National Funeral Home Lets Hundreds Of Corpses Rot In Hallways
The National Funeral Home in Falls Church, Virginia stores unrefrigerated corpses, including some bound for Arlington National Cemetery, in hallways and garages for months on end, according to embalmer-turned-whistleblower Steven Napper. The Funeral Home's owner, Texas-based Service Corporation International, told Napper that they were unwilling to pay for refrigeration, which would prevent corpses from leaking and growing mold.
During his time there, Napper said, as many as 200 corpses were left on makeshift gurneys in the garage, in hallways and in a back room, unrefrigerated and leaking fluids onto the floor. Some were stored on cardboard boxes or were balanced on biohazard containers. At least half a dozen veterans destined for the hallowed ground at Arlington National Cemetery were left in their coffins on a garage rack, Napper said.
He began to take photographs in December and presented them to the Virginia Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers. Federici and Napper's observations — accounts supported by three others who have worked there — have led to a probe by the state board, although board officials said they were prohibited by law from disclosing such an inquiry. Several people said they were interviewed by a board investigator in recent weeks.
[...]
Stringfield said he and other contracted van drivers were instructed to leave bodies in the garage if there was no room in the coolers, something Stringfield refused to do. He said he spoke to a board investigator about the situation last month.
"You don't leave a body uncovered. You don't let a body leak. You don't leave a body on a stretcher in the garage," Stringfield said. "But who's going to see it?"
[...]
"A lot of the bodies that are there are there for a week or a month, and they're just sitting there dripping on the floor," the employee said. "The families don't know anything about it because the families aren't allowed at Central."
The Virginia Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers is investigating Napper's accusations. Don't worry though, Service Corporation International is already on the case. "I can assure you," J. Scott Young, President of SCI Virginia Funeral Services said, "that our company takes these allegations very seriously."
Funeral Home Employees Say Bodies Were Mishandled [The Washington Post]
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Comments:
Gross. And a huge biohazard site goes up overnight!
So why didn't the other businesses/neighbors complain of a stink? Arlington is a pretty clean place yet crowded place... I'm sure such odors would have been smelled by somebody.
So THATS what my dog was licking on the floor... huh. Guess I shouldn't have let her lick my face..
Those huge death based companies are what is wrong with the funeral industry these days. If you want the staright truth about them read The American Way Of Death by Jessica Mitford. Some of the stuff I read in it stood my hair on end.
My guess is that we have a local, clueless pussy of a manager who didn't have the courage or the sense to push back against those pressuring him to make numbers, with those higher ups never thinking that said manager would get that desperate and/or creative in controlling costs.
I can only hope that karma or hell or vigilante justice, whichever you subscribe to, makes an example of those responsible.
Ok doing this to people who passed away is an insult. Doing this to veterans who will make their way home for the final time is....i dont even know.....
@Joshua Davis: Who says they DIDN'T complain? Doesn't look like they interviewed the neighbors for this story, so we don't know.
They're owned by SCI? No surprise there. This is why I joined the People's Memorial Association ([www.peoplesmemorial.org]) nearly 10 years ago. You can find your local memorial association by visiting the Funeral Consumers' Alliance ([www.funerals.org]).
Disgusting behavior.
But, not to worry, they are not taking it just seriosly, but "very seriously." So glad to see that.
Service Corp was in trouble a few years ago in NYC and I think DC for things like body harvesting. Just find a field, a couple of cords of firewood and a can of gas for me please.
Mmm
@nybiker:
It is disgusting, isn't it? I hate those type of canned responses from companies. It seems like this is not one of those times to throw a canned response around. If for no other reason than your company was caught letting people's loved ones decompose in a hallway. Wow... This whole world is out of control and scary!
@chattanooga: The funeral industry is another big scam. I think Penn & Teller Bullsh!t did an episode on it.
I want to be disposed of as cheaply as possible and my family is NOT to be shamed into paying a cent more than it takes to cremate me in a cardboard box and throw the ashes into a plastic garbage bag. I told my husband if he pays for a big fancy funeral, I would haunt his ass mercilessly.
Dust to dust.
Put me on the curb for Tuesdays pickup. I dont want my life insurance paying for the funeral scam.....
The WaPo article says the problem was at the National Funeral Home in Falls Church, "at the edge of a cemetery just off Lee Highway". As you can see ([maps.google.com]), the buildings are actually well off Lee, which is a wide boulevard to boot; neighbors are a fair distance away. (I was curious because I pass that cemetary fairly often.)
At least Texans are consistent: slash VA funding while they're living; let veteran's corpses rot in the hallway once they're dead.
Mitigating factor: they wear American flag label pins.
Less mitigating factor: pins made in China.
@pollyannacowgirl: Yup. Just send me to Fiji with 12 forks stuck in me and my head resting on a chafing dish. Done!
If it were me, I wouldn't care. Leak in the ground, leak in the hallway, it's all the same. In fact, come the zombie apocalypse (Zombocalypse®), it would probably be more convenient if I were still above ground.
A good friend of our family's was buried at Arlington Cemetery (where my dad is also buried) last week after dying in early January. There is such a backlog of funerals there apparently because so many WWII veterans are dying now due to age. I hate to think that our friend's body may have been treated like that. Eeeew.
@RodAox: What's the difference if they were veterans or not? Do veterans deserve more dignity in death than anyone else? That's ridiculous. I don't care if the person was a junkie who OD'd, a cancer victim, someone killed by a drunk driver, or even a mass murderer. EVERYONE deserves dignity in death!
@pollyannacowgirl: My grandpa informed my grandma that if she did the traditional Dutch Reformed funeral (AFAIK, it's kind of like sitting shiva - the whole family sits with the body for a few days), he would haunt her ass. Instead, he got a great big party and his ashes were scattered over the golf course he loved. Hubby has been given the same instructions - donate any organ they want, cremate me, toss the ashes from the end of the pier, and have a party.
@pgh9fan1: There's no such thing! Our bodies break down, sometimes when we're 90, sometimes before we're even born, but it always happens and there's never any dignity in it! I don't care if you can walk, see, wipe your own ass... it's always ugly, always! You can live with dignity; you can't die with it! -Gregory House, MD
This sickens me when I think of people I know with loved ones in Arlington Cemetery who will read this article.
I'd be surprised if this is an isolated incident among SCI facilities.
@pgh9fan1: Yes veterans deserve more... with your argument we should show hitler the same respect a fireman/soldier/police officer/mother of two should get? that is just insane.....
This has got to be the most disrespectful thing I have ever heard!!
I dunno about you people, but I will freak out if they stick me in a hole in the ground or a wall. I'm hideously clastrophobic and I think even in death I would just FREAK if I was stuck in a box in the ground. I told my family they should just stick me in a museoleum or catacomb and let me mummify.
A lot of you people complain about not wanting a fancy funeral. But as the popular saying goes: funerals are more for the living, not for the dead.
Why is it even possible that a body is left out for months on end? Wouldn't the families be alarmed by this?
@pgh9fan1: Everyone deserves dignity in death and it's possible there aren't any identifiable things on the coffin to even distinguish a veteran from a non veteran.
But that said, veterans absolutely deserve more in death. Americans owe so much to them for the sacrifices they made in life for this country. Anyone with family or loved ones in the military will understand first hand what sacrifices are needed.
Has anyone ever seen anyone die? I have. The spirit (or whatever you want to call it, I don't care) leaves the body before the time of "actual" death. What remains is just that, remains. It's not part of who lived in that body. What happens to those remains doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, unless those left behind want to make a big deal of it. I can't believe funerals and all the cha-ching involved. Bad business. Just dispose of the remains, the memories of life and love are what matter.
@chattanooga: and make sure to get the more recent updated version as it is more relevant to current practices:
the american way of death revisited published in 1998
@pollyannacowgirl: the magic word is "alternate container"
funeral directors hate to admit to using cardboard boxes.
@Joshua Davis: or they thought "eh, it's a morgue, they have dead bodies there, that's probably normal"
at least, that's whati would have thought.
My grandpa built his own coffin. He spent his money on exactly the headstone he wanted, with some of his favorite sayings on it. He said the only re
@HogwartsAlum: Dammit, stupid post ate my sentence again...
He said the only requirement was that the handles be on very securely, so that pallbearers wouldn't drop him and no one would get hurt if that happened.
@Imperialist: i want my funeral to be for the future living: i intend for my [burned in an 'alternate container' ashes to be interred in one of those undersea memorials that are destined to be growing surfaces for coral
didn't something similar happen about 8 years ago, with a crematorium owner dumping bodies in the back yard and giving the loved ones a bag of concrete?
@Eldritch:
I promise, you won't freak. You'll be so happy to be out of the meat prison you won't care.
I told my mother I was going to sign up for the Body Farm. There was this looooooooonnng silence at the end of the phone. I think it's a great idea. People can learn from what happens to my body, and I'll be dead, so what do I care? Anyway, it's all voluntary and they are very respectful of the people who donate.
She doesn't think I'll actually do it.
@HogwartsAlum: I'll probably freak. :D I know me. And I kinda like the catacombs/museoleum idea.
Either that or I've seen these awesome above-ground coffins in New Orleans, which are basically stone coffins on little pillars, out of the ground (since it floods there and the coffins would just get sucked out of the ground). I just don't want to be under the ground or in a wall or cremated.
@RodAox: Technically yes, you should give hitler the same respect that anyone else gets, ie a minimum plain burial and not mutilate the body. I mean just because it's Hitler doesn't mean you can just dump the body in the street and let it get run over by traffic or anything like that.
Now if the family/state/whatever wants to pay to give more than just the minimum because of who they are, what they did, etc that's their perogative, but there's still that minimum level that everyone starts out at that's expected.
@Joshua Davis: The funeral home isn't located in arlington. It's located in Falls Church Virginia. The bodies are headed to Arlington, but they don't get there immediately.
Ew. Simply put. Ew.