“He is Adam. He is not art.”

        Lovingly stated, yet forcefully told.

        Those words came in the form of a letter Thursday to the City of Cincinnati and to the man who is accused of taking photographs of Adam Richardson and 11 others as they lay in the Hamilton County morgue.

Richardson

        Mr. Richardson, 22, was a part-time Williamsburg police officer who died early Christmas Eve.

        Family members are still grieving the loss. But the more they hear about the access photographer Thomas Condon had to the morgue, the more upset they get. They want answers.

        “We haven't received any information,” said Carol Willenbrink, Mr. Richardson's aunt and the woman who raised him. “Just one phone call last Friday from the coroner.

        “He said he would like to apologize for photographs that had been taken, that he was very, very sorry. That's it (and) that's not enough.”

        Police say Mr. Condon, of Mount Auburn, took photographs of 12 corpses in various stages of autopsy over a six-month period. Investigators say the pictures showed corpses posed with objects, such as a snail shell, sheet music, an old photograph and an Alice in Wonderland book.

        One photo showed a woman's face with an old-fashioned key placed across her lips.

        The coroner's office granted Mr. Condon access to the facility, but not to produce these staged photographic displays with bodies of the dead. He was given access to do some testing to determine the kinds of equipment he would need to produce a training video. He has not been charged with a crime.

        Mrs. Willenbrink said she knows nothing about the photographs taken of her nephew, nothing about the on-going investigation. But she has a few questions she'd like answered.

        “Why it happened is the No.1 question,” Mrs. Willenbrink said. “They said they didn't know he photographed people, but isn't it their job to know he's in there?”

        Mr. Richardson's family also wants to know whether anyone will be prosecuted.

        “I want all of them prosecuted,” Mrs. Willenbrink said. “The photographer, the coroner, everybody. That was his (the coroner's) job to make sure ... We put someone we love very much in his hands.”

        Bob Willenbrink reminisced Thursday night about the nephew who came to live with him at age 14, the neighborhood boys he played with, the Knothole baseball games he played and his dream of being a cop.

        “That's the type of work he wanted to do,” his uncle said. “He was living his dream.”

        Now, the family is going through what Mr. Willenbrink calls “tragedy doubled.”

        “It really upset us greatly again, for the second time,” he said. “It's devastating.”

        Hamilton County Coroner Carl Parrott released a statement late Thursday that said sheriff's officers are extensively reviewing security procedures at the morgue. There has been discussion about where and how to place security devices to track employees and visitors.

        The upgrade might include a computer-assisted system.

        “But the bottom line is that if a person not employed by this office is in the facility, we need to know it, consent to it, and observe his or her every movement,” Dr. Parrott said.

        Sadly, say the police officer's family, that is what they thought already went on.

        “He was a very proud man and that took his dignity,” she said. “Right now we're trying to catch our breath from this.

        “We do want the community to back us. Somebody has to do something. They can't shove it under the rug.”

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