Florida – Police arrested two employees of brock’s Home Town Funeral Home in Callaway after 16 bodies were found in deplorable conditions. Funeral director Gregory Dunphy, 64, was charged with six counts of unlawful preservation and storage of human remains for having kept corpses in the main section of the building without any refrigeration.
For her part, Felicia Boesch, the 39-year-old daughter of the funeral home’s owner, was charged with ten counts of unlawful preservation and storage of human remains for the bodies stored in a cooler at 62F. The bodies were supposed to be kept at no more than 40 degrees. Cremations had not been performed according to some relatives’ wishes, and none of the corpses had been embalmed, WJHG-TV reported. Felicia Boesch declared she did perform some cremations and refused to answer additional questions. Sheriff’s spokeswoman Ruth Corley declared investigators and the state attorney’s office are yet to determine whether Dunphy and Boesch will face additional charges, according to a report by Fox News.
Sheriff’s spokeswoman Ruth Corley declared investigators and the state attorney’s office are yet to determine whether Dunphy and Boesch will face additional charges, according to a report by Fox News.
Dunphy told News 13 that Boesch had to handle a family emergency and that he accepted the job for only three weeks as a favor to her, adding that the conditions of the funeral home were terrible when he arrived there. The man claimed he was not aware that the bodies had been stored at improper temperatures because he had no access to the cooler.
He also declared that he had no access to extra supplies and had no more body bags to store the corpses. He added that he called the Bay County Sheriff’s Office about the deplorable conditions of the place, saying that he found bodies outside the cooler.
“The smell, the physical condition of the remains themselves. I mean that’s somebody who is loved,” Dunphy said, as reported by Fox News. “I’m, morally and ethically, I was bound to report it, but I still had to give Felicia the chance to correct it.”
A press release from the sheriff’s office states that investigators acting on a tip arrived at the funeral home at around 5 pm Sunday and found flies throughout the building, as the Daily Mail reported. Ruth Corley, a spokesperson with the sheriff’s office, told the Northwest Florida Daily News that the funeral parlor was still in full operations when investigators found the decomposed bodies. Corley mentioned that they were even receiving people there.
“There’s a lot of grief involved, and our thoughts and prayers are with them, it’s a very tough situation,” Sherriff Tommy Ford told WJHG-TV. “We’re trying to be as sensitive as we can.”
The medical examiner’s office has taken custody of the 16 bodies, and a separate funeral home is in charge of the funeral arrangements. The owners of Brock’s Home Town Funeral Home surrendered their state license Tuesday, and the business has been shut down.
Family grief
Some relatives of the deceased whose bodies had been kept at varying degrees of decay publicly expressed their shock. Grieving family member Kimberly Gates said she and her family were devastated to hear that her sister’s body was among those discovered decomposed at the funeral home and felt terrible for not being able to view her for obvious reasons, according to a report by NWF Daily News.
MyPanhandle.com reported that Scott Fernandez had also lost his hopes to have an open-casket funeral for his mother, who died on August 11.
Source: Fox News