Remains Of 63 Fetuses Found At Detroit Funeral Home - Details
Oct. 21 2018, Published 4:21 p.m. ET
An investigation is underway after 63 infants or fetuses were found at a funeral home in Detroit.
The latest horror find comes after authorities found 11 other fetuses at another funeral home in the city.
The discoveries have raised concerns about the handling and disposal of human remains by the city’s funeral homes.
On Friday, the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs found “heinous conditions and negligent conduct” at the Perry Funeral Home.
They removed 37 remains from boxes and 26 from a freezer. Some of the human remains there were found to be years old.
Authorities say the Perry Funeral Home may have committed criminal violations by failing to properly dispose of bodies or to facilitate their final dispositions, such as burial or cremation, in accordance with state laws.
The funeral home’s lawyer Joshua I. Arnkoff, said it had not committed any criminal offenses.
The remains were unclaimed by parents, the statement said, and the funeral home did not have the legal authority to conduct a final disposition — such as a burial or cremation — of those remains.
The business was closed on Friday and its license has been suspended.
The discovery was prompted in part by a lawsuit filed in July by a woman whose daughter, Alayah Laniece Davis, died shortly after she was born in a hospital in December 2014.
At the time, the mother said the body should be given to Wayne State University Medical School for research or educational purposes, the lawsuit said.
However, her daughter’s remains ended up in the custody of Perry Funeral Home and may have been stored at the Wayne State University School of Mortuary Science for years without the mother’s knowledge.
The lawsuit said the funeral home indicated, on a certificate of death, that the infant’s remains had been buried in a cemetery, even though they remained at the mortuary.
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Both the university and the hospital where the baby was born are named as defendants.
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