Graham Putnam and Mahoney Funeral Parlors

That’s scary,” he said as he backed away from the coffin, a lily white model that housed a well-dressed mannequin with a mirror for a face.“That’s a real eye opener,” the man, who said he’d used heroin that morning, uttered after staring into his own eyes.“We don’t want to come get you,” Stephanie Charron, who works at Graham Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Parlor, replied earnestly as she handed the man a leaflet.It was the kind of interaction parlor Director Peter Stefan was hoping for when he got permission to pull his hearse, casket and makeshift syringe to City Hall. Sometimes, the outspoken mortician noted, a picture is worth a thousand words.“There’s all different kinds of counseling people can go to,” Mr. Stefan said as people in cars strained their necks toward the unusual scene. “This is my counseling – it’s called reality.”The old funeral director – best known as being the man who buried Marathon Bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev – tires of picking young bodies off the city streets. So he figures a blunt visual might help save a life – he did a similar display a few years ago, though the oversized syringe is a new addition.“I’ve talked to well-off families who’ve said, ‘My 22-year-old died. My 17-year-old died,’” said William S. Coleman III, who fashioned the oversize syringe with some plumbing supplies. The perennial City Council candidate – this year he’s running in District 1 – gave some advice to a group of teenagers who stopped their bikes in the late-afternoon sunshine to listen.“If you’re on the straight and narrow, stay on the straight and narrow,” he said after talking to them about the dangers of drug use. “Stay clean.”The man who said he was high – his first name is Eric – became emotional as he spoke about the toll opioids have taken on his life.“I’ve lost everything due to this – my kids, my life,” he said. “Ever since I took that first sniff, my whole world turned upside down.”Eric, 33, said he’s tried to quit before without success.“It’s tough,” he said, adding that, at the rooming house on Lincoln Stree... (Worcester Telegram)

But when there’s a body, it has to go somewhere — and someone has to make that happen.In 2013, after the Boston Marathon bombing, Peter Stefan was that someone. The director of the Graham, Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Parlor, in Watertown, Massachusetts, took on the unpleasant burden of handling the body of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the two brothers behind the bombing at the marathon’s finish line, which killed 3 and left hundreds injured. It was a job no one wanted at the time — and for which Stefan paid a heavy price. But, as he told VICE News, he’d do it again if he had to.“In this country, we bury people,” Stefan said at the time. He told VICE News, “We’re not dealing with the situation; we’re dealing with a dead body. Not what the dead body did.”This segment originally aired June 13, 2017, on VICE News Tonight on HBO. ... (VICE News)