The funeral industry is prone to many accidents, and there are a number of horror stories about funeral parlors all over the United States.
For 40 years, until May of this year, funeral homes in Colorado did not require a license and were subject to minimal oversight. Bill Booker, owner of Lawler Funeral Home and member of the Arkansas Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors, told Fox News Digital that the horrifying stories coming out of the state “were meant to happen.” told.
But even in states with tighter restrictions, a spate of horrific mix-ups and mismanagement continues to traumatize already grieving families and spark public outrage.
“I want to assure the public that there are a lot of safeguards in place, and outside of a situation like Colorado, these cases shouldn't last very long,” Booker said. “I think most funeral professionals really want to be in this profession because they believe there is a sacred relationship of trust between them and their clients.”
In any case, when a funeral home's mismanagement becomes news, experts become upset.
“Much of the work in the funeral industry is done with no one else present except the funeral director and the deceased,” Booker said. “People need to have the right education, but they also need the right heart to serve the nation in these tender times.”
1. Hundreds of bodies left to rot by Colorado funeral home that misused coronavirus relief funds for vacations and lavish lifestyles
In April, John and Carrie Hallford, owners of Back to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs, dumped nearly 200 decomposing, maggot-infested bodies inside their building. It was discovered that there was. Fox News Digital previously reported.
The couple were charged with five counts of abuse of a corpse, five counts of theft, four counts of money laundering, and more than 50 counts of forgery.
The Hallfords are accused of burying the wrong body twice, giving dry concrete to families in place of their deceased relatives' ashes. They collected a total of $130,000 from the family for cremation and burial costs, which they never did. In court, an FBI agent testified that the funds were enough to cover the cost of cremating all the abandoned bodies on two separate occasions.
A portrait of Return to Nature Funeral Home owners John Hallford (left) and Carrie Hallford (right). (Muscogee County Sheriff's Office, via AP, File)
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According to text messages exchanged by the couple, the accumulation of bodies began four years before the tragic discovery. In the messages, the couple discussed whether to dump the body in a pit and then dispose of it with lye or set it on fire.
A subsequent indictment alleges that the Hallfords also used $882,300 in COVID-19 pandemic relief funds to buy cars, dinners, virtual currency, their children's tuition, and numerous vacations. .
“In the state of Colorado, someone who is unregulated, unlicensed and without government oversight eventually loses their sense of right and wrong, and the consequences are just horrific,” Booker told Fox News Digital. .
In August, the Hallfords were ordered to pay more than $1 million to the family. CNN reported.
2. Former funeral home in Colorado arrested for storing cremated remains and a woman's body in a hearse for two years
In February of this year, two years after the funeral home closed, the cremated remains of up to 30 people were discovered in a home rented by a funeral home.
Police made the damning discovery on February 6th when they removed 33-year-old Miles Harford from his Denver home under a court order. Fox News Digital previously reported.
Harford also kept the dead woman's body in a hearse for two years. He admitted to police that he decided to store the woman's body in a hearse because he owed money to several crematoriums in the area and none of them would cremate the woman's body. Colorado Sun Reported.
Seen here is the Return to Nature Funeral Home in Penrose, Colorado, where an FBI agent testified that a pile of human bones was discovered and bodily fluids several inches deep covered the floor. (AP Photo/David Zarbowski, File)
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His business, Apollo Funeral and Cremation Services, had been closed since September 2022.
Mr Booker said Mr Harford may have been motivated by “greed” or a “lack of moral compass”.
“perhaps [he didn’t] I plan to make this into a pattern. But once you go down that path and no one notices, you can do it over and over again,” Booker said.
A warrant issued for Harford's arrest at the time listed possible charges of abuse of a corpse, falsifying a death certificate and theft of money paid for cremation.
3. Long Island sisters sue funeral home for $60 million after they say the wrong man wearing their favorite T-shirt was buried on their father's property
Stacey Holtzman and Megan Zenner learned that when their father died out of state, a funeral home in South Carolina mistakenly sent the wrong person's remains to New York for burial, even though the women did not. Regardless, the New York funeral home claims it was the correct body. I recognize the man in the coffin.
The Long Island sisters are seeking $60 million in damages from Fletcher Funeral Home and Cremation Services in Fountain Inn, South Carolina, and the Star of David Memorial Chapel in West Babylon, New York, after a burial last February. filed a lawsuit.
When the women asked how their father was last seen, they suspected something was wrong. The man was wearing his favorite Led Zepplin shirt, but his face didn't look very nice.
Photo of an empty mortuary in a crematorium. (Fox News)
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“Where is his facial hair?” Stacey Holtzman asked the funeral director. CBS News. “The funeral director said it's standard to shave everyone's hair.”
There were also signs of an autopsy on the man's forehead, but the women requested that their father be buried in accordance with Jewish tradition, which does not allow autopsies.
“Again, the undertaker dismisses it by saying, “Oh, that's standard when someone dies in a hospital,'' and I say, “No, this isn't right. I don't recognize him,''' Holtzman told the outlet.
A few weeks later, a funeral home in South Carolina confirmed the women's suspicions. In the lawsuit, they claim his body was “abandoned” inside the morgue “without dignity or respect.” The bereaved daughters then buried their father without wearing his favorite clothes.
The Star of David newspaper said in a statement that the family “identified the deceased at the cemetery” before burial. Fox News Digital previously reported. The Star of David said that after Fletcher informed the family of his mistake, he “took swift and decisive action to contact the family and provide them with whatever services they needed to ease their grief.” .
The Star of David newspaper said, “We deeply regret the grief experienced by families due to mistakes made by funeral directors in South Carolina,'' adding, “Families are under tremendous stress as they try to identify the deceased.'' added.
Mr Booker said in 44 years of working as a funeral director, he had “never seen” a body mixed up.
“I don't know what all the background information is, but I would like to hope that the people who died went through a long illness and are probably not too similar to us,” he said. “Mistakes can occur in medical settings where a deceased person is given the wrong identification. … Two people die at about the same time, there is an identification error between the deceased, and two funeral homes is affected.
4. New Jersey funeral home about to bury a woman 20 years younger than a 93-year-old woman
The family of Kim Kyung-ja, who passed away on November 10, 2021, is offering $50 million to two funeral homes, a mortician, and an undertaker after the wrong woman was nearly buried in her mother's place. I asked for a settlement.
said the woman's daughter, Kumi Kim. NorthJersey.com The family believed that embalming technology had advanced so much that the deceased mother looked much younger.
Kim Kyung-ja was wearing dentures, and the other woman's body had a full set of teeth, the family's lawyer told the magazine. The dentures were later found under a pillow in the coffin.
A man places a rose on a soldier's grave at Arlington National Cemetery, a U.S. military cemetery, on Memorial Day, an annual commemoration of those who died while serving in the military, in Virginia, U.S., May 29, 2023. people. . (Celal Gunes/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
The mourning family, many of whom had come from South Korea, began throwing shovels of dirt onto the woman's coffin during the burial. The family realized something was wrong as funeral director Haemin Gina Chung tried to rush the mourners home.
Jeong is said to have shown Gumi Kim a photo of the 93-year-old and asked her if it was her mother. When Gumi Kim answered in the affirmative, Chung instructed the cemetery to remove the coffin from the grave and take it back to the funeral home, surprising her friends and family.
5. A Texas funeral home is sued for allowing bodies to “literally rot” during the 2021 winter storm.
Last February, Giulietta Guerra sued Integrity Funeral Home in south Houston, saying her son Edward Silva was not embalmed for four days.
Fox News Digital previously reported Silva passed away suddenly on February 9, 2021. According to Guerra's complaint, funeral director Hilda Rojas promised the woman that she would have her son embalmed by February 12 and “make it look real.”
Guerra said she was told on February 12 that her son's body was not ready, and again when she called the next day.
On February 14th, Winter Storm Uri hit Houston. Guerra and her husband couldn't get through by phone, so they drove to the funeral home. The door was locked, and the grieving parents noticed the generator was missing as they drove around the building.
Guerra arrived at the funeral home on February 22 with a hairdresser to do Silva's hair and makeup. Guerra was “severely decomposed” and smelled so bad that the hairdresser told Guerra's sister not to let her see her son, according to the complaint. It is said that the director of the funeral home did not tell the bereaved family anything about the condition of the body beforehand.
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The funeral suit is my family brought me Silva also did not fit due to “extreme post-mortem swelling,” according to the suit. In order for him to be able to wear it, the clothes eventually had to be cut open and draped over his body.
The family was forced to hold a funeral without a coffin, and many of the more than 100 mourners said the smell made them “nauseous.”
“No family should have to endure the desecration of their loved one's body like the Guerra family did,” said family lawyer Omar Khawaja. “We are planning to hold Integrity Funeral Home at Forest Lawn Cemetery Responsible for their terrible actions. ”
