How NBC News Broke a Major Story—and Honored a Late Colleague

Crafting the ideal lede for any news story can be a tough assignment. But NBC News enterprise reporters Mike Hixenbaugh and Jon Schuppe had an added challenge when they had to type the first sentence of their deeply-researched investigative piece into a Texas medical school accused of profiting off of unclaimed bodies—a story that was 10 months in the making.

Midway through the nearly year-long process, the third member of their team, senior enterprise editor Susan Carroll, died suddenly in May at age 46. “We were all gutted when we lost her,” Hixenbaugh tells TVNewser, noting that Carroll passed away before any writing could begin. “She was probably the best writer among us. While we were writing, I repeatedly thought: ‘Susy would be proud of this story, but she’d probably quibble with the lede.”

“And,” Hixenbaugh adds without missing a beat, “her lede would have been better!”

A Texas-based reporter who previously worked at The Houston Chronicle before joining NBC News, Carroll received the tip that spurred the trio to launch their investigation. Hixenbaugh and Schuppe had previously collaborated on the five-part 2023 series Lost Rites, which exposed the cracks in America’s death notification system, with authorities burying the unclaimed bodies of the recently deceased without alerting their families.

Carroll’s tip directed them to the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth, where officials reportedly allowed unclaimed bodies to be carved up and leased to training and research facilities—again, without the permission of surviving relatives. While officials defended the program as a necessary way to aid in medical research, the lack of familial consent—not to mention the revenue it generated—made it an ethically questionable endeavor.

“This was the exact kind of story that Susy pursued throughout her career,” Hixenbaugh says of Carroll’s personal investment in the investigation. “She wanted to expose injustice, especially when that injustice is affecting people who don’t have the resources to advocate for themselves.”

Working in tandem, the trio filed thousands of record requests and sought interviews with both family members and Health Science Center officials. By the spring, they had amassed an enormous digital archive of material, but work on the story temporarily ground to a halt when Carroll passed away. “We took a break,” Hixenbaugh says. “It was hard to go through all of her material.”

Notably, there was a memento of Carroll left behind in the Google Drive that contained all of their work. “If Susy had created a folder, there was a little circle on it with her picture and her name. It motivated us to know that she was watching—we knew we had to finish the story for her.”

We at @NBCNews are proud to have Susy Carroll’s byline on this investigation. Susy, our beloved Senior Enterprise Editor, died earlier this year.

She launched this project, and @Mike_Hixenbaugh and @jonschuppe saw it through.https://t.co/c5zmr8gK5r https://t.co/NziSO21oRD

— Tom Namako (@TomNamako) September 16, 2024

In addition to the published NBC News article, the story aired as a segment on Monday’s NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt, reported by national correspondent Liz Kreutz. Hixenbaugh says that filmed piece was also months in the making, and credits the Nightly News team for “taking great care” with the sources he and his enterprise colleagues had cultivated. And he’s already noticed a significant uptick in responses and new leads since the piece hit the airwaves, a boon for locating the next beats in the story.

“We’re going to continue reporting on this,” Hixenbaugh says, pointing to the racial demographics of the families impacted by the Health Science Center’s actions as an area for further investigation. “The counties did not have good demographic records, but we do know that unclaimed bodies broadly in this country are disproportionately black, disproportionately male, often mentally ill and often homeless.”

Even as they continue the work that Carroll started, Hixenbaugh says that the late editor’s decision to pursue the story has already made an impact. Just before the piece was set to publish, the Health Science Center announced that it was ceasing its body donation program and firing the officials in charge.

“That’s the best tribute to Susy,” Hixenbaugh notes. “She was the type of journalist who wanted to change the world for the better—and this story led to significant change.”