For two decades, the Kandoria family says they had no idea what happened to their brother, Rand, a Manhattan banker who vanished in late 2004. Now they claim they have an answer, and it is a brutal one: the body buried as a John Doe in a pauper’s grave on Hart Island was identified as Rand Kandoria, a Financial District operations officer at Deutsche Bank. According to court papers, medical examiner staff matched fingerprints in 2025, and relatives are now accusing investigators of failing to compare those same prints to the John Doe pulled from the East River back when he was first found. The revelation has the family asking how a downtown banker could disappear and end up quietly interred as an unidentified man, only to be named more than 20 years later.
Allegations in court papers
In legal filings, Kandoria's relatives argue that investigators never ran his fingerprints against those taken from an unidentified body recovered near Pier 11, as reported by the New York Post. The outlet reports that medical examiner staff ultimately matched fingerprints from the man buried in grave no. 313 on Hart Island to Kandoria in 2025, and that the body had surfaced about a half-mile from Kandoria's Financial District apartment. The Post also notes that Kandoria, an operations officer at Deutsche Bank, was 43 years old when he was reported missing to the NYPD on Dec. 27, 2004.
What is Hart Island?
Hart Island serves as New York City's potter's field, the public burial ground for unclaimed and indigent remains, and has been used for mass burials for more than a century, according to NYC Parks. Access to both the island and its records has long been restricted, which advocates say has fueled frustration for families trying to track down loved ones. That mix of scale, bureaucracy and limited transparency can make it extremely difficult for relatives to locate a specific grave without persistent paperwork and outside assistance.
Family pursued leads for years
According to the family, their search did not stop with the original missing person report. They say they hired private investigator Rosanna Licitra in 2024 to dig into records and missing-person files, and that Sham Kandoria collected ashes identified as his brother's in August 2025 and took them to the United Kingdom, according to the New York Post. The Post further reports that the remains linked to grave 313 were cremated, and that a burial entry for that grave was logged in February 2026. The family says that timeline, along with the paperwork and the city's handling of the remains, poses troubling questions they now want answered in court.
Legal questions and next steps
Court filings from the Kandoria family, along with summaries in news coverage, accuse city investigators of procedural failures that may have delayed a proper identification for years. Advocates with the Hart Island Project and attorneys for the family argue that the case highlights serious gaps in recordkeeping, communication and access for families trying to confirm what happened to a missing relative. The legal papers seek records and a detailed review of the chain of custody for Kandoria's remains, and the family's lawyers say they plan to pursue whatever remedies the courts will allow.
For the Kandoria family, finally putting a name to the John Doe in grave 313 has been a mix of relief and shock. They contend that two decades of not knowing could have been avoided with basic fingerprint checks and more straightforward communication from city agencies. Now they say they are using the court system to pry loose records and explanations, and they want officials to spell out how a missing Financial District banker wound up in a pauper's grave on Hart Island, and why it took so long for anyone to tell them.
