Katrina Coverage

Current thinking is that there were six bodies found in the Superdome:

Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide, said Beron, who personally oversaw the turning over of bodies from a Dome freezer, where they lay atop melting bags of ice. State health department officials in charge of body recovery put the official death count at the Dome at 10, but Beron said the other four bodies were found in the street near the Dome, not inside it. Both sources said no one had been killed inside.

At the Convention Center, it was four:

…despites reports of corpses piled inside the building. Only one of the dead appeared to have been slain, said health and law enforcement officials.

And:

[Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan says:] "It's unfortunate we saw these kinds of stories saying crime had taken place on a massive scale when that wasn't the case. And they (national media outlets) have done nothing to follow up on any of these cases, they just accepted what people (on the street) told them. … It's not consistent with the highest standards of journalism."

Well, as detailed elsewhere in this article, and as described here, local officials did their part in confirming inflated figures:

In interviews with Oprah Winfrey, [NOPD Chief Eddie] Compass reported rapes of "babies," and Mayor Ray Nagin spoke of "hundreds of armed gang members" killing and raping people inside the Dome. Unidentified evacuees told of children stepping over so many bodies, "we couldn't count."

…Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan said authorities had confirmed only four murders in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina - making it a typical week in a city that anticipated more than 200 homicides this year. Jordan expressed outrage at reports from many national media outlets that suffering flood victims had turned into mobs of unchecked savages…

There's much more at the link.

For contrary information, see "Mortician contradicts reports downplaying crime".

And, note the following:

One widely circulated tale, told to The Times-Picayune by a slew of evacuees and two Arkansas National Guardsmen, held that "30 or 40 bodies" were stored in a Convention Center freezer. But a formal Arkansas Guard review of the matter later found that no soldier had actually seen the corpses, and that the information came from rumors in the food line for military, police and rescue workers in front of Harrah's New Orleans Casino, said [Lt. Col. John Edwards of the Arkansas National Guard], who conducted the review.

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