An ousted OCME worker reflects on the catastrophic fallout in his life and career despite beating a petit larceny rap that had him standing accused of looting a lux accessory from a swank Midtown apartment.

BY: M.L. Nestel 

Nearly three years after a city medical examiner driver faced a year in the clink for allegedly lifting a Louis Vuitton bag from a dead man’s Midtown posh sliver apartment — the acquitted man was formally sidelined by a city administrative panel, The Blotter has learned. 

Trevor Rheams, now 53, beat a criminal petit larceny rap stemming from accusations dating back to Aug. 9, 2022. 

After that night, Rheams was accused of swiping an $800 satchel from a corpse’s apartment in a swank building blocks away from the United Nations on First Avenue and East 39th Street in Manhattan’s ritzy Murray Hill nabe. 

30-DAY SUSPENSION WITHOUT PAY TO LET-GO

“I recommend a 30-day suspension without pay,” New York City’s Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings Office of Trials and Administrative (OATH) bag gr wrote in his final report published on April 11, 2025. “[Rheams] is warned that continued failure to follow agency protocols could lead to more severe penalties, including termination of his employment.” 

The judge based the punishment on the fact that Rheams, who was proven to be not guilty of the snatch, still broke OCME rules by entering a dead man’s home behind closed doors while a police officer stayed put in the hallway. 

Also, the judge blamed Rheams for engaging in conduct that brought his city agency “into disrepute” when some of the details of the LV bag incident splashed in local media. 

Rheams, who had been an Office of Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) staffer mainly as a motor vehicle operator since 2007 (and earning a nose under $57,000 salary records show), was formally charged for the Oct. 26 bag grab. 

Then on Feb. 2, 2023, the city servant was exonerated of all charges. 

Despite being in the clear, the criminal conclusion still spawned a tribunal hearing to determine if Rheams violated policies despite being absolved of the theft of the bourgeois satchel. 

The proceeding isn’t criminal but intended to determine if and what internal discipline should be meted out to employees facing accusations of wrongdoing.

Rheams waited an exhausting three years to have his day in the disciplinary court.

In an exclusive interview with The Blotter, Rheams recounts how he was put through the legal meat grinder without being granted much of a fair shake.

‘DISCRIMINATED AGAINST IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE’

“I was never able to get a fair shot, a fair shake,” he maintained. “And it was, you know, they discriminated against me a lot. I was definitely discriminated against in more ways than one.”

He also recalls how his partner that fateful night helped him collect the corpse — was spared any real consequence due to various internal politics and previous finger-pointing.

“The person that I was working with — they had a relative who was friendly with Frank DePaolo [fmr. OCME Deputy Commissioner]. He was one top people there."

He continued: “This [coworker] that was in charge of the situation with me. He, you know, he told him to well, [colleague] was the one that went after me, right for whatever reason. But like I said, the guy that I was working with, he has family who worked in 421 [OCME HQ… 421 E 26th St, New York, NY 10016], their main building in Manhattan, okay, friendly with the upper echelon of people up there. So I guess, being that's the case, they put it all on me without even having a conversation.”

In the end, Administrative Judge Turilli determined that indeed on the day in question inside the dead man’s apartment Rheams “violated” the OCME’s removal policy when he “removed a decedent from a home scene of death,” the report reads.

Specifically, Rheams and his mortuary colleague were found to have breached the protocols by removing the body from his domicile “unaccompanied by law enforcement.” 

A month-long trial was held days after Rheams’ acquittal and ended on March 12. 

It saw testimony from over a half-dozen witnesses. 

An OCME spokeswoman cited Rheams’ suspension as “an open employee disciplinary matter” and emphasized that they were “unable to provide additional comment at this time.”

When reached by phone, Rheams’ OCME partner who was documented as extracting the corpse from the apartment that night, refused to comment. 

The details of that night paint a picture of a possible flat-footed effort in the corpse pickup to the OCME’s HQ blocks away — but don’t expose Rheams as some luxury accessory raider.

At around 8:30 p.m., the papers say, Rheams reportedly was recorded on CCTV entering the high-rise. (A recent listing of a one-bedroom apartment with East River views fetches $5,500.)

He and his forensic mortuary technician colleague (who wasn’t charged and whom Rheams recalled had only worked with once before) entered the deceased man’s abode on the eighth floor wheeling a gurney. 

A cop was reportedly parked in a folding chair posted outside of the deceased man’ apartment and chatting on a cell phone, according to the report. 

Both the morgue workers appear to enter the home to recover and bag the body. 

The evidence detailed in the report suggests Rheams and his colleague were working inside the apartment for “over 10 minutes” while the officer “remained in the hallway outside of the closed apartment door.”

It was suspected by authorities relying on the police officer’s bodycam footage that there was a Louis Vuitton bag resting in the kitchen. 

At one point, the papers say, the cop arises and opens the apartment door and stands by the doorway. 

Both Rheams and his colleague are said to have sealed the dead man’s remains and then after strapping him in — they “push the gurney” through the hallway toward the elevator bay. 

The following day another OCME worker tidying the same van used by Rheams the previous night — discovered inside the passenger-side floorboard a pillowcase with a Louis Vuitton bag tucked inside it; replete with a tag bearing the dead man’s name.

‘I WAS JUST HELPING HIM WRAP THE BAG AND PULL THE STRAPS’

When questioned at the tribunal about his recollection from that evening — Rheams said he suffered from a bout of illness from getting “splashed [sic] in the eye” from a previous body pickup. 

I had a situation that happened, that occurred right before we got there from from the last case, which, you know, they wouldn't understand it,” Rheams explained in our interview. “I had got some [corpse] juices in my eye and on me. And I really, I wasn't feeling good after that. And I really wanted to go home.”

And yet Rheams soldiered on by doing some of the nominal things like strapping and securing. Notably, he recalls how his partner that night did the heavylifting on the particular extraction.

“I really didn't want to go on another job,” he admitted. “I wasn't feeling good at that time back in what was going on. I was up against the wall of the Manhattan hallway trying to get myself together. My partner did everything.

“He already had the body on top of the black bag. So it was just helping him wrap the bag and pull the straps. That's all I did. I was like incapacitated during that.”

As far as the police officer’s whereabouts, the report suggests Rheams indeed led the gurney into the apartment while the cop “remained outside with a key to the apartment.”

It condemns Rheams for not being “really sure what [the cop] was supposed to do,” according to the papers. 

The “dizzy” morgue driver’s account in the report depicts him gathering himself and leaning against a wall while the morgue partner “placed the body in a white pouch”. 

Then Rheams helped fit the body into a black bag and together they transported him out the door. 

Rheams, the document details, testified that he lacked any say-so over the police officer’s action to hang back outside the home and added that “a lot of times” the police detailed on these post mortem jobs don’t choose to trail the OCME workers into homes.

He declared in court “there’s nothing I could do about it.”

Turilli, the administrative judge, wasn’t swayed.

While Rheams may have been unaware or felt powerless to compel the police officer to be in their presence during the removal of the deceased he cited the OCME’s directive that “expressly applies to the conduct of motor vehicle operators at the scene of death and respondent can be held responsible for his own actions such as performing a removal in a close apartment while knowing that law enforcement remained outside.”

An expert with 20 years at OCME appeared at the tribunal to reinforce agency practice regarding the “removal” directive.

“Only with accompaniment of law enforcement will [Motor Vehicle Operators] enter the scene,” it reads, adding, “Law enforcement must remain with the [medical examiner transport team] throughout the entire removal.”

And if there are any hiccups with this, they must be reported to the administrator on-duty “immediately.” 

When informed of these directives, Rheams testified that he was “not familiar” with them even though he was given “lots of documentation” over the years. He also testified that he was “never provided any training on the role of law enforcement at the scene of a removal.”

The judge determined that Rheams neglected his options.

For one, as the drive, he could have contacted the OCME administrator on the clock that night or simply refused to lend a hand to his colleague “until the police officer entered the apartment,” the papers say. 

The tribunal recycled Rheams’ past run-ins during his 18-year tenure as a morgue driver.

The black marks on his record factored into the man’s 30-day disciplining. 

In 2009, Rheams was suspended for two days over a “discourtesy charge.”

Two years later he weathered a 60-day suspension penalty and paid a $1,000 fine after getting popped for an off-duty marijuana infraction. 

By 2014, Rheams was working on a thin one-year probation thread. 

It wasn’t until 2022, when Rheams appeared before another tribunal where he was suspended for 60 days — 50 of them were struck down for “engaging in intimidating behavior towards a hospital worker who struck his car” and another 10 for “using a fake placard to park in an agency-designated space.” 

Another seasoned retired mortuary technician considers Rheams “a good friend” and told the Blotter that if they committed the theft of the bag it would mean being terminated. 

“He wouldn’t be there if that was the case,” the person said. 

What’s more, the retired OCME worker added that it’s not that uncommon for cops to hang behind out of sight while morgue workers procure and safeguard the remains. 

“If you’re going into an apartment and it’s sometimes filled with garbage, it's only two people who can go in there,” the person, who requested anonymity, told The Blotter. “And I know many times if it’s a decomposed body in an apartment or being in a house — some cops can't take it. 

“They won't come in.”

TREVOR RHEAMS [TR]: Yeah, is this Trevor.

THE BLOTTER [TB]: Are you even still working for the city anymore? Because I don't see you on the payroll.

TR: Well, after my last court thing, they came back with a recommendation of a 90-day suspension. But what I didn't understand is that I went through all of that and everything, and at the end of it, the Medical Examiner had
the final say. So he (administrative judge) overturned it, so he put termination in June, you know. I’m appealing it, but, yeah, termination right now.

TB: Okay, so you are appealing the termination. How long does it take to get, the appeal, to wrap up?

TR: I really don't know. I'm just waiting for the Union lawyer to contact me, or whatever the case may be. But, yeah, I'm having problems. I'm trying to get a lawyer myself, but I just don't know which the right one to contact because I need to start with these civil cases: one against the police department that arrested me for no reason. And second one against them, the
people from the [ME] job. But yeah it's a lot, because they do things on, like emotion and things like that. They got a club. Meaning they either like you — or you don't like them. But I got blackballed for a long time because I didn't want to play along.

TB: How so?

TR: I didn't want to go out. I didn't want to go on date with this other colleague. I had a situation with her where she wasn't even my supervisor at the time, but at that time my supervisor, she worked with my supervisor for 11 years, and from what I understand, my supervisor had a thing for and, you know, she never gave him a chance or anything, but he was upset that it was some kind of rumor that she liked me, or whatever. So they transferred me. And that's when everything began.

TB: Again, I read through everything, and it seems like it seems like everything, because if you, if you read through everything, and you see the first, my first charge, like that,
they took me, my very first one that they gave me as punishment. They gave me a message. Maximum allowable punishment on my very first incident, which they made up in the first place. I mean, a lot of it was bogus, common things like attendance; things like, you know, like things like this, like, say, I'm working in Queens,
right?

TB: Yes.

TR: Now I have to do everything they call on me to do. Like  overtime in the middle of my shift in Manhattan. So they say go
to Manhattan after my shift is over. I punch out of Manhattan, right? So now they look at it.

TB: Oh, you punched in over in Queens, but you punched out in Manhattan.

TR: Little tricky shit that they was doing knowing they they had me down there, and they said that I missed maybe, like 20 something days, or whatever the case may be. So we went through the process, and when they showed me, you know, the dates and everything, and I went through them, all of the days that they accuse me of missing were my old days.

TB: Okay.

TR: Yeah, I've been going through a lot with these people for a long time and the people, and it seems like the people that leave and the people that come in — like they get a some kind of memo or something, you know? They continue with it. They keep picking it up. These people like, they're unbelievable. If you read the file let's say you hire me in June. By December, I probably got like five or six different promotions. You know what I'm saying?

TB: Wow.

TR: I was never able to get a fair shot, a fair shake. And it was, you know, they discriminated against me a lot. I was definitely discriminated against in more ways than one. The person that I was working with, they had a relative who was friendly with Frank DePaolo [fmr. OCME Deputy Commissioner]. He’s one of the top, he was the top person there. This [coworker] that was in charge of the situation with me. He was the one that went after me, right for whatever reason. But like I said, the guy that I was working with, he is he has family who worked in 421 [OCME HQ… 421 E 26th St, New York, NY 10016], their main building in Manhattan, okay, and friendly with the upper echelon of people up there. So I guess, being that's the case, they put it all on me without even having a conversation.

TB: Are we talking about the Louis Vuitton bag disappearance incident?

TR: The Louis bag, yeah. Yeah, the person that I was working with, like I said, his family members, you know, have a relationship with the upper level people at the job. So when it came through, it was just for some reason easier, I guess, for them, for whatever reason, to point the finger at me and without even talking to me, without even asking me about what happened or anything. So that's how that went. It was out of control.

TB: And your partner?

TR: What they did to him was they promoted him. Then he was on probation and they let him go, you understand?

TB: Yeah, okay.

TR: So they play these games. They play these dirty games.

TB: Their version of that night is a guy dies in a pretty swank building, right? It's in Murray Hill.

TR: It's a nice building, yeah.

TB: And I read through the way the cops and prosecutors initially said it went down — you're with your partner. You guys get there, there's a cop that's supposedly manning the door. You guys go in, and the cop supposedly, it's described in the document, she's supposed to be present in the vicinity of the apartment or the house, while OCME personnel are doing your work. But that didn’t happen. It appears the cop — she stays on the phone.

TR: Yeah, yeah, that's right.

TB: And so then after all the accusations of the Louis Vuitton bag being stolen — you've been found clear of this. So you’re  absolved at least based on the [internal] proceedings. But why do you think they say that you picked up the LV bag as you were exiting the flat, and then it somehow appeared, or it was found in one of the ME vans — specifically in the glove compartment?

TR: I don't know. I don't know where it was found, somewhere in the van, under the passenger seat, I think.

TB: How do you explain that?

TR: Well, I'm gonna tell you like this, I had a situation that happened, that occurred right, right before we got there from from the last case, which, you know, they wouldn't understand it. I had got some [corpse] juices in my eye and on me. And I really, I wasn't feeling good after that, and I really wanted to go home. I really didn't want to go on another job. I wasn't feeling good at that time back in what was going on. I was up against the wall of the Manhattan hallway trying to get myself together. My partner did everything. He already had the body on top of the black bag. So it was just helping him wrap the bag and pull the straps. That's all I did. I was like incapacitated during that.

TB: So, and the guy's name, that was your partner.

TR: Yes. He was pretty much like the main guy.

TB: So the whole time you were mostly there trying to gather yourself. And when you say you had juices in your eye, was it with another pickup that happened?

TR: Yeah, the one before that.

TB: I spoke with a retired, longtime forensic colleague of yours and he worked at the morgue for a long time. He said to me that, like a lot of times, you're going into places and it's hostile. Was that one of those situations? The one where you got the juices shot into your eyes?

TR: It was a really bad bad decom [decomposed body].

TB: Okay.

TR: It was a really, really bad apartment. It was in terrible shape. It was a lot.

TB: The juices are shooting out from the body and they hit you in the eyes?

TR: Yeah. It was wet everywhere. It was just like a lake. So trying to get the body in the extension core, I guess it came out or whatever, and all the juices came flying.

TB: Gosh.

TR: So I closed my eyes and ran to wherever I could go, and I was in the bathroom and just tried to throw water in my face and my eyes. I didn't even look what it was. Then, when that case was over, we went to the van, and I got the alcohol, and I just started throwing that shit in my eyes, and my eyes started burning, and I thought ‘I fucked myself up real bad!’ It was bad.

TB: Where was this pickup? Do you remember the borough?

TR: Up, Upper Harlem.

TB: But you can’t remember specifically.  You just can't remember. It's cool.

TR: It wasn't too far away from the other job [in Murray Hill] which makes sense.

TB: It makes sense you guys would take this to the next ticket, if you will, to go to the Midtown one then, because you were on the island, right?

TR: Yeah, that's what, that's what happened. And then that happened at the call, I didn't know. I didn't even know what went down until the next day because I did, because I didn't know what happened until the next day, when my supervisor called me and told me that they found the [LV] bag in the truck. I'm like, ‘What?’ I was like, ‘How?’ But then everything snowballed from there. I get arrested.

TB: Why would they want to get you? Who do you think placed it there? Who else besides you and your partner went into the deceased man’s apartment?

TR: As far as being in the house — nobody. It was just me and him. So I don't know. All I know is that when we came back, he had the key to the truck, so he had to finish doing what he needed to do. So he called me to give me the key. That was right before he went home. He had the keys and everything.

TB: On your partner, did you know him very long? Because he too was arrested. And you've worked the job for a long time. You've been, if I'm not mistaken, you've been there since what like did the early aughts–

TR: Since 2004. It was horrible. They [OCME] didn't want me. Didn't want me to be on the truck. That's something that, you know, I always been on. I never had a situation. I never been accused of nothing. I never, you know, never had a problem on the truck. So I was like, ‘Wow!’ So then they sent me to do this second job and all of a sudden there’s an investigation. No, they sent me to fail. So as soon as I get there, the guy says to me, ‘Well, nobody said nothing to me.’ Nobody said nothing. Period. So I don't know what's going on. I come to work, then they tell me, ‘Oh, you gotta go to this building over here. Report to this guy.’ So I'm like, ‘Whatever.’ Alright, so I go there. As soon as I get there, the first thing that he says to me is: ‘I know why you are here.’ I'm like, ‘Wow!’ I don't even know why. So I'm already feeling like, yeah, they already, you know, they've been talking crazy about me or whatever. So I'm like, ‘Wow!’ So I worked with him, like, okay, everything's going good. There's a new supervisor who's a female. It's her first week, first day or two there, you know what I mean? And they made her a supervisor. So when finish work with him, told me: ‘I work with a female supervisor. So, you know, they told me I had to work under her. So she told me to go to lunch. I go to lunch. When I go to lunch, another guy writes me up. Said I went A-wall and left. I’m like ‘Whoa!’ So he writes me up and it seems like they didn't want me. He said a whole bunch of shit and all that. Then the new female supervisor told them what happened. That she told me to go to lunch. But do you think that they gave me a party or let me back? No. They still didn't want me. You know what I mean?

TB: I see. Because your your record came up. And you look like you kept it pretty clean in terms of your past. You had one incident involving smoking marijuana while on the clock. And you had a discourtesy charge in 2009 that cost your two days pay.

TR: That didn't happen.

TB: No? Reading here there was a 60-day suspension in 2009 for smoking.

TR: I don't know what that is.

TB: Looks like a suspension.

TR: I don't know what that is, but never for nothing like that.

TB: Okay. Then two days later, it says it was a 60 day suspension, paying $1,000 fine after getting caught smoking marijuana or some kind of marijuana violation.

TR: That's not right. I need to shoot that down because that never happened.

TB: Okay. I'm not saying it did.

TR: I'm glad you told me. Yeah, no, I don't know nothing about that. No, that never, that never, ever happened.

TB: Also, in 2014 it appears you are on probation. You want a one year probation period, but then it seems like nothing major happened until this incident.

TR: Everything, everything that happened to me was a product of collusion. The same lady supervisor that I was talking about, she had a situation at the job where she threw away an employees’ belongings. The thing about it was, when she did it, I was there.

TB: So your witness to her tossing someone’s stuff?

TR: Yeah, they were 12 to 8. She's on at 8. She's just 8 to 4. She wasn't supposed to be there. Her boss even told her to leave, but she tried to stay to work there. And the worker comes back and he was just harassing me. So the guy comes in before she left, and he went to look for the trashed stuff. They couldn't find it, so he asked if she sees what happened to it? So she said ‘No.’ So they got into an argument, you know, and after I was there for the argument. The next day, there's a report that she, the female, made a request to replace the guy because she felt he been threatening her life.

TB: But you didn’t see that part of it?

TR: No. But she wrote a statement for me telling me her version. Even though that’s not what happened? And then [OCME] try to take him down, to try to fight him and everything.

TB: When was that? How close to the incident with the bag, the Louis bag?

TR: These problems started before that. And that’s when they put a target on my back. More problems started happening. Then little started. Then a record started. This started happening. Then the paperwork issue started happening.

TB: Gotcha, okay.

TR: Then when the bag situation happened the chief of mortuary at the time he told me, ‘Just tell the truth.’ You know, the truth will set you free. So I'm telling the truth. And that shit hurt me. Like, it fucked me up to all the way up to today.

TB: And this is the same woman, the supervisor, that kind of had a little bit of a crush on you?

TR: Yeah.

TB: Anybody else know about the crush?

TR: No, everybody knew, everybody. Everybody knew about it.

TB: Back to the bag, just to get this cleared out. What kind of bag was it? Was it like a little bag, a little wallet, like a purse?

TR: It was a little bigger than that, like a, like a small, like a gym bag, a little smaller, okay, but like a legitimate, like a legitimate Louis Vuitton, with of browning and gold, sort of, I don't know, I didn't see it.

TB: You've never seen it.

TR: They showed it in court, but I had never seen it until then.

TB: What did it look like in court?

TR: I guess? Well, you know, they had it in a plastic bag.

TB: I see. So it was an original Louis Vuitton? The signature style, with the textured leather, the brown and gold?

TR: As far as I can see it was like the classic Louis Vuitton, but kind of like a gym bag style, yeah.

TB: Okay, and did they tell you what was in it?

TR: No, no, no, they didn't even — I mean, the bag’s probably worth a few hundred bucks. I don’t know what was in it.

TB: It's sort of fascinating, because, like, your partner, who, like you said you'd only work with for the second time — you didn't really know him. He obviously went through what he went through. He's no longer with the OCME. Have you talked to him? Have you guys ever conversed since and discussed what happened?

TR: No.

TB: Why do you feel like you were the one to blame when it's possibly someone else.

TR: I guess I haven't been a team player. I haven't been, you know, one of their people. For a long time, you know. But the thing is, they were short, so they had to use me so that, and that's the whole thing about it. That's what messes me up so bad. That's what hurt my feelings. I've been working 60 to 80 hours a week. Mostly 80 hours a week, like, for a year, like, I've been working every day. You know, been doing double shifts every day. And I ain't never had a problem. It just hurt me. Real bad. It hurt lost a lot. I lost a lot.

…

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