Stored at room temperature, US undertakers admit desecration of 190 bodies
November 22, 2024, 10:02 p.m. Listen to article
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Relatives scatter the ashes of their loved ones who have died or bury them ceremonially. In the USA, however, this has often not happened recently. Two undertakers only hand over dry concrete and store the dead in a house – with fatal consequences.
The owners of a funeral home in the US state of Colorado have pleaded guilty to desecration of corpses. The two admitted in court and in the presence of the surviving relatives that they had stored 190 corpses in a house at room temperature. They had already admitted fraud in October.
The defendants are accused of storing bodies in a dilapidated building near Colorado Springs instead of cremating them since 2019. They are said to have given dry concrete to the bereaved instead of the ashes of the deceased. The funeral home’s customers distributed their loved ones’ supposed ashes in meaningful places or stored them at home.
According to court documents, the couple used customers’ money and almost $900,000 in pandemic relief funds for luxury cars, vacations, cryptocurrency and cosmetic treatments.
The scam came to light last year when neighbors reported a stench coming from a building in the small town of Penrose, southwest of Colorado Springs. Authorities found bodies piled on top of each other, some crawling with insects. Some remains were so decomposed that they could no longer be identified. The building was so toxic that the emergency services had to wear protective suits and could only stay in it for a short time.
