Authorities find more bodies after initial report of 115 two weeks ago, when owners were evicted and police investigated foul odor
The remains of at least 189 decaying bodies were found and removed from a Colorado funeral home, up from about 115 reported when the bodies were discovered two weeks ago, officials said Tuesday.
The remains were found by authorities responding to a report of a foul odor at the Return to Nature funeral home inside a decrepit building in the small town of Penrose, Colorado.
Efforts to identify the remains began last week with help from an FBI team that gets deployed to mass casualty events like airline crashes. Fremont sheriff Allen Cooper described the scene as “horrific”.
Funeral homes are parasites. Families should prepare and bury their own, unembalmed with no casket. A dead body is the most biodegradable matter in nature. Why pump it full of formalin and doll it up like a tart? Mourn the life of the dead, not their physical body.
Have you seen the people of walmart? Do you want them to be burying their dead near river banks and protected water ways? Fuck no.
This is the answer. It’s a pollution issue as much as a mortician issue.
There is this clothing donation dumpster thing by my work that has a couch infront of it. It’s pretty clear to me what happened. Someone brought it, noticed the sign that says no furniture donations, and decided that it wasn’t his problem.
It would be pretty much like that. Find random bodies everywhere.
This couch looks comfy, let’s put grandad there. No one will notice, put some sunglasses on him.
Or just plain old burying a person too shallow. Not a huge problem now, but it’ll be a problem when coyotes and vultures and other scavengers dig the corpse up.
Preparing and burying your own is a recipe for cholera outbreak
Cholera more requires the living and untreated water. Palestine is a recipe for a cholera outbreak. You’d need some spread among the living before the corpses become a real vector.
E coli maybe, but once again, only with untreated water.
For the most part, corpses don’t really spread a lot of disease other than whatever killed them.
It’s illegal almost everywhere in the US to have a “natural” burial. There are laws on containers, treatment, and where the deceased can be buried. Dead bodies, while very biodegradable are also toxic and tend to get dug up and parts drug around by animals, up rooted by trees, or dug up during construction after the property is bought out. I do agree that funeral homes are soulless vultures who fleece people in mourning though, the last “fuck you” from capitalism.
What constitutes a natural burial? At a cursory glance there are only about 5 states that don’t permit home burials and many of those just say it has to be in a cemetery, but you can apply for a family cemetery on your property and it’s completely legal.
In Virginia and West Virginia at least there are no requirements whatsoever that you use a casket or bury them to any specific depth. I’d suspect that if you were disrespecting grandma and threw her in the garbage you would be breaking desecration of remains laws but doing a legitimate burial at home is completely fine.
I can only speak to the laws of my state and those around me, and I suppose local municipalities might have differing laws, but it’s pretty open ended. You do not need a funeral home involved at all and frankly given how expensive these things are I totally support families that go that route.
I wish I could have a sky burial but I’m pretty sure theres nowhere in the US that could happen. And it would freak my wife out. I think the best option is aquamation (or hopefully recomposting since it was just legalized in california), since I can’t have a sky burial
I’ve said the same thing for years. One day my wishes will be honored!
I’ve looked it up years ago. In my state, you don’t need embalmed, a vault, or anything really. You can throw a fresh body into the ground in a handmade pine box if you want.
I think the only restriction is an approved site for burial.
Are you sure natural burial is illegal?
Yes and no, it’s not a black and white issue. I didn’t really want to go all in on the topic because it’s Googleable. My grandpa recently passed and it’s very expensive, we were looking for alternatives. On a federal level natural burial is allowed. The states take matters into their own hands. Some require burial vaults, some require embalming, some require that natural burials only happen in very specific places, and some require a mix of those things. It’s doable but if they can squeeze money out of you through laws or extreme inconvenience, they will. It’s not as easy and just picking a spot and burying a loved one, in a lot of cases.
First of all, sorry to hear what you’re going through.
In regards to natural burial, my understanding is that it’s more legal than not, just that there’s regulations depending on where you live. It’s very rare that embalming is required by law. Burial vaults are typically required when embalming fluids are used to slow the spread of the fluids to waterways. Neither of these are considered part of a natural burial.
There’s a lot smoke and mirrors in the funeral industry that has led to wide misconceptions and outright misinformation. I asked if you were sure because the points you made are generally what a traditional burial funeral home would tell a client to steer them more towards their products. It’s awful that it’s become common for funeral homes to prey on those that are grieving. Absolutely despicable.
I hope y’all find a way that honors your grandpa without causing additional stress.
I’m not the guy that you’re responding too but I’ll add my anecdote.
There was a somewhat off his rocker dude in my hometown that lived with his mom, she died, he didn’t notify anyone, buried her on his land (owned 15-20 acres or so, nothing large) and didn’t tell anyone. A few months go by and she obviously misses doctor appointments, church, etc so police check in. Then the guy says “oh yeah she died, I buried her, no biggie”. Turns out he violated a few laws doing this so he got some light jail time, she got exhumed, investigated to make sure she wasn’t murdered, then buried in a graveyard.
I lived fairly close to all this being in the same county and learned that in Illinois at least, you can’t just bury your dead, you have to go through some processes.
That’s right, there’s is a process. You can’t just bury people without reporting the death and going through some sort of process. That’s a good bit different from an actual natural burial even if at face value he did bury her naturally lol. That’s wild. I’ve heard of that happening in my region in the southern Appalachians too.
I’ll give you one better. I once found a dude who had been chucked in a garbage pile by his son. This was out in the deep country, so lots of land and most people had a burn pile or area they chucked garbage. It was pretty cold, so the body didn’t decompose very much, but there he was, laying on the ground with trash bags and various household debris piled up on top of him. The son had wrapped him with some fitted sheets. It was wild.
They are wrong. One of my family members works in the industry. Wood biodegradable caskets are perfectly legal in all states.
Are you out of your mind?
Fun fact. It’s completely legal and ok to take possession of your loved one, provided you are their legal next of kin, and you can effectively bury them yourselves. Find someone on Craigslist that can throw together a pine box and rent out an excavator for a weekend and you can bury grandma for a fraction of the cost.
I have loaded a corpse into the bed of a pickup truck. We have sat bodies upright in the back of a suburban. All of this is completely legal so long as you don’t cross state lines and even then you just need a permit.
Each state handles it differently but largely this is the same wherever you go.
Spend the 5k to 10k on a nice trip to Vegas, Grammy would have wanted it that way.
Is it legal to have a Viking funeral where you’re set adrift in a longboat and someone fires a flaming arrow at it and it goes down on fire? Asking for a friend.
No. Not an any state when I looked into it a decade ago
That being said, sometimes it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission, if you get me.
My dad helped with a ‘burial at sea’ thing. I’m sure they had some sort of permit, because it was a real to-do with a big casket weighted down so it would sink and such. The story goes that the weights weren’t enough to sink it, and the casket ended up being air tight, so they shot a few holes in it to let air out and water in. I’m pretty sure they did it in international waters.
Your friend is not the first to ask this xD
That’s actually a great question and I don’t know the answer. It might not be permitted because of concerns about disposing of remains and whatnot but again each state is different with their laws.
Personally I want a sky burial but I don’t think I’d be able to sell that to my family.
My dad said he wants this. I can’t be sure if he’s serious, but I am.
“Everywhere you go” inside this one count you’re talking about. Maybe.
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What happens if you don’t own land?
Wait…You… You are saying to only bury your dead on your own land, right?
Padme_meme.jpg
If you don’t own land then you’re not a real citizen /s
It’s actually illegal in most countries to bury a dead body without alerting your authorities and usually there are restrictions on where you can do it.
You can of course just cremate the body, you don’t have to go with a cemetery.
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Wtf is this thread. There’s a comment chain going wild about how to bury your own body.
Is there a Lemmy bestOf?
When you have a loved one pass away… and you get forced to pony up $10k for a basic service, cremation in a nice casket, and a pretty expensive “basic” urn for the ashes, because the funeral home won’t let you use anything cheaper like a pine box or a shroud, with the only choice beong between an “eco gas” cremation in your own city vs. a $2k cheaper “non eco” one a city over… you’ll know why people call funeral homes vultures and look for alternatives.
Just put me in a Folgers can. Just because we’re bereaved doesn’t make us saps!
If they don’t allow that, then they’re descriminating against all of us Dudists!
You can use a pinewood casket.
Here in Spain, you “are legally allowed to use a pinewood casket or just a shroud”… at the same time as “only a funeral home is allowed to perform a cremation or burial”… and they all refuse to do businesses with you unless you also pay for a much pricier casket and some extra services.
Nice tiny loophole, ain’t it?
Hmm ok so what do Roma, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus do?
Protest. There’s a few faith-specific funeral homes, even some that offer free burials for immigrants without resources, but otherwise just protest.
Interesting.
I just had to do this. It was less than $4K for cremation, two services with funeral home staff (multi-hour, including on location at the church), and all of the guest books/cards/etc, plus announcements. I’d have to look at my paperwork for the exact amount.
They even told us to bring our own urn because it would be cheaper than anything the funeral home could provide, so we did.
Refuse to accept the body. The local government will have to take care of it.
Checked on that, it’s a 2K€ minimum community service, they take the body, cremate, then dump the ashes into a common pit, no extras. Next of kin are still supposed to pay the 2K€ “when their economy improves” (basically if you’re earning anything above minimum wage, then you’re on the hook).
Also if your loved one dies at home, “refusing the body” is not really an option, you want the body out ASAP before it stinks the whole place (had my mom for a day, took a couple weeks to get rid of the smell).
That is why every funeral home has those big garage doors. If you don’t see it from the street just look in the back. Dialysis bodies smell the worst. Imagine rotting meat soaked in urine.
I love this comment thread. People advocating for the general public being responsible for this. Oh yes please have people randomly disappear from society buried uphill from water supplies. Screw thousands of years of civilization dealing with this problem.
Imagine rotting meat soaked in urine
You’re seeing that in-between moment when a wildly ignorant comment is upvoted to the top quickly but comes down slowly. It’s still hot, but the OP has been downvotes far below most corrective comments.
Lemmites thinking anyone who provides a service is a parasitic bourgeois bastard that needs guillotining.
As with any service, everything can be “reasonably” priced. Things that people need every day have become predatory or straight price gouging. Funeral homes are one of those. If people want to have their naked bodies burned or put into the ground, they should be able to.
In theory… Let’s say I bury my loved one far away from the city. Couple months later some hiker finds an arm that an animal pulled out. Police gets involved. They blame it on the cartels… At what point do I say anything, and if I do, how much trouble am I in?
“Asking for a friend”
Of course. It goes without saying.
It depends on your jurisdiction, it’s a felony in some places.
When does the US get labelled as third world hellhole it actually is?
Absolutely fucking disgusting.
That would require the US to leave NATO and become Switzerland tier neutral.
Oh, you meant the racist way people who’ve never been to the “third world” say “third world.”
Iean unaligned with allied or axis powers?
Allied or Soviet bloc powers
Lmfao, the rage!
A funeral home contains dead bodies? THE HORROR!
