Man cremated against wishes after remains mislabeled A funeral home in Kelso, Wash. is being fined $12,500 and placed on probation for one year after a mix-up last October led to one man ending up in another’s casket, and another man being cremated against his wishes. The bodies of 72-year-old Jerry Moon and 97-year-old Robert Petitlerc were not immediately tagged with ID bracelets, leading to an error that caused one’s remains to be mistaken for the other’s. The result? Moon was cremated, and Petitclerc was sent on to another mortuary, where the mistake went undetected until the Moon’s family opened the casket to discover the latter. They said that Moon feared cremation, and had said he wanted to be buried alongside his parents. And while…

A grieving Canadian family faced an extra dose of bad news when they arrived at the funeral home to attend the memorial for Marguerite Mercier-Pelletier. They found that the funeral home had placed the wrong body in her coffin, but the grim discovery came too late. Directors at the Oscar St-Ours funeral home in Shawinigan, Quebec had accidentally cremated the woman’s body, which was not what her family had requested. The 81-year-old woman’s family appears split over whether they forgive the funeral home for their irrevocable actions. Ms Mercier-Pelletier’s brother said that he understands and has no ill will to the funeral administrators while others are allegedly considering legal action. Representatives from Oscar St-Ours funeral home told the Toronto Sun that this was the first…

A mix-up at Simpson Family Mortuary in Inglewood, Calif. caused the family of Darlene Davidson to bury the wrong body. When family alerted the mortuary their relative looked different in her casket, they told them it was because she was embalmed. BY VICTORIA TAYLOR    NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, March 12, 2013, 3:19 PM The body of Darlene Davidson was not in her casket during what was supposed to be her viewing after a mortuary mix-up. Her family found out days later that they had buried the wrong person. The body of Darlene Davidson was not in her casket during what was supposed to be her viewing after a mortuary mix-up. Her family found out days later that they had buried the wrong person. Loved…

Alice Barr, KHOU 11 News11:34 p.m. CDT August 1, 2014 HOUSTON — A man who said goodbye to his mother at her funeral earlier this week will have to do it all over again after learning the wrong body was buried in the family’s plot. “I remember the days when she looked like this,” said Bruce Lawson, looking at a photo of his mother on the cover of a funeral program. Bruce held the same program three days ago, when he thought he was saying goodbye to his mother, 81-year-old Edna Lawson. “We were sending her back home to be with dad.” But on top of pain, Bruce says there were doubts when he came to identify his mother’s body here at Mabrie Memorial Mortuary….

By Chris Blank, Associated Press Writer JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Missouri’s attorney general on Friday accused a funeral home of improperly handling bodies, including one that was stored in an electrical room for 10 months without being embalmed or refrigerated. The woman, identified in a lawsuit only as “J.H.,” died Sept. 9 from several types of hepatitis. State inspectors found her body in advanced decay on July 11 at a Columbia funeral home. When inspectors returned four days later, the body was still there. It was then turned over to the medical examiner’s office to be cremated. The attorney general’s office sued Warren Funeral Chapel Inc. and its operators, Harold Warren Jr. and Harold Warren Sr. A call to the funeral home seeking comment was…

Seventy-three-year-old Evans Davidson is already stricken with grief after losing his wife, Darlene Davidson, of 51 years. Adding to his grief, the funeral home accidentally buried the wrong woman in his wife’s plot — even after Davidson informed the employees that he was “pretty certain” the corpse he saw during the open casket viewing was not his wife’s. “It wasn’t my wife and I knew it,” said Davidson. He claims he was pressured by the staff at Simpson’s Mortuary in Ingelwood into continuing with the funeral after they informed him that the embalming process can sometimes alter the appearance of a loved one. Six days after 82-year-old Darlene was supposedly laid to rest, the family received a phone call from the mortuary informing them that…

Bodies of two victims from a plane crash in Union County were sent to the wrong families. Updated: 10:06 a.m. Friday, March 26, 2010 | Posted: 11:53 p.m. Thursday, March 25, 2010 By Lynn Hulsey, Staff Writer DAYTON — The bodies of two men who died in a March 5 plane crash were misidentified by the Montgomery County Coroner’s office in a mix-up that resulted in the wrong man being cremated and the other mistakenly placed in a Pennsylvania mausoleum. “This has never happened to us before, and I’ve been here since 1975,” said Dr. James Davis, county coroner since 1981 and deputy coroner before that. “We’re still trying to ascertain the level of error and whose error,” he said. Arthur Potter, 67, of Greenwood, Ind., and…

N E W  Y O R K, June 12 By Karen Matthews Body ID tags were accidentally switched at a funeral home, and one woman wound up being buried in the other woman’s grave even though at least one relative noticed something was amiss. “This is a terrible mistake,” Unity Funeral Chapels’ Clifford James said today. He said one of his employees mistakenly switched body tags last week, misidentifying 70-year-old Elizabeth Woods and 76-year-old Ruth Ross. Woods was buried in Ross’ grave at the Rose Hill cemetery in Linden, N.J., while Ross’ body remained at the funeral home. James, the funeral home’s general manager, said that when the Ross family was called in to view the body before holding a wake, one of her children said “That’s not…