Yeah, I thought this story was a joke the first time I saw it, or that the man had been dead for years, and they dug up his bones. Ick. Just goes to show you should always be cremated and your ashes sprinkled out int he ocean or some such. Make sure you're destroyed.
This is the depths that some depraved individuals will sink to.
Well, it's the funeral home that does the cremating, so they could just harvest away and then burn the evidence.
Why waste some perfectly good body parts by burning them when they could help someone still alive? I hope when I die they use as much of my body as possible. In any case, I'd hardly be in a position to care what happens.
Don't get me wrong, though. I think these people should be vigorously pursued and prosecuted.
Unless a loved one accompanies the body to the furnace, requests to view it one last time before it goes to be cremated, watch the casket be placed in the zapper and observe it's imolation, how can you be sure what they give you in the urn is actually the deceased ones ashes? It could be someone elses, it could be probably almost anything unless you're familiar with what ashes look like. I'm not trying to be a jerk, but really, an unscrupulous undertaker, preying on people at the most emotional time of their lives, is not beyond reproach for doing a switcheroo or some other dastardly deed. Remember that creep in the South who just dumped the bodies all over the woods (I think it was dozens or hundreds over a decade or two) to collect the service fees and avoid some of his costs?
Alistair Cooke WAS cremated, and "his" cremains sent to the family in England.