Strange story.
Oct. 13, 2018
The decomposing remains of 11 infants were found on Friday after Michigan authorities received an anonymous tip that sent them to a shuttered funeral home in eastern Detroit.
The bodies were found in a box and a coffin that were hidden in a drop ceiling between the first and second floors of the Cantrell Funeral Home, Lt. Brian Bowser of the Detroit Police Department told reporters on Friday night. It was unclear how long the remains had been there.
He said the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs received a letter about the remains on Friday afternoon and went to the funeral home. Agency officials then called the police.
Lieutenant Bowser said officers discovered “11 remains of infants, stillborns.”
The state department shut down the funeral home in April because of “deplorable, unsanitary conditions and other violations,” it said in a statement at the time.
It found that embalmed bodies had been stored for months in a garage without refrigeration, and that some were badly decomposed. It listed violations including “fraud, deceit, or dishonesty, incompetence, and gross negligence in the practice of mortuary science.”
Jameca LaJoyce Boone, who was a manager at the funeral home for about a year until it shut down, said on Saturday that her work involved funeral services and she did not know about the remains in the ceiling.
“This is horrific, and it’s unethical,” said Ms. Boone, who was not an owner or member of the family that ran the funeral home. “I don’t understand how it happened or why it happened, and I’m just at a loss for words. That’s not how the funeral industry operates.”
In a statement on Saturday, the state department said it had suspended the mortuary licenses for both the funeral home and Ms. Boone in April, adding that an investigation into the newly discovered bodies was underway.
The owner of the funeral home did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Saturday. The building where the corpses were found was bought last month by Quality Behavioral Health, a social services organization, its founder and president, Naveed Syed, said on Saturday.
He said that the building has been undergoing repairs and was not yet open to the public when he let the authorities in on Friday afternoon. He said the discovery was gruesome and disturbing, but not surprising.
“They closed it up in April because of this kind of thing; they found the bodies in the garage,” he said. When the state authorities asked to inspect the premises, “my gut was telling me there might be something fishy.”