Corsica. An undertaker convicted of disposing of corpses

Bodies exhumed and found in pieces in the scrub instead of being cremated: an undertaker was sentenced on Tuesday in Bastia to six months’ imprisonment suspended for “injuring the integrity of the corpses”.

The undertaker, on the other hand, was acquitted by the Bastia criminal court of the charge of “breach of trust”. Similarly, “there is no ban on exercising a profession linked to funeral homes”, reacted his lawyer Me Emmanuel Maestrini, satisfied with this release for breach of trust. “The attack on the integrity of a corpse is in fact a professional fault, more civil than criminal”, he continued.

The case began in April, with the discovery of seven coffins and human bones hidden in garbage bags, in the middle of a wild dump under a road in the village of Bigorno (Haute-Corse). Investigations by the gendarmerie then made the connection between the bones and an exhumation request made to a funeral director for a family vault in a nearby village, in order to proceed with a cremation.

They have done everything of the mission entrusted

“Who filled the garbage bags? Who was aware of the content? Who knows what they would become? The versions differ. And they did everything with the mission entrusted to them”, the prosecutor had launched at the hearing, on December 6, where the company manager and one of his subcontractors presented themselves. Against the executive he had asked for six months of imprisonment with conditional suspension, a fine of 5,000 euros and a ban from exercising a profession related to the funeral home.

For the subcontractor had asked for a fine of 5,000 euros. Sentence followed by the court which sentenced him to a fine of 10,000 euros, of which 5,000 was suspended.

“For me the coffin was empty”

At the helm, the undertaker, already sentenced to a six-month suspended prison sentence for extortion by threat or coercion, and a one-year suspended prison sentence for breach of trust, had declared good faith. “I have not seen the bones in the coffins. (…) For me the coffin was empty, “he said.

The other defendant, a security guard by profession with a clean criminal record, had assured that he had taken the garbage bags without knowing that there were bodies inside: “I threw everything in the bush knowing it was not illegal,” he admitted. . Defense attorneys have asked for his release.