Police find 63 foetuses in Detroit funeral home
DETROIT: Police removed the remains of 63 foetuses from a Detroit funeral home and regulators shuttered the business amid a widening investigation of alleged improprieties at local funeral homes.
Detroit police Chief James Craig said officers found 36 foetuses in boxes and 27 others in freezers during Friday’s raid at the Perry Funeral Home.
He said he was “stunned” by Friday’s discovery, which came a week after the remains of 10 foetuses and one infant were discovered in a ceiling at Detroit’s defunct Cantrell Funeral Home.
Michigan Licensing and Regulatory Affairs said the remains found at the Perry Funeral Home were turned over to state investiga- tors, who immediately declared the funeral home closed and its license suspended.
Inspectors for the State of Michigan’s Corporations, Securities & Commercial Licensing Bureau said in a statement that they had found “heinous conditions and negligent conduct” at the Perry Funeral Home, including numerous failures to certify death certificates and obtain proper permits for burial.
Craig said the investigation into the Perry Funeral Home began after a man who has sued that business over its handling of remains of infants and foetuses saw coverage of the discoveries at the Cantrell Funeral Home and told his attorney to contact police.
That lawsuit, filed in July, alleges that the Perry Funeral Home stored the remains of stillborn and live birth babies in the Wayne State University School of Mortuary Science morgue for up to three years without trying to notify parents, some of whom wanted to donate the bodies for medical research.
It also alleges the funeral home may have fraudulently billed Medicaid, as well as the Detroit Medical Center, for burials it never performed.
The attorneys in that suit, Peter J. Parks and Daniel W. Cieslak, said they believe many more infants’ remains may be found in the improper possession of the Perry Funeral Home, perhaps as many as 200, based on research of log books kept by the Wayne State University School of Mortuary Science. — AP