“If this person were , for example, living with a daughter that was getting some form of welfare payment, he would have needed a number in order for her to continue receiving aid.”
Thanks. Did not know this. His not needing the SSN for his own benefits lowers the odds of a death certificate being issued with his SSN, although not by much. As a practical matter, most 87 year olds don’t die without some medical attention (even if they didn’t need Medicare to pay for it) and the penalties involved in an MD failing to file a death certificate are too severe to make it probable that this man’s doctor failed to do so in his case (and even if this happened in reality for this particular individual, I still don’t understand how Madelyn either could have relied on this to make her plan work without detection or how she could have found out about this in order to set her plan into motion).
Filing a death certificate doesn’t inform SS.That has to be done separately. As far as Madelyn goes, the group of friends of hers were avid Communists ( Frank Marshall Davis being one ). Hawaii in the early 60’s was a hotbed for Communists. I am sure they had contacts with people who knew how to do this.
You keep playing at “yes, but” with everyone who’s been working on this for years, so how about you tell us how it happened.