Miami where we stayed at the Airport Ritz Carlton. In the room next to me was Haiti's president, Aristide. That has nothing to do with the story-- but I found it pretty interesting. This was of course, before he was run out of the country and back in the day when he was still in good graces with his people. There were security guards outside his room in the hallway the entire time I was there.
Anyway, I digress. We arrived in Haiti on a Sunday. By Monday mid-morning, we had paid off a corrupt government official to forge all the official documents to show that I had perished in a car accident. If my memory serves me, I believe I died on April 14, 1998. (The original death certificate is framed and here in my office-- a fun little memento, eh?). And it only cost me (or CBS) $75.
By Monday afternoon, our native guide, Alix had led us to a crooked funeral home director who agreed (all captured by hidden camera) to stage a full-on funeral for me, fill a casket with rocks and place my casket in the city cemetery. It would only cost us fifteen hundred American dollars. What a deal!!!
By the way, he offered to get us a real body to put in the casket for only ten dollars more. We politely declined and opted for the rocks for ethical reasons. Evidently, at the time (can you imagine what it is like now?) there was a huge glut of unclaimed bodies at the local morgue. Most Haitiens could not afford the few dollars to claim their loved ones bodies. The video we took at the morgue of bodies stacked everywhere was ghastly and too disturbing to use in our story.
We paid the funeral director $750 down and were told to pay him the remaining balance on Friday. He said the funeral would be on Wednesday and then he would need a few days to "edit" the video tape of the entire event. He would then give us that video as proof for the insurance companies that I had died. I still have it and the story we filed if you ever have a night where there's nothing on TV.
I know I'm jumping to the end-- but the video tape, by the way was hilarious. It was set to classical music and was full of constant pans, zooms and movements that made you feel like you were on a roller coaster. In short, can we say amateur? It starts out with a "wake" of sorts where 350 of my closest "friends" came to mourn my passing. The funeral director had paid these locals one dollar each to dress up in their Sunday finest and come and pretend to be devastated by my loss.
So the first part of my "funeral" has all these people sitting and sniffling and crying in a reception type hall. My casket (with rocks inside and flowers on top) sits at the front of the room. Some of the folks are so overcome with their sadness at my untimely demise that they fall to the floor and roll around in anguish. I guess that part is our fault. My producer (on hidden camera) tells the funeral director through our interpreter that she wants "lots of emotion" from the mourners.
After about an hour of this, the entire group heads down the street to the big Catholic Cathedral where an older, white Priest drones on and on in Creole. Who knows whether he was in on the scam and knew there were rocks in the coffin. But I got the full treatment-- the smoking ashes or incense or whatever is done. It made for pretty cool video, I tell ya!
From there, the funeral procession paraded through the streets of Port au Prince-- my coffin in an old hearse, a small raggedy band of boys and men playing Amazing Grace on a handful of instruments and a few hundred Haitiens walking and crying and following along.
They passed me several times. Or perhaps I should say- I passed me several times. It was surreal, to say the least.
Finally, we ended up in the Port au Prince City Cemetery where my coffin was shoved into a big concrete encasement. I'm certain the grave robbers who undoubtedly descended upon my coffin that evening were scratching their heads when they found the rocks!
Now back to the "story behind the news story". On Friday, we headed through the teeming city streets to the funeral home to pay the rest of the money to the funeral director and to get our "proof"-- the video tape.
As we approached the funeral home, we could tell and feel something going on. There were hundreds of people congregating around the place. Our driver/interpreter, Alix rolled down his window and asked a man what was happening.
I'll never forget the man's answer: "We are waiting for the dead to come back to life".
We drove on and parked a few blocks away to get the hidden cameras all hooked up and running.
I, being the fair hair and pasty white skin girl-- stayed in the car with my photographer (who also stood out). My producer disappeared with Alix into the crowd. Here's what they told us when they got back.
They made their way through the mass of people, went inside and found the funeral director. After they had paid him and got my tape-- they asked him what in the world was going on.
Before I tell you his answer, you have to remember that 98 percent of the population in Haiti practices Voodoo.
The funeral director told them that a very poor family from out in the country had gone to the local Hoogan (not sure of the spelling but pronounced who-gone) who would be the equivalent of a witch doctor in the world of Voodoo and asked him to use his magic and sacrifice their young son to bring them luck in the lottery.
The deal was struck and the Hoogan was to bring their son back to life after the lottery numbers were drawn.
Well, you can probably guess-- but the Hoogan was unable to revive the child.
And since he failed-- he was considered to have bad magic. The crowd outside the funeral home had just killed him-- by pulling at him. The funeral director said they had pulled his arms off of him and were now waiting for the dead to come back to life!! Not the Hoogan mind you-- the young boy. The people thought that by killing the bad witch doctor, that the spell would be broken and the boy would be somehow saved.
We didn't stick around to see if he revived. We got out of there as fast as we could-- nervously laughing because we were all so freaked out. I never found out how the parents did with those lottery numbers. Or if the boy came back to life.