Originally Posted by
Katherine
I've been (kinda sorta) creeping this thread for a while, and I work at a funeral home, so I thought I'd answer some questions. Except my answers might be totally irrelevant because every funeral home is different.
- A body can be cremated any day of the week, at least in Indiana. We have a law that we have to wait 48 hours after death to cremate a body, and most other states have similar laws. Cremation takes 2-3 hours, some cooling off time, and another 1-2 hours of processing (after the body's organic material is evaporated/burned off, bone fragments are left - those are then put through a processor to turn it into the powdery, sandy substance the family is given). Total, it can take between 4-6 hours, or more.
- Most funeral homes don't have an on-site crematory. I think Dick Tipps covered this in one of his commercials. They have a crematory, but it's not right next to the funeral home, and it's possible the crematory is separately staffed, and possible that the crematory serves multiple funeral homes, so many bodies are coming in and out. So in some ways, there are all sorts of negligent ways an accidental cremation could have happened, then the rental/temporary casket she was in during viewing was staged back in the funeral home by the staff when they realized their mistake. But as much as a lot of people are sold on this happening, I'm still doubtful.
- Caskets are opened and closed with allen wrenches. We keep them all over the place. In our hearses, lead cars, drawers in the funeral home. Since the funeral home specifically said the casket was "broken into" I'd assume it was closed/locked, but it would be easy (at least IMO) for a person to find a wrench or tool to open the casket. Though I do have some timeline confusion: All of the articles say that she was likely stolen out of a private viewing area between 1:30 and 4:30... But they also say she was wheeled into a hall for the night. So was the hallway the private viewing area? Was she stolen before her casket was wheeled into the hallway? That wouldn't make sense, wouldn't they notice there is no human in the casket before they wheel it off and close it? Wouldn't the casket have been open for viewing, so no need to break into it? Is there something I'm missing? (Seriously, I haven't really dug too deep into this one so maybe I'm not remembering details, lol).
- Some bodies are heavy, some not so much. I've helped a funeral director lift an embalmed woman into her casket after the hairdresser finished doing her hair on a gurney in the chapel - it was easier for two of us to lift her into her casket than to wheel her back to the prep room to use the body lift. I could see a determined, strong person being able to pull the body out of the casket.
- Most funeral homes have a lot of entrances and exits, at least from my experience. At ours, we have a front door, side/delivery door, back door, and 2 sets of double doors in each chapel. There being no signs of forced entry doesn't mean shit, IMO. Someone could have gotten in through any door before everyone left, stayed hidden in the funeral home, and found a way out with the body (especially on a weekend when less staff is there - usually the bookkeeper, preplanner, aftercare provider, etc all only work Mon-Fri so their offices are empty all weekend). That's why during and after business hours, the body is usually in a chapel, or in a locked prep room/morgue.
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