r/nottheonion 19h ago

Kentucky funeral home sued after mixing up cremated remains and giving one family soil instead of ashes

https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/kentucky-funeral-home-sued-after-878062
1.9k Upvotes

228

u/pichael289 18h ago

There's alot of shady shit that goes down after death, official corners and medical examiners are in very short supply and funeral home owners are often rolling in money.

59

u/hectorxander 18h ago

It is a racket for sure.

Definate price fixing on urns and coffins and gravestones for starters.

It is called a trust, but laws forbidding price fixing are only as good as their enforcement.  The legal system and regulators are corrupt beyond hope and bot bothering to hid it, even as few citizens realize the scope of the corruption and still thinks the rules apply equally to a higher degree than they do.

8

u/Boringoldpants 14h ago

I think it's horrible, don't misunderstand. But I kind of get the high prices for urns. It's a one-time purchase per person per lifetime. That said, it's my loved ones' money at that point. Buy the overpriced urn or put me in a cardboard box. I won't care either way.

6

u/hectorxander 13h ago

I would just be buried 4 feet down.  Apple or cherry trees planted over it.  A few states are starting to allow something close to that CO but they need some expensive biodegradeable container.

For most of human history, we were buried, it is good for the soil, and there is no reason to take up space and resources in a graveyard for that.  Carve on a rock if you want, let nature flourish there.

4

u/Boringoldpants 13h ago

Cheers to that.

7

u/pichael289 11h ago

Also my family in a specific part of a specific state (don't want to call them out for a good reason probably get sued cause they are like that) owned alot of funeral homes. They would manipulate grieving widows into paying more, saying "don't you want your dead husband in heaven to see that you thought he deserved the very best?" And alot of times that "very best" for poorer people meant the "fancy cremation box". There was no fancy box, it was all the same cardboard or whatever, but it all got burned up so you couldn't tell.

Urn ashes aren't even ashes, they are mostly ground up bones since they don't burn, and the finer the bone meal the better the facility but not even money paid to them decided that, it's just whoever they used. My uncle, a multiple funeral home owner, used to brag about upselling these grieving widows on nonsense. This Same uncle showed up when my grandpa was dying from sepsis (he recovered, thankfully) to say he wouldn't help support him, but we don't need him to do it we have enough loving family members already. Anyways that same uncle died of covid because he thought Tucker Carlson was telling him the truth. Nope, he's dead. Guess how much of the family didn't go to his funeral? They were boasting about giving all their rich friends new cars right before this, while telling their actual family they won't help them. Pieces of shit. All funeral home owners need to be under strict scrutiny, since what they do is immoral. Way more disgusting than the drug addicts in our family, that's for sure. Horrible people, burning in hell according to their beliefs. They won't get to heaven, no fuckin way.

1

u/Mat_the_Duck_Lord 12h ago

There is a non-zero chance a relative of mine had their remains removed, grounded up and spread on the cemetery grounds to make room for Marilyn Monroe, as he was buried before that graveyard got popular and they eventually needed more room for wealthy folks remains so “evicted” around half the former tenants.

1

u/Front_Word4171 7h ago

They take advantage of people at their weakest moment.

102

u/skaliton 18h ago

the soil part is the most confusing. Like as a cursory glance the average person isn't going to know if the ashes are from a cremated body or grabbed from the fire outside but I'm pretty sure anyone would know the difference between ashes and dirt

23

u/malphonso 14h ago

The "ashes" you receive are more ground bits of bone than what you think of as ashes from a fire. The retort chamber with the body gets anywhere from 1600-2000⁰F (871-1093⁰C) and the only thing leftover from that is bones and other mineral heavy products that couldn't be vaporized.

Kitty litter is closer to cremains than either soil or ashes.

50

u/Jaxsdooropener 19h ago

I'm just gunna leave this here as a suggestion to the fact that it probably wasn't an accident. https://open.spotify.com/episode/4vnrZkBn5tKJRqqUYRg81k?si=-NBvsPXvTv-BuWM3gIcI1w

-3

u/Croakerboo 18h ago

What happened to respecting the hustle?

22

u/rd_rd_rd 16h ago

oh shit I just realized they could make so much moey by selling dead bodies to medical school or whatever and gave families random ashes, although they should be smart enough to give them ashes instead of soil.

4

u/timbitttts 15h ago

New business idea 💡✅

3

u/Alaishana 9h ago

Afaik, medical schools have all the bodies they need. There's no money in this. You got to line up to have your body taken for free disposal.

2

u/Couldnotbehelpd 2h ago

Medical schools are not gonna risk buying illegal bodies from undertakers. It’s not the 1700s that would be fucking insane if they did that.

15

u/Y34rZer0 18h ago

Bet it’s not the first time they’ve done that…

6

u/BadgeOfDishonour 15h ago

Mix up. Soil. Uh... what, do funeral homes often have large sacks of soil next to cremated remains? Is Home Depot in the funeral business these days?

Is there any reason why the crematorium would have a sack of soil in it? Sure, if the funeral home has grounds, it may have a bag of soil in a shed somewhere. But I assume they aren't cremating people in that shed. And they probably aren't storing their gardening supplies in their crematorium.

Also this:

 ...the funeral home did not have the facilities to perform cremations on sight...

I am really glad they can't flash-fry a body at a glance.

1

u/malphonso 14h ago

It's not uncommon for funeral homes to partner with a third party crematory.

5

u/BadgeOfDishonour 14h ago

That is not the point. The point is that there is no scenario where a crematorium would have a bag of soil in the same room as cremated remains. It would be like opening a jar of mayonnaise and finding it full of motor oil. It's nonsense. They aren't in the same space, so they are not mixed up at any point in time.

It's fraud, or a wildly implausible explanation. Those are the options. "Mix up" implies an accident, which is completely unbelievable.

1

u/malphonso 14h ago

I'm with you there. The only stuff stored in my crematory are the items necessary for cremation. It's also silly on its face. Cremains look nothing like soil, and there's no reason to place soil in an urn

This is 100% fraud. Whether it's by the funeral home or by the crematory, I'm not certain.

I was replying to your quote from the article regarding the home offering cremation but not having the equipment on the premises.

1

u/BadgeOfDishonour 14h ago

Ah I see what you were responding to. What I was pointing out was the word Sight. "Site" was the word they wanted. They do not have the facilities to perform a cremation on "sight" or "at a glance".

10

u/ceciliabee 17h ago

Having held a bag of cremains, it's insane that anyone would be brazen enough to try and pass off soil. If this was genuinely a mixup, there need to be new regulations to ensure all employees have functioning brains.

Although, the US is currently about to do a deregulation dump so I doubt this will happen. Enjoy the burning dumpster fire.

1

u/OrangeBug74 12h ago

20 years ago there was a crematorium in northwest Georgia that got behind on cremations. Rather than repair the problem equipment, bodies were simply left outside. Plastic bags of QwikCrete or bonemeal were sent to families. It went on a very long time with not idea which bodies belonged to which families.

A prison sentence followed for the operator

1

u/acmithi 5h ago

"And then, you get a box of ashes you can pretend are hers." -- Monty Python, undertaker sketch.

1

u/blackout-loud 4h ago

Asked for her mother in an earthen vessel but got Mother earth instead

3

u/SokkaHaikuBot 4h ago

Sokka-Haiku by blackout-loud:

Asked for her mother

In an earthen vessel but

Got Mother earth instead


Remember that one time Sokka accidentally used an extra syllable in that Haiku Battle in Ba Sing Se? That was a Sokka Haiku and you just made one.

1

u/slamdanceswithwolves 14h ago

Ashes to ashes, soil to soil.

0

u/SheriffHarryBawls 10h ago

Does it matter? It’s ashes. For all u know, those grandma’s ashes u released into the ocean were a buncha old porno magazines