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”.

  • RaincoatsGeorge
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    8 months ago

    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.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      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.

      • SoylentBlake@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        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.

      • SheDiceToday@eslemmy.es
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        8 months ago

        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.

      • RaincoatsGeorge
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        8 months ago

        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.

    • stolid_agnostic@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      You can also just not claim grandma’s body and let your tax dollars handle it at an even bigger bargain.

      • RaincoatsGeorge
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        8 months ago

        You are absolutely correct sort of. After ten days we notify the state that nobody has claimed the body. They will then take upwards of 3 months and look into all of their family and known associates. I suspect if you are well off and don’t have a good reason to refuse to pay for a funeral they are going to put the pressure on you to do so. But I don’t know that there’s a legal Avenue for them to force you to do so. They can carve up that persons estate to pay for it and I think most people have a general quantity of things and money they can pull from. But yeah if that person has nothing and you say no, yah probably you’re gettin off.

        Your grandma will rot the whole time. We have to open those bags to confirm who is inside anytime they change hands so I get to see the remnants of that and u know it is what it is. Mostly it’s homeless people and that’s just the expected process. But occasionally there’s families that just won’t do it and I mean I’m not one to blame them. Even the cheapest traditional options are thousands of dollars.

        Fascinating industry though. It’s not my primary job but you have to learn the funeral business to function with those sorts. They’re my favorite. They’re all a little fucked up in their own way. Some a lot of way.

          • RaincoatsGeorge
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            8 months ago

            That’s cool. They can’t and won’t. But I think it’s pretty straightforward for most middleish class people to set aside a few thousand to cover their disposal. You don’t even have to specifically set that money aside. You set it aside when you collect baseball cards or limited edition Mountain Dew code zero call of duty custom 2 liters.

            Just let your family carve up your bullshit and sell it to stupid drunk people.

            • stolid_agnostic@lemmy.ml
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              8 months ago

              lol so cute of you to assume that I have or ever will acquire anything of value or have savings. My only real goal in life is to not end up homeless before I die

    • zerofk@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      “Everywhere you go” inside this one count you’re talking about. Maybe.