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Funeralgate -
Thu Oct 23 04:41:51 2003
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Funeralgate
http://www.hereinreality.com/funeralgate.htm

The Skeleton in Bush's Closet that won't go away
See Fox News: Gruesome Photos, Video Show Bodies Discarded in Woods Behind Cemetery
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,41298,00.html 

Here's a new chapter in an old scandal involving a Bush contributor and longtime family friend, Robert Waltrip. This time it's the desecration of dead bodies, and George W. Bush is directly linked to this scandal (as is current FEMA director Joe Allbaugh, GW's Chief of Staff while governor of Texas). According to Fox News, Waltrip's company, a cemetery company called Service Corporation International (also known as Dignity Memorial) was "recycling" graves, removing the bodies that were there originally and throwing them in the woods to use the space to house new customers at two Jewish cemeteries in Florida.
Bush's connection to the story is that he was subpoenaed in 1999 but refused to testify in a lawsuit by an ousted Texas state employee as to what his involvement was in halting an investigation into SCI's embalming practices, among other things.

This was a big Texas scandal for our president at the time, but as you will learn from this Washington Post article dated August 31, 1999, a Texas judge put everything right for then-governor Bush, just in time to campaign for the Presidency.

Taxpayers of the state of Texas and SCI settled the lawsuit for $210,000 on November 9, 2001, weeks before the gruesome discovery made at two cemeteries in Florida caught the brief attention of the media.

From Fox News December 20, 2001

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Attorneys suing a cemetery company accused of recycling graves showed grisly photos and video footage Thursday of crushed burial vaults and human remains discarded in the woods.

They also presented internal documents they say show Menorah Gardens & Funeral Chapels in West Palm Beach and its owner, Houston-based Service Corporation International, were aware of the grave desecrations. SCI is the world's largest cemetery company.

The attorneys represent 10 families who say their loved ones were dug up and dumped in the woods, buried in the wrong graves or buried in vaults on top of each other instead of side by side as the families had paid
for. More than 1,000 people could become part of the class-action lawsuit, they said.

"That body that is placed to rest for eternity is now destroyed, maligned, abused," said attorney Ervin A. Gonzalez.
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SCI officials did not immediately return a call Thursday but said Wednesday that they had no knowledge of any wrongdoing. The state attorney general's office is investigating Menorah Gardens and four other South Florida cemeteries owned by SCI.

A videotape and photos taken by private investigators showed a leg bone beside chunks of a concrete vault, in which coffins are placed. They also show Jewish burial shrouds, and a Star of David next to finger bones.

A former cemetery worker led investigators to the remains, attorneys said.

Remarks in the burial book, obtained from former employees, included "no room for spouse," "move Mrs. Kolin" and "dig this grave double deep." Another handwritten note said: "Where are Lippitis and who are Haskells and are they both deceased? Move Haskell marker."

The pages show "there are several hundred people who have purchased graves, premium contracts purchased years ago, that do not have a place to be laid to rest," said co-counsel Neal Hirschfeld.

Myra Stone of Lake Worth said her parents bought side-by-side graves in 1982. Her father died in 1994, but another man allegedly was buried next to him in her mother's grave.

When her mother died last year, the cemetery's operators dug up the man's vault and threw most of his remains in the woods, according to a former employee.

"I understand that some of his remains are still in her grave," Stone said. "I am just horrified."

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday, seeks unspecified damages.

"We've investigated allegations that we thought too heinous to be accurate, too horrible to be true, over the last several years," Hirschfeld said.

UPDATE: Several of the funeral homes being sued for using the Georgia crematory where hundreds of desecrated corpses have been found were owned by SCI.
================================
Florida adds new lawsuit to cemetery firm's woes
BY BETH REINHARD breinhard@herald.com
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/2774919.htm

Menorah Gardens & Funeral Chapels, already taken to court over horrific allegations at cemeteries in Broward and Palm Beach counties, gained a new and formidable legal opponent Friday:

The state of Florida.

The attorney general's office, along with two state agencies that regulate funeral homes and cemeteries, sued Menorah Gardens and its Texas-based parent company, SCI, in Palm Beach Circuit Court.

The state wants to stop Menorah Gardens from running the two cemeteries and asks for a court-appointed expert to take over.

The lawsuit backs up earlier allegations and adds new details, including two instances in Broward County in which two babies were buried in a single grave.

The suit also seeks punitive fines, compensation for cemetery customers and civil penalties of as much as $15,000 per violation from the world's largest funeral operator.

''This is not mere economic crime,'' said Attorney General Bob Butterworth at a press conference at his Fort Lauderdale office. ``This is a crime against the human soul and heart.''

The state's lawsuit supports the claims of a civil lawsuit alleging bodies buried in the wrong place, coffins stacked on top of each other, and occupied plots that were resold. It also affirms the most disturbing accusation: that a backhoe was used to crack open a vault to make room for another body. Pieces of Hyman Cohen's vault, burial shroud and remains were scattered in nearby woods in ''a field of wild hogs,'' according to the state.

SCI disputes that allegation, and said in court documents filed Thursday that radar indicates four vaults in the area where Cohen and three others were buried. SCI spokesman Don Mathis said the vaults appear to be whole.

NEW DETAILS

That assertion was shot down at the press conference by the state comptroller's regional director in Palm Beach County, Brenda Liberti.

''We probed the site, and the vault is in pieces,'' she said. ``Apparently, it was crushed.''

The state's suit also contains new details and allegations. It says:

• In an area called ''Babyland'' at the cemetery on Griffin Road, investigators found two instances in which two babies were buried in a single grave. Records showing the names of the deceased did not match the names on the corresponding grave markers.

• SCI has known since Oct. 24, 1997, that 44 of the 136 burials in the Ben Gurion West section of the cemetery in western Palm Beach County were in the wrong place. Records identify the occupant of one grave as ''unknown.'' Despite SCI's discovery of errors in the Ben Gurion West section and two others, SCI failed to tell family members.

• Three people who records say were buried in the Ben Gurion South section in Palm Beach County are actually in another section.

• SCI has sold nearly all of the available spaces in a mausoleum in the Mount Sinai section in Palm Beach County and has received full payment for about three-fourths of those spaces. Still, construction of the mausoleum has not begun.

SCI spokesman Don Mathis said it's unfortunate the state filed the suit, since the company has been cooperating with officials.

''It's not going to change what we're doing as far as taking care of any problems,'' he said.

The notoriety surrounding SCI in South Florida, coupled with the recent discovery of hundreds of decaying corpses on the grounds of a Georgia crematory, has unnerved consumers nationwide. Inspections of all of the 146 licensed crematories in Florida did not find major violations, said Paul Kirsch of the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation.

FEDERAL CONCERNS

Federal officials are also taking note. U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, is calling for better state oversight of cemeteries, while U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, R-Lake Worth, wants federal investigators to determine if state laws are adequate, and to decide whether federal intervention is needed.

While the state's lawsuit centers only on two cemeteries, Butterworth and other officials said their examination of SCI-owned sites is continuing. Investigators have indicated concerns about other cemeteries in South Florida, including Forest Lawn in Fort Lauderdale.

Investigators have been combing through records and looking at graves since Dec. 17, two days before the other complaint was filed in Broward Circuit Court.

Of seven sections in the Palm Beach County cemetery, ''systemic'' problems were found in all but the Garden of Abraham, Liberti said. Some grave sites were several feet from where records indicated they should be.

The misburials resulted from a domino effect in which one mistake pushed subsequent burials farther off their marks, Liberti said. Grave diggers lack adequate supervision and cemetery officials withheld information to cover up the extent of the problems, she said.

METAL RODS

Her counterpart in Broward, Tony Armbrister, said his staff used metal rods to probe 890 plots at the Griffin Road cemetery. He declined to say how many errors were found, but said they were ``prevalent.''

Of the eight sections examined, only two -- the Gardens of Sarah and Solomon -- did not reveal major problems.

An attorney for the plaintiffs in the first lawsuit, Neal Hirschfeld, was gratified to hear about the state's discoveries.

''It's satisfying and vindicating for plaintiffs in the case,'' he said.

``Even the naysayers and those that did not or could not believe that these kind of things have occurred can now see our allegations mirrored by the state's top attorney.''

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