Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Mother-daughter villains BUSTED SELLING BODY PARTS OUT OF LOCAL FUNERAL HOME

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Mother-daughter villains BUSTED SELLING BODY PARTS OUT OF LOCAL FUNERAL HOME · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

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1:39
Speaker 1: When most people think of their mom. They think of
1:43
Speaker 1: all the love and care of their mom gave them
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Speaker 1: while they were growing up. We think about Mother's Day,
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Speaker 1: Valentine's Day, Christmas, special things we can do with our moms,
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Speaker 1: all those wonderful homemade meals, all the love you don't
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Speaker 1: usually put mother and daughter and the same sentence as
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Speaker 1: selling body parts. That's right. I'm Nancy Grace. This is
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Speaker 1: Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us Crime Stories
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Speaker 1: with Nancy Grace. How do the words mother daughter duo
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Speaker 1: fit in the same sentence with selling body parts? Let
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Speaker 1: that so kN just for a moment. Why with the
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Speaker 1: words mother daughter duo end up in the same sentence
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Speaker 1: as selling body parts? I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories.
2:48
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us here on Fox Nation and
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Speaker 1: Sirius XM one eleven. A mother daughter duo connected to
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Speaker 1: selling body parts? How does that work? We'll take a
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Speaker 1: listen to our frience Akmghjverse seven Jennifer Kobaleski State regulators
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Speaker 1: tell me they're investigating eleven complaints against the funeral home.
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Speaker 1: And this Ruter's special report found the FBI is investigating
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Speaker 1: a side business owner, Megan hess is running out of
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Speaker 1: the same building selling human body parts. We called hess
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Speaker 1: Hi Megan. My name is Jennif Kovaleski and I'm a
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Speaker 1: reporter with Chanel seven. When I asked her about selling
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Speaker 1: human body parts, all she would say is, we don't sell,
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Speaker 1: we recover. There's a difference, there's no selling. Before hanging up,
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Speaker 1: X employee Kerry Esher also told Reuters about gold teeth
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Speaker 1: taken from corpses. She says the family sold to pay
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Speaker 1: for a Disney vacation. Not to be clear in Colorado.
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Speaker 1: In most states, it's perfectly legal for funeral homes to
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Speaker 1: sell items taken from candavers, including gold teeth. Okay, I
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Speaker 1: didn't know that, and I've been prosecuting felonies for I
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Speaker 1: don't even know how long. Anymore, it's okay to recover
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Speaker 1: with me an all star panel, to break it down
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Speaker 1: and put it back together again. With the overarching question,
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Speaker 1: when you send your loved one's family body to a
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Speaker 1: funeral home, what happens? And how did a mother and
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Speaker 1: daughter duo get into a side business aside from their
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Speaker 1: family owned funeral home. What happened? I mean, I just
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Speaker 1: went through the death of my dad and we went
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Speaker 1: to a local funeral home in Macon and they were wonderful.
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Speaker 1: And I never thought this type of thing would happen
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Speaker 1: at a reputable funeral home, the thought that that would
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Speaker 1: happen to your loved one's body. Wendy Wiener is joining us,
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Speaker 1: attorney specializing in funeral home law. This is her expertise.
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Speaker 1: She knows it like the back of her hand. Also
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Speaker 1: with me, thirty six years Seattle PD and Homicide Division,
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Speaker 1: author of Seattle's Forgotten serial Killer, Gary gen Grant, Cloyd Steiger,
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Speaker 1: forensics expert and host of Shattered Soul's podcast, Joining me
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Speaker 1: out of California. Karen Smith, the Deputy Medical Examer for
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Speaker 1: the Travis County mm's office AT's in Austin, Texas. Doctor
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Speaker 1: Kendall Crown's renowned New York psychologist Karen Stark at Karen
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Speaker 1: Stark dot com, but straight out to Crime online dot Com.
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Speaker 1: Investigative reporter Nicole Parton, who I would like to point
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Speaker 1: out is a licensed funeral director. Nicole Parton, before we
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Speaker 1: get on with what it entails being a funeral home director,
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Speaker 1: What happened? What happened with mesa Sunset funeral home out
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Speaker 1: in Colorado, MESSI a horrific story. I can't imagine what
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Speaker 1: these families are feeling knowing that their loved ones bodies
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Speaker 1: were cut in pieces and then sold. And the kicker is,
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Speaker 1: do you wait a minute, I didn't even I didn't
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Speaker 1: even know that part. I knew what I guess. You
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Speaker 1: have to cut the body in pieces to harvest. That's
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Speaker 1: certainly putting perfume on the pig the body parts. Okay,
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Speaker 1: mother daughter duo in Colorado illegally sells body parts or
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Speaker 1: entire bodies through a funeral home without consider the families.
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Speaker 1: Is that it in a nutshell? That's it. That's correct.
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Speaker 1: Sometimes they were selling the entire body, the whole court,
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Speaker 1: but in many cases they were dissecting the body, cutting
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Speaker 1: up the body and selling individual parts. Okay, so what
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Speaker 1: can you tell me about the mother daughter duo? Was
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Speaker 1: this their funeral home? What do we know about that? Yeah,
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Speaker 1: it was actually their funeral home. Megan has forty three
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Speaker 1: years old family owned and operated business, worked closely with
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Speaker 1: her parents there, and somehow this mother daughter operation started
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Speaker 1: the side job of selling these bodies. Now you have
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Speaker 1: to understand they're in a small community there, well loved,
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Speaker 1: well known, a local funeral home and no one knew
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Speaker 1: what was going on behind the scenes until all of
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Speaker 1: this began to come out. I've got to go to
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Speaker 1: Karen Start, New York psychologist Karen at a time when
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Speaker 1: you're dealing with a horrible blow, like my dad, we
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Speaker 1: did everything together. We exercised together. He taught me how
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Speaker 1: to dance, how to drive. He was quite the dancer,
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Speaker 1: by the way, Karen Start. He was a life of
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Speaker 1: the party. He met my dad many many times. And
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Speaker 1: the thought that this could happen to his body at
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Speaker 1: the funeral home, I mean, person, the families are already
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Speaker 1: dealing with so much with a loss, and then to
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Speaker 1: imagine this is happening in the back rooms. What does
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Speaker 1: that do to a person? And why are you so
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Speaker 1: vulnerable at the time your loved one has passed away. Well,
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Speaker 1: I mean people are trying to cope with loss and
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Speaker 1: not as you know, Nancy, not having that person in
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Speaker 1: your life. And it's very important to be able to
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Speaker 1: go through some kind of ritual after people died, so
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Speaker 1: that you hold them near. For so many people, they
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Speaker 1: want to see the body or they want to remain
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Speaker 1: it's a symbol of this person lived and I love them.
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Speaker 1: I cared about them and they go on in my memory,
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Speaker 1: and when they are faced with something like this, it's devastating,
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Speaker 1: just devastating to imagine that they thought they were with
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Speaker 1: their loved ones even though the people had died. And
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Speaker 1: then to discuss or that someone has done something, taken
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Speaker 1: the body. They've been duped at a time when they
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Speaker 1: are most vulnerable. It's horrific. You know. I'm just trying
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Speaker 1: to figure out how this whole thing came to light.
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Speaker 1: Straight back to Nicole Parton, investigate a reporter on this
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Speaker 1: special case, a mother and daughter duo allegedly selling body
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Speaker 1: parts secretly of clients that came to their funeral home,
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Speaker 1: their well established family owned funeral home in Colorado. To
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Speaker 1: Nicole Parton, how did authorities find out this was happening.
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Speaker 1: I mean, certainly the victims weren't speaking, No, they weren't,
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Speaker 1: but the family members were beginning to be suspicious when
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Speaker 1: they were given the created remains of their loved ones,
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Speaker 1: or what they thought were the cremated remains of their
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Speaker 1: loved ones. Open and don't like the way you just
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Speaker 1: said that, Nicole Parton, or what they thought. It's just
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Speaker 1: like when you hear in the movie you know the
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Speaker 1: bad is going to happen. What do you mean by
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Speaker 1: what they thought were the cremated remains. Well, we have
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Speaker 1: stories of family members opening the urn, opening the container,
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Speaker 1: looking into the ashes and beginning to question what they
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Speaker 1: were given as cremated remains, beginning to question, is this
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Speaker 1: really the ashes of my loved one? So they reported this,
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Speaker 1: Why would you question that? I mean, what are ashes
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Speaker 1: supposed to look like? Well? That can vary, of course,
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Speaker 1: but I think some of them were able to look
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Speaker 1: in and see obvious signs. Some one family complained they
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Speaker 1: looked in the urn and they saw sands in the urn,
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Speaker 1: and they knew, surely the cremated remains of my loved one,
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Speaker 1: the ashes wouldn't look like sands. They began to complain
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Speaker 1: to the local authorities. Detectives ran some analysis of those
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Speaker 1: ashes and shun up. It came back to be all
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Speaker 1: kinds of things other than cremated remains. Okay, when you
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Speaker 1: think of that special mother daughter relationship like the one
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Speaker 1: I have with my mom who now lives with me,
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Speaker 1: are the one I hope to have for life with
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Speaker 1: my daughter Lucy, you don't really think about selling body
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Speaker 1: parts as part of the Equation Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.
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Speaker 1: We are taking a look at a mother daughter duo
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Speaker 1: out of Colorado allegedly selling body parts secretly, sometimes whole bodies.
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Speaker 1: Take a listen to our friends at kmgh DI Verse
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Speaker 1: seven Jennifer Kovaleski. Colorado doesn't regulate body part brokers, and
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Speaker 1: we're the only state that doesn't license funeral directors, which
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Speaker 1: means no background checks. What this funeral home is accused
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Speaker 1: of doing is eye opening and illegal or not raises
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Speaker 1: serious ethical questions. He entrusted me to take care of
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Speaker 1: his final wishes well. Also, trying to plan a funeral
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Speaker 1: is a trying task for any family. Something just wasn't
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Speaker 1: right from the beginning. But what Ron Maybury says he
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Speaker 1: experienced its sunset. Me's a funeral home in Montrose only
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Speaker 1: added to the pain. I thought we were just doing
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Speaker 1: like an organ donation type thing, but apparently that's not
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Speaker 1: the case. In his final days, maybe, he says, his
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Speaker 1: friend Rex Dunlop made a dying request to have his
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Speaker 1: glass eye placed with his ashes. N I spent weeks
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Speaker 1: trying to recover his eye. They couldn't track down the
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Speaker 1: researcher who supposedly bought his head. Maybe he says he
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Speaker 1: never got the eye and couldn't complete his friend's final wish. Okay,
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Speaker 1: there were just jumped out at me. Joining me is
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Speaker 1: a specialist. And yes, there are legal specialists in this area.
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Speaker 1: That's what they do day in, day out. Just like
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Speaker 1: when I went to law school, I knew all wanted
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Speaker 1: to be a felony oct Put the bad guys in jail,
13:02
Speaker 1: and you develop an expertise. You take constitutional law, criminal law,
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Speaker 1: criminal procedure, rico, organized crime, every class possible, and what
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Speaker 1: you want your expertise to be. Wendy Weener is joining
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Speaker 1: US attorney specializing in funeral home law. And I know
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Speaker 1: you're not specifically talking about the Sunset Macy case, but
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Speaker 1: here's my general question. Wendy, and you are a renowned
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Speaker 1: expert in this field. How can a state like Colorado
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Speaker 1: not be licensed like other states? I thought it was
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Speaker 1: a uniform across the country. Oh, Nancy, First, thanks for
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Speaker 1: having me. The regulation of the deathcare industry is on
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Speaker 1: a state by state basis, just like the regulation of
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Speaker 1: the insurance industry, and in fact, a lot of the
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Speaker 1: laws and rules that govern the deathcare industry grew out
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Speaker 1: of the various insurance codes of the various states, so
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Speaker 1: it is on a state by state basis. Colorado's regulatory
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Speaker 1: scheme is unusual, and the market there does, for the
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Speaker 1: most part, govern itself, if you will, inasmuch as a
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Speaker 1: funeral homes that don't do a good job for their
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Speaker 1: customers eventually are out of business. Colorado does regulate some
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Speaker 1: aspects of the destare industry, but this particular aspect was
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Speaker 1: not one of them. They govern themselves. I mean, you
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Speaker 1: can say that about pirates or dope dealers. Who's left
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Speaker 1: to govern themselves? I mean, I know, theoretically in America
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Speaker 1: we govern ourselves, we elect our leaders, but we are
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Speaker 1: subject to rules and regulations. Having a hard time getting
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Speaker 1: my mind around what you just said, Wendy Wiener is
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Speaker 1: joining me, who is renowned expert in funeral home legislation,
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Speaker 1: law and regulation. When you say that they're our regulations
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Speaker 1: in place, what type of regulations are put on funeral homes?
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Speaker 1: Because I can tell you something. It would be a
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Speaker 1: war between the gods if anybody touched so much as
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Speaker 1: a lot of hair on my father's head at the
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Speaker 1: funeral home. Oh no, that is not going to happen
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Speaker 1: on my watch. So what kind of regulations are in place? Well,
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Speaker 1: generally speaking, and I think important to this case, the
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Speaker 1: laws of most states require specific authorizations for funeral homes
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Speaker 1: to take specific actions with regard to a decedent's remains. So,
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Speaker 1: for instance, in Florida, where I live and where I
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Speaker 1: primarily practice, the laws specifically require authorization given by the
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Speaker 1: person legally authorized to do so by law for things
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Speaker 1: such as embalming, preparation, removal of the mains. And in
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Speaker 1: a case such as this, there are authorizations that are
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Speaker 1: required when a family may want to participate in one
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Speaker 1: of the body donation programs that are widely available in
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Speaker 1: the United States. Right now, you mean like organ donors
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Speaker 1: that happened at the hospital, though not at the funeral home.
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Speaker 1: You're exactly right. This is not an organ donation situation
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Speaker 1: per se. At the funeral establishment or associated with the
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Speaker 1: funeral establishment. There are often programs in place for the
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Speaker 1: harvesting of certain body parts, eyes, skin, lots of things
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Speaker 1: that can be beneficial for both scientific study. Okay, I've
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Speaker 1: got a question right there, weener with us specialist in
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Speaker 1: funeral home law. Right there, doctor Kendall Crowns and remind
17:05
Speaker 1: me to circle back. Nan. So, I want to find
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Speaker 1: out the difference between a funeral home and a mortuary.
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Speaker 1: Is there one, doctor, Kendall Crowns. I thought when you
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Speaker 1: did organ donation, you had to do that, while don't
17:17
Speaker 1: you have to do that when the person is still alive.
17:20
Speaker 1: So some organ donation you do have to do it
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Speaker 1: while the individuals still alive or the tissue is viable
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Speaker 1: anymore and you can't transplant it. But there is parts
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Speaker 1: of donation that can be done after the body is dead,
17:32
Speaker 1: but it has to be done with a certain time period.
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Speaker 1: That is a bone and some soft tissues including heart
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Speaker 1: valves that they'll recover after the after the person is decease,
17:44
Speaker 1: as well as cornea is from the eyes. Wendy Weener
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Speaker 1: with me, lawyer specializing in funeral home law. So, Wendy,
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Speaker 1: what's the difference in a funeral home in a mortuary?
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Speaker 1: There's really not one. It's a nomenclature, long held question
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Speaker 1: in my mind. Okay, let's get back to mother daughter duo,
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Speaker 1: you know. To Kloyd Steiger thirty six years, Seattle PD,
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Speaker 1: twenty two years homicide now author Cloyd Steiger. Have you
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Speaker 1: ever dealt with people trafficking in body parts or bodies?
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Speaker 1: You know, I really never have because my body experiences
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Speaker 1: is limited to murder victims who you know, go under autopsies,
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Speaker 1: So you know, I've never never heard anything really like that.
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Speaker 1: It's kind of shocking that I've had dismembered bodies. I've
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Speaker 1: had um bodies that were let me just say in
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Speaker 1: a not euphemistically tampered with post mortem Doctor Kendall Crown's
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Speaker 1: DEFU Medical Examiner, Travis County, Texas, have you ever dealt
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Speaker 1: with the sale of body parts? So, yeah, yes, they have.
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Speaker 1: And when I used to work in Chicago, they would
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Speaker 1: occasionally have packages that were being trafficked through O'Hare Airport
18:56
Speaker 1: that would be seized and then they would be full
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Speaker 1: of like human skulls and they bring them into the
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Speaker 1: office for us to identify with human remains and what
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Speaker 1: they were being What people do you be doing with
19:08
Speaker 1: human skulls? From what I understood when I asked about
19:13
Speaker 1: your very same question, as they were being sold to
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Speaker 1: dental schools so they could work on a tief. Okay,
19:20
Speaker 1: you know that's one aspect of criminal law. I hadn't
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Speaker 1: thought about yet, but I guess there's always something to
19:25
Speaker 1: be explored. To Nicole Parton joining us Crimaline investigative reporter.
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Speaker 1: In this specific case, she is a licensed funeral director.
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Speaker 1: From what I understand, Nicole Parton, this doesn't sound like
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Speaker 1: your traditional organ donor situation. What allegedly was happening with
19:47
Speaker 1: this mother daughter duo and Karen start, I'm gonna circle
19:50
Speaker 1: back to you about the mother daughter dynamic and selling
19:54
Speaker 1: illegally selling body parts together. But Nicole Parton, what exactly
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Speaker 1: were they doing? This was not on the up and up,
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Speaker 1: absolutely not. This was not organ donation. This was not
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Speaker 1: in consent of the family members. So family members were
20:09
Speaker 1: not signing consent forms saying that they authorized the funeral
20:13
Speaker 1: home to donate parts of their loved one, but rather
20:17
Speaker 1: the family was going in purchasing in most cases cremation
20:21
Speaker 1: services for their loved one, and rather than this mother
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Speaker 1: daughter performing as they should have been the cremation, they
20:28
Speaker 1: were selling the body parts in some cases a thousand
20:32
Speaker 1: dollars for upper legs, five hundred dollars for heads, two
20:36
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty dollars for needs. So they were never
20:39
Speaker 1: embombing or never cremating the loved one. They were giving
20:43
Speaker 1: the family back an arm full of something other than
20:47
Speaker 1: their loved one, bashes and selling their bodies. Crime stories
21:04
Speaker 1: with Nancy Grace, a Colorado funeral home is causing more
21:10
Speaker 1: suffering for grieving families. He's very unsettling questions for any
21:14
Speaker 1: you know survivor that's creaming the loss of the loved one.
21:18
Speaker 1: Terry Thorsby's parents died within six months of each other.
21:21
Speaker 1: Her lawyer, Chris Cowan, says she arranged for them to
21:25
Speaker 1: be cremated by Sunset mesa funeral home and crematorium in
21:28
Speaker 1: montro was about one hundred miles north of Durango. They
21:31
Speaker 1: were expecting to get, of course, the remains back. According
21:34
Speaker 1: to a lawsuit filed last week, Thorsby learned from the
21:37
Speaker 1: FBI that her mother wasn't resting in peace. Her mother's
21:41
Speaker 1: published both arms from the shoulder down her mother's right
21:45
Speaker 1: knee and to her foot, and the mother's left knee
21:47
Speaker 1: had been harvested before the cremation and sold to a
21:54
Speaker 1: research facility or some sort of medical Sylvie, and that
21:58
Speaker 1: her head had been severed. Okay. Wendy Wiener joining me
22:02
Speaker 1: attorney specializing in funeral home law. What type of research
22:07
Speaker 1: institute would be part of sales like this? Now, I
22:13
Speaker 1: know you are not going to talk about sunset MESA.
22:17
Speaker 1: I understand that, But what about research and development institutes.
22:21
Speaker 1: Aren't they under a duty to figure out where they're
22:25
Speaker 1: getting body parts? I mean, I'm going to go to
22:28
Speaker 1: the grocery store and I'm going to buy X, Y,
22:31
Speaker 1: and Z. I know where it's coming from. I'm not
22:35
Speaker 1: going to go out on the street and try to
22:37
Speaker 1: find those items falling off the back of a truck.
22:40
Speaker 1: I have a duty to provide to my children wholesome,
22:46
Speaker 1: sanitized food that's good for them. I mean, my analogy is,
22:51
Speaker 1: don't research institutes have a duty to figure out where
22:55
Speaker 1: body parts are coming from? Well? I think your question
22:58
Speaker 1: really gets to the heart of this matter, and that
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Speaker 1: is what authorization has been given by the family for
23:04
Speaker 1: the use of the decedents remains. I would suspect that
23:09
Speaker 1: in a case such as this, where the families were
23:13
Speaker 1: not aware and where it appears that some type of
23:16
Speaker 1: fraud was being perpetrated against the families involved, Likewise, there
23:21
Speaker 1: could have been a type of fraud being perpetrated against
23:25
Speaker 1: the end recipient of the of the parts of the
23:30
Speaker 1: decedents remains, and so it's entirely possible that the medical
23:37
Speaker 1: institutes or the research facilities that ultimately received these portions
23:42
Speaker 1: of human remains were not aware that families failed to
23:46
Speaker 1: receive or failed to give the appropriate authorization. I want
23:50
Speaker 1: to circle back to unit whole parton joining US licensed
23:54
Speaker 1: funeral director or investigating this case for US at crime
23:57
Speaker 1: online dot Com. I also understand that this too mother
24:01
Speaker 1: and daughter has in coage allegedly sent bodies and body
24:06
Speaker 1: parts that had actually tested positive for infectious diseases or
24:14
Speaker 1: people who died from illnesses such as HIV, hepatitis B,
24:19
Speaker 1: hepatitis C. Although they certify to the I'll just go
24:24
Speaker 1: with research institutes or whoever's buying the body parts illegally
24:29
Speaker 1: certifying to them that the bodies and body parts did
24:33
Speaker 1: not have any such illnesses. So what became of those
24:38
Speaker 1: body parts and could they have infected others? As another
24:42
Speaker 1: big question, what do we know about that nicole partment
24:46
Speaker 1: of anything? We know some about that. But yeah, in fact,
24:50
Speaker 1: they were sending out these bodies or body parts and
24:54
Speaker 1: again without full disclosure, without the truth concerning diseases or
25:01
Speaker 1: the infections that were inside the body. So could they
25:04
Speaker 1: have potentially been a farm. Absolutely, And again this goes
25:08
Speaker 1: back to because they didn't disclose, they weren't honest, not
25:12
Speaker 1: only with the families, but with those receiving the body.
25:15
Speaker 1: We know the mother daughter duo ignored, according to law
25:21
Speaker 1: enforcement wishes of mourning relatives on at least twelve occasions
25:26
Speaker 1: by shipping bodies or body parts to a third party.
25:29
Speaker 1: Now you heard this one woman talking about her mother's
25:32
Speaker 1: head being severed. Another facet of this is the mother
25:36
Speaker 1: daughter dynamic coccion hess mother and daughter each fueling the
25:42
Speaker 1: other's desire to illegally sell body parts. You know, I
25:47
Speaker 1: was just thinking about this, Karen start as I was
25:49
Speaker 1: taking a sip of this. You know, I'm a tea drinker,
25:52
Speaker 1: but my daughter insisted she makes a special concoction. She
25:57
Speaker 1: whips cold water with instant coffee, adds stivia and milk,
26:04
Speaker 1: and I don't know what she does, but she makes
26:07
Speaker 1: a drink for me. And what I see usually at night,
26:12
Speaker 1: right before I fall asleep, as I see John David
26:15
Speaker 1: and Lucy's face asleep on the pillow. How does a
26:19
Speaker 1: mother daughter relationship get so twisted that together they're like
26:25
Speaker 1: two witches around the fire, gnashing their teeth and switching
26:29
Speaker 1: their tails, selling illegal body parts against the wishes of family.
26:36
Speaker 1: How does that dynamic get so twisted, Karen, Well, you
26:40
Speaker 1: just discussed it, Nancy when you talked about the bond
26:43
Speaker 1: between you and Lucy. So the two of you are
26:46
Speaker 1: so tight that she loves to be able to make
26:50
Speaker 1: this concoction for you. And mothers and daughters many times
26:55
Speaker 1: have that kind of really unusual strong bond. So if
26:59
Speaker 1: the mother is somebody who is not a good person,
27:03
Speaker 1: whose criminal mentality, there's a good chance that the daughter
27:08
Speaker 1: will go along with it. Because you look up to
27:10
Speaker 1: your mother. Mothers. We see them as wise and they
27:14
Speaker 1: know it all. They help us, And it doesn't surprise
27:17
Speaker 1: me at all that that strong bunt could be converted
27:22
Speaker 1: into something that would be evil. Here's the reality, you know,
27:25
Speaker 1: Cloyd Steiger thirty six here Seattle PD and now author
27:31
Speaker 1: we know of twelve firm allegations made by law enforcement.
27:37
Speaker 1: There's no telling how many other times has happened, how
27:42
Speaker 1: long they have been doing this before they were finally caught.
27:45
Speaker 1: You've got one guy looking for a glass eye you've
27:49
Speaker 1: got somebody else. They're missing their gold teeth. The body
27:52
Speaker 1: is a severed head, a kneecap, and nobody knows exactly
27:57
Speaker 1: what happened. This may have been going on for years
28:01
Speaker 1: before it finally made its way to law enforcement. Cloyd. Yeah,
28:05
Speaker 1: you know that's my experience, Nancy, that we're just looking
28:08
Speaker 1: at the tip of the iceberg, and these the ones
28:10
Speaker 1: that got caught on. There are probably hundreds, if not
28:12
Speaker 1: thousands of other cases where people were unsuspecting and never
28:15
Speaker 1: challenged it, where they gone away with it. It's syspathetic.
28:19
Speaker 1: And you know another issue is, to you, Nicole Parton,
28:24
Speaker 1: licensed funeral director, how many times do people actually look
28:30
Speaker 1: in and urn? I know you recall my cat Cocoa,
28:35
Speaker 1: the stray that I took in solid Black. I loved
28:39
Speaker 1: him so much, had him eighteen years and I was
28:42
Speaker 1: not even a cat person. So he was cremated and
28:45
Speaker 1: he is in a wooden urn. I've never really looked
28:49
Speaker 1: or sifted through the ashes. So what would you expect
28:53
Speaker 1: to find in an urn? What would ashes look like? Nicole?
28:59
Speaker 1: That can vary, the amount of ashes can vary. And
29:02
Speaker 1: you're right, most family members don't even look inside, which
29:07
Speaker 1: echoes what you were saying earlier. This has probably been
29:10
Speaker 1: going on for so long and has happened to many
29:13
Speaker 1: other families. But when families do look inside, you can't
29:16
Speaker 1: expect to see different colors. Sometimes small particles of bone
29:21
Speaker 1: you can expect sometimes if their loved one had maybe
29:26
Speaker 1: received pins or screws from a broken bone. You can
29:30
Speaker 1: see those in the bottom of the earn. You can
29:31
Speaker 1: see those mixed in with the ashes. But certainly it
29:35
Speaker 1: would not look like sand as some of these witnesses
29:37
Speaker 1: are saying. It's it's a darker color, and you could
29:42
Speaker 1: definitely tell an ash as opposed to some of these
29:46
Speaker 1: things that they were placing inside the arn. I guarantee
29:51
Speaker 1: you that a lot of these people never even looked
29:54
Speaker 1: inside to see what was in the arn. We are
29:58
Speaker 1: talking about a mug her daughter, duo coach and hess
30:03
Speaker 1: that allegedly took part in a wide ranging scam to
30:09
Speaker 1: sell body parts out of their Sunset masa funeral home
30:14
Speaker 1: in Colorado. But they're not the only ones. Take a
30:18
Speaker 1: listen to CBS four Miami reporter Joan Murray. When that's
30:22
Speaker 1: her face, it looks like someone had through acid on
30:28
Speaker 1: her or she was pushed into a fire and just
30:32
Speaker 1: left the burn. Those were the gruesome last images Ebony
30:36
Speaker 1: Morgan says she has of her eleven year old daughter.
30:39
Speaker 1: She claims had a botched burial. She was a sweet girl.
30:42
Speaker 1: She used the always on the way home and across
30:45
Speaker 1: She's taught to her dad, to her dad about how
30:47
Speaker 1: his you know, her day was help him take his
30:50
Speaker 1: work shoes off. Like we don't have that anymore. My
30:54
Speaker 1: kids they're just standing us the doorway, like they don't
30:58
Speaker 1: even go on that side of the house. Ebity Morgan's daughter,
31:01
Speaker 1: Riasia Washington died on vacation in Georgia from an asthma attack.
31:06
Speaker 1: Her parents said they paid Shawn Johnson Funeral Home of
31:09
Speaker 1: Riviera Beach to preserve the body, drive her back to Florida,
31:12
Speaker 1: and a range of proper service. Instead, they said the
31:15
Speaker 1: body was never embombed or refrigerated. Their explanation was, we
31:20
Speaker 1: were trying to save the family money, therefore we brought
31:23
Speaker 1: the body back without having an embombed in Georgia, to
31:27
Speaker 1: which the family had no knowledge of. Time stories with
31:44
Speaker 1: Nancy Grace. In the last weeks, a family has sued
31:49
Speaker 1: a Riviera Beach funeral home claiming this little girl's body
31:54
Speaker 1: was left to decompose. Take a listen to a press
31:59
Speaker 1: conference where mom Ebony is speaking about this lawsuit. When
32:03
Speaker 1: we took pictures of my daughter, she asked us not to. UM.
32:07
Speaker 1: I didn't understand why I was scared. I was scared
32:13
Speaker 1: when I was standing there with Sean. UM. I didn't
32:16
Speaker 1: know after seeing my daughter looking like that, no skin
32:21
Speaker 1: on her body, her face is that? I mean, I
32:26
Speaker 1: just can't. Her head was the size of a basketball,
32:32
Speaker 1: like she my baby was. She was just so big
32:36
Speaker 1: and stinking she was. It was. It was horrible. I
32:42
Speaker 1: could see it on Sean's face. She was scared presenting
32:44
Speaker 1: my daughter to me like that. She was scared, and
32:47
Speaker 1: I was scared because she was scared. I didn't know
32:49
Speaker 1: at that point what she was capable of. I was
32:52
Speaker 1: just ready to go and call the police and get
32:56
Speaker 1: someone here to see what I had just saw, because
32:59
Speaker 1: that was just joining me. Nicole Parton Crime Online dot
33:03
Speaker 1: Com investigative reporter Nicole Parton what happened there in Riviera Beach, Florida,
33:09
Speaker 1: And this has just occurred, very sad situation, Nancy. I
33:13
Speaker 1: can't imagine the family's horrific pain when they viewed their
33:17
Speaker 1: daughter in this condition. So apparently the girl passed away
33:21
Speaker 1: in Georgia, and then the Florida funeral home transported her
33:25
Speaker 1: body back to Florida. Not an uncommon thing, but in
33:29
Speaker 1: this case uncommon in the fact that they didn't have
33:32
Speaker 1: her involved before the transportation, and then, according to the allegations,
33:37
Speaker 1: once they arrived in Florida, still no preservation of the
33:41
Speaker 1: body took place, still not in bomb, still not placed
33:44
Speaker 1: in a refrigerated, climate controlled facility, and of course, unfortunately
33:49
Speaker 1: the obvious took place. Their little girl began to decompose.
33:53
Speaker 1: Here is more of the mom in her heartbreak, talking
33:56
Speaker 1: about her eleven year old little girl at a press conference.
34:01
Speaker 1: This is ebony. When I saw her face, it looks
34:06
Speaker 1: like someone had threw acid on her, or she was
34:12
Speaker 1: pushed into a fire and just left to burn. Her
34:18
Speaker 1: face was unrecognizable. I didn't think that was my child.
34:25
Speaker 1: Sean tried to cover her. As we continue to try
34:29
Speaker 1: to pull the sheets off of her, she just continued
34:33
Speaker 1: to pull them back over and my darter hand was
34:37
Speaker 1: out and I touched her hand and I asked Sean,
34:41
Speaker 1: I said, Sean, is this is this my daughter's handed.
34:44
Speaker 1: Is something happened to it, like did her hand fall
34:46
Speaker 1: off and you had to put a fake hand here?
34:48
Speaker 1: Because this hand it looks see through like this hen
34:52
Speaker 1: is see through. It looks like a mannequin hand that
34:56
Speaker 1: you see in the nailselin. She goes, no, I told
35:00
Speaker 1: you Rhasia, she had a skin slip. She had a
35:04
Speaker 1: skin slip, Ebony, I told you that. Saying no, oh
35:06
Speaker 1: you didn't. It's just almost too much for me to
35:10
Speaker 1: take in. First she loses her daughter at eleven years
35:12
Speaker 1: old with an asthma attack. Then her body is bungled
35:16
Speaker 1: like this, I mean, according to the mother, the little girl,
35:19
Speaker 1: Rais's body was not properly ebombed or refrigerated for nearly
35:24
Speaker 1: two weeks. The body was at the funeral home. Nicole
35:28
Speaker 1: Parton Crime Online dot Com reporter investigating this case. What
35:33
Speaker 1: do we think exactly happened? Well, the allegation state the obvious.
35:38
Speaker 1: Unfortunately that the body who was transported without embombing the
35:44
Speaker 1: funeral home has yet to really give an explanation. They
35:48
Speaker 1: have said something like they were trying to save the
35:50
Speaker 1: family money. My question to them would be they should
35:54
Speaker 1: have placed her in refrigeration. She could have been preserved.
35:57
Speaker 1: There are measures that could have could have taken place,
36:01
Speaker 1: and I will be very curious to see the outcome. Well,
36:04
Speaker 1: I'm curious too. I'm curious as to why there's not
36:06
Speaker 1: a criminal investigation going on, Nicole Parton, is there? You
36:10
Speaker 1: know at this point there is not. They are investigating,
36:13
Speaker 1: but police confirmed that they've responded this. They're trying to
36:16
Speaker 1: investigate to see what's going on, but at this point
36:20
Speaker 1: no criminal charges have been made. Wow. A family now
36:24
Speaker 1: suing a Riviera Beach funeral home claiming the little girl's
36:27
Speaker 1: body was left to decomposed. To doctor Kendall Crown's joining me,
36:31
Speaker 1: Deputy Medical Examiner of Travis County, Texas in Austin, this
36:35
Speaker 1: is only compounded by a parent, the grief of a
36:38
Speaker 1: parent losing a child at a young age, just eleven
36:41
Speaker 1: years old, a beautiful little girl. And now this did
36:46
Speaker 1: you hear the way the mother described what the body
36:50
Speaker 1: looked like when she managed to get to see the body.
36:54
Speaker 1: What did that description tell you as to what happened?
36:58
Speaker 1: Doctor Crowns. All the descriptions that I'm hearing is it's
37:02
Speaker 1: moderate decompositions. So the body has been unrefrigerated or not
37:08
Speaker 1: put in a cold environment for a period of time,
37:11
Speaker 1: and the body is beginning to break it down. The
37:13
Speaker 1: swelling that they're talking about of her head and her
37:16
Speaker 1: body is from bacteria of creating gas, and that causes
37:20
Speaker 1: the body to bloat and swell up. And then the
37:23
Speaker 1: mother referred to skin slippage. There's the epidermal and dermal
37:28
Speaker 1: layer of skins of the top part of the bottom
37:30
Speaker 1: part of the skin, and they're attached by bombs. And
37:33
Speaker 1: when these bombs begin to break down, the skin actually epidermis,
37:38
Speaker 1: or the surface of the skin, slips off and kind
37:41
Speaker 1: of like a thin layer of tissue and it almost
37:45
Speaker 1: looks like a gloss. Oh man. Yeah, it's hard enough
37:49
Speaker 1: dealing with grief, much less the loss of your child
37:53
Speaker 1: and then this, But in this funeral home world, we're
38:00
Speaker 1: just telling you the tip of the iceberg. Take a
38:03
Speaker 1: listen to a former Uniontown funeral director who ultimately was
38:09
Speaker 1: sent to prison for fraud. This is Pittsburgh KDKA two
38:13
Speaker 1: news reporter Ross Giadatti. Because Marski pleaded guilty to swindling
38:18
Speaker 1: almost a half a million dollars from many people over
38:21
Speaker 1: the age of sixty Today, of course, the sentence was
38:24
Speaker 1: read out, and many of the folks that he allegedly
38:27
Speaker 1: took advantage of are not happy about it. After Stephen E.
38:30
Speaker 1: Kazmorski was sentenced to up to eight years behind bars.
38:34
Speaker 1: His victims' reactions to that sentencing ranged from shock to
38:38
Speaker 1: outrage and slap in the face. Cost a man's a thief.
38:42
Speaker 1: He stole our money, probably should have been maybe more.
38:46
Speaker 1: The fifty two year old disgraced Uniontown funeral director pleaded
38:50
Speaker 1: guilty to bilking more than half a million dollars in
38:53
Speaker 1: prepaid funeral arrangements from roughly one hundred and forty individuals.
38:58
Speaker 1: When he took the stand today, speaking to the victims,
39:01
Speaker 1: he said that he wasn't a bad man, just a
39:04
Speaker 1: bad businessman. Well, that is certainly putting perfume on the pig.
39:09
Speaker 1: What are prepaid funeral plans in a nutshell, Wendy Wayne,
39:15
Speaker 1: or what are those? Prepaid funeral plans sometimes referred to
39:19
Speaker 1: as pre need contracts are contracts made with a funeral
39:24
Speaker 1: home by a individual, by an individual or by a
39:28
Speaker 1: family wherein the family comes in and makes all of
39:32
Speaker 1: the arrangements ahead of time. It's actually a wonderful thing
39:35
Speaker 1: to do, takes the burden off of the family at
39:40
Speaker 1: the time that the decedent passes, but the arrangements are
39:44
Speaker 1: made and the funeral is paid for in advance. All
39:48
Speaker 1: of the states require that the funds related to those
39:52
Speaker 1: contracts be addressed in one of just a handful of ways.
39:57
Speaker 1: Either those funds have to be put into a trust
40:00
Speaker 1: account and maintained there until the decedent has passed, or
40:06
Speaker 1: the funds must be pushed into an insurance policy. And
40:11
Speaker 1: then in a couple of states there are some other alternatives,
40:14
Speaker 1: but primarily that's what it is, and that's how it was,
40:17
Speaker 1: taking advantage of families, parents grieving at the time of
40:23
Speaker 1: a loss, bilking them out of thousands of dollars and
40:28
Speaker 1: according to this guy, who says he's just a bad businessman,
40:31
Speaker 1: nearly a million dollars. We wait as justice unfolds. Nancy
40:37
Speaker 1: Grace crime story signing off Goodbye friend,