Miscellaneous

Might Have Shoulda Considered Cremation, Eh?

Keep this in mind when your grandma dies and you can't afford her funeral expenses:

A funeral director accused of leaving a woman's body to decay in a parked hearse after her relatives failed to pay the bill was arrested on a felony charge of abusing a corpse, police said Wednesday. Watson and Sons Funeral Home embalmed the remains of Edna Kathleen Woods, 52, after she died of natural causes in November 2007, said Gadsden police Sgt. Jeff Wright. Relatives wanted the body cremated but failed to sign the necessary paperwork or pay owner Harold Watson Sr., he said.

After storing the corpse at his funeral home for more than a year, Wright said, the 76-year-old Watson decided to move it because he couldn't reach the woman's family.

Someone complained about a foul smell near downtown Gadsden, about 60 miles northeast of Birmingham, and officers on Tuesday found the woman's remains in a cardboard box that was inside a locked hearse parked on a piece of property that Watson owns.

A cardboard box inside a hearse? There are better ways to dump a corpse, dude. That's what rivers are for, right?

Full post as published by Quiz Law on February 26, 2009 (boomark / email).