News

'Hundreds' of bodies concealed by authorities? Nope. It's a hoax.

First responders huddle amid extensive damage along the Swannanoa River in East Asheville on Sept. 30 days after Hurricane Helene swept through Western North Carolina. [COLBY RABON/ Carolina Public Press]

By LUCAS THOMAE, Carolina Public Press, Published: November 3, 2024

Eustace Conway, a former reality TV star and founder of the 1,000-acre Turtle Island Preserve in Watauga County, has become one of the most prominent North Carolina voices promoting claims — widely and emphatically debunked — about the devastation of Hurricane Helene, giving them traction and an audience well beyond North Carolina on social media.

Conspiracy theories and unfounded rumors have dominated parts of the internet following the storm, making efforts by local and state officials to relay accurate and verified information to survivors and other North Carolina residents all the more difficult. One of the top issues of contention is the death toll in Western North Carolina.

In a video posted on Oct. 19, Conway claimed the official death count from the storm undercounted fatalities by the thousands, and accused the government and the news media of lying about the true impact of the storm.

“We’ve got piles and piles and piles of dead bodies,” Conway says in the video. “We’ve got 18-wheeler refrigerator trucks filled up with dead bodies… Why is there such a disparity between the reality of what I’m seeing here and what you’re getting told?”

In another video posted to his YouTube and Instagram pages on Oct. 5, Conway claimed that officials leading response and recovery operations were preventing volunteers and donations from helping hurricane victims.

“The people that are supposed to be coming here to help the Appalachian Mountains, they’re actually, literally, killing people by keeping aid (from) getting to them,” Conway claimed.

Together, the two videos have amassed more than 600,000 views and 4,500 comments on YouTube alone.

Many of the claims he made – that the true death toll was in the tens of thousands, temporary morgues were quickly filling up, massive numbers of bodies could seen by air sticking out of the ground, “the government” was conspiring with news organizations to cover up the true death toll and emergency management authorities were threatening volunteers with arrest – have been continually rebuked by local, state and federal officials.

Carolina Public Press reporters who have visited many of the areas in question personally have seen no evidence to support any of these claims.

As of Friday, DHHS has reported 101 deaths related to the storm in North Carolina. That number includes people who died during recovery and clean-up efforts after the storm, which is one reason the total has grown gradually over time.

CPP reported on Oct. 18 that there is no backlog of unidentified bodies yet to be included in the death count, as some on the internet have claimed. While a small number of additional storm-related deaths have occurred or been identified since then, these are not remotely close to claims like those coming from Conway.

'Nobody is hiding numbers'

The North Carolina Department of Public Safety – the entity which includes state emergency management – is aware of only seven North Carolina residents still unaccounted for following the storm as of Thursday, communications director Justin Graney told CPP.

“The State Emergency Response Team has received no evidence to support any of the claims that there are significantly more fatalities than have been recorded and announced publicly; a testament to the heroic response of our first responders and emergency management officials throughout western North Carolina,” Graney told CPP in an email statement.

“While we join our North Carolina communities in grieving the loss of 101 of our own, it is important to note that many of our local partners have reported fatalities within their jurisdictions and none of those reports substantiate the claims being made on many social media platforms.”

The Fire Department in Swannanoa, a small community just east of Asheville that has been the center of many online rumors following Helene, took to Facebook to ask people not to share unverified information. That post from Oct. 19 was written by Deputy Fire Chief Larry Pierson.

“We have seen inaccurate social media posts claiming their information is ‘verified’ with no sources stating who verified it and no response when questions are asked,” the post read.

“From the actual responders from hour one, the boots on the ground, the ones who have been involved in rescuing and recovering our people, nobody is ‘hiding numbers.’ There are inflated numbers of body bags ordered, insinuating there are that many more that the public isn’t being told about. Untrue.

“There is an image of a ‘reefer’ (refrigerated trailer) at a funeral home insinuating there are so many, it is full. Logic would tell any of us that the funeral home also did not have power, and that is just such a contingency for normal operations at such a facility.”

When asked for comment, Conway told CPP that he would not retract his statements or delete the posts. He said he believed he was telling the truth based on the accounts of people he claimed were involved in search and rescue efforts following the storm.

“I’m working with eyewitness accounts that have seen hundreds and hundreds of dead bodies,” Conway said during a phone call on Friday. “So how can there be only 100 dead people when there’s hundreds and hundreds of dead bodies that add up to thousands?”

He has provided no photos or other evidence to back these claims of massive concealed storm-related deaths other than these unsubstantiated assertions by people Conway says he has spoken to. In one video he estimated the real storm-related total loss of life in North Carolina at 20,000.

Featured in 'Mountain Men' reality show

Conway is somewhat of a celebrity figure in the North Carolina mountains. The Turtle Island Preserve website describes him as a naturalist who has “lived in the woods for over 40 years,” and says he is a graduate of Appalachian State University.

He is the subject of the 2002 book “The Last American Man” written by best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert and was featured prominently in the History channel series “Mountain Men.” Conway last appeared on the show in the summer of 2023 and is no longer listed on the official cast webpage.

A representative of A+E Networks did not respond when asked whether Conway was still under contract with the network or whether there were plans for him to appear in future episodes of the series.

Conway founded Turtle Island Preserve in Watauga County, which is both a nature preserve and education center that hosts children’s camps, workshops and other outdoor programs. Conway no longer leads the preserve, which is now a nonprofit organization governed by a board of directors.

Conway has not been an overtly political figure, but his skepticism toward local government institutions has been well-documented. In 2012, his camp at Turtle Island was nearly shut down after Watauga County inspectors found many structures on the property to be in violation of health and safety codes. In June 2013, the issue was put to rest after the state legislature passed a bill exempting “primitive” camps from those building codes.

In 2023, Conway endorsed perennial political candidate and conspiracy theorist Shiva Ayyadurai for president. Ayyadurai is an anti-vaccine activist and has spread various falsehoods about COVID-19 and the 2020 Election on social media.
The Helene-related death count as of Nov. 1 included nine in Henderson County, 43 in Buncombe and one in Polk. Transylvania reported no fatalities.

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