After the shocking news Friday that the remains of 63 fetuses and infants were recovered from the Perry Funeral Home on Trumbull — a week after 10 fetuses and the remains of an infant were found hidden in a ceiling of another Detroit funeral home — a slew of families are left worrying about what happened to the remains of children they lost.
As state investigators, city police, a litany of state and federal agencies, plus private attorneys, tackle the legal and civil logistics of the failures of Perry Funeral Home and the Cantrell Funeral Home on Mack to properly dispose of remains, families are looking for answers. The remains include fetuses, stillborn and live born infants, police said.
A number of volunteer-based community organizations and funeral homes have stepped up to help — whether it's to provide resources for emotional support, a promise to help cover burial or cremation costs when matches are made, or a hotline to call for more information.
Covering burial or cremation costs
Eric Winton, Roger Belcher and Roger Winton carrying the casket for Brooke Winton for a burial in March of 2005. Brooke's mother Angie Winton is now the president of Metro Detroit Share, a local pregnancy and infant loss support group. (Photo: Winton Family Photo)
Angie Winton, president of Metro Detroit Share, said a group of five volunteer-based organizations dedicated to helping families cope with stillbirths or sudden infant deaths, have formed the Southeast Michigan Perinatal & Infant Loss Coalition and want to connect with families affected by the discoveries made at the Cantrell and Perry funeral homes.
These groups include:
Winton told the Free Press that all five organizations do funeral assistance, while both Metro Detroit share and the Tears Foundation also do in-person and online support meetings.
"It's just appalling that in this day and age, with online access to information, that these funeral homes did not — if there was an issue with cost — that they did not reach out," Winton said.
Metro Detroit Share's records show the organization has assisted families working with both Perry Funeral Home and Cantrell Funeral Home in the past, Winton said.
As for families awaiting word on whether or not their children were among the remains recovered at the funeral homes, Winton said, the coalition is prepared to work collectively and with participating funeral homes to prepare burials.
"First they just need to be in touch," she said. "We'll just have to kind of work through it when it's such a big issue."
Winton said all five groups have different intake procedures, but across the board they've found that most funeral homes are typically very generous and work with volunteer-based organizations to facilitate burials for families that can't afford them.
There have been several cases where funeral homes have helped cover cremation costs, and Metro Detroit Share has offered assistance with urns, lockets or some sort of keepsake, Winton said.
"It's completely up to the family, but knowing they have options... We can see how much we can help with," she said.
Left to Right: Dr. Sara Garmel, Darlene Baczynski, Angie Winton, Scott Duley and Alison Duley, and Dearborn Hospital Staff in July of 2018 after the Duley's son William died after his birth. Metro Detroit Share donated their first temperature-controlled "Caring Cradle" to the couple to give them more time to say goodbye. (Photo: Metro Detroit Share)
In the case of a burial, she said, some cemeteries have special designated areas for fetuses or infants that are generally of no cost to the family, and Metro Detroit Share has covered the cost of a headstone.
"I think a lot of people honestly, they don't know where to reach out to," she said. "Unless you've had a loss, you don't understand the mental status when you're going through a trauma like that."
Winton said many families get scared when they think they can't afford to bury or cremate their child, but don't know there are organizations that can help coordinate things with funeral homes and cover costs.
Donations can also be made to the coalition's Crowdrise page. Winton said the funds will be used for the families affected by the discoveries made at the Cantrell and Perry funeral homes, and excess funds raised will be split between the five organizations to help with future funeral service costs and support services.
The coalition's goal is $10,000.
A hotline for unclaimed remains
Verheyden Funeral Homes, Inc. owner and chairman Brian Joseph poses for a photo in Grosse Pointe Park on Tuesday, October 16, 2018. "If we cannot bury our dead, we are no better than a third world country. To paraphrase our holy father Francis, it is our obligation to help the marginalized and the ones in need," said Joseph. (Photo: Ryan Garza, Detroit Free Press)
Verheyden Funeral Home in Grosse Pointe Park has also offered to make funeral arrangements for the remains of 269 people found in the Cantrell Funeral Home's basement after an April inspection that lead to the site's closure.
State officials confirmed that 52 of the remains had no records and were unidentifiable, and at least four have been retrieved by families. Some appeared to go back as far as 1996, but names for the identified remains have not been released publicly.
These uncovered remains were then stored in a Flint facility operated by the mortuary transport company Preferred Removal Services, but will be transported to Verheyden Funeral Home where families can retrieve and eventually inter them. The funeral home has set up a hot line at 313-821-9040 for families looking for the remains of their loved ones.
Some interments at metro Detroit cemeteries are expected to take place as early as Nov. 2, on All Souls' Day.
Identifying the others
A Detroit Police vehicle parked outside of Cantrell Funeral Home in Detroit, Friday, October 12, 2018. (Photo: Junfu Han, Detroit Free Press)
Efforts to identify the fetuses and infant remains most recently recovered from the Cantrell Funeral Home are still ongoing.
Detroit Police Chief James Craig told reporters at an Oct. 15 press conference that prior to the Oct. 12 discovery an anonymous phone call lead state inspectors to another fetus and cremated remains at Cantrell in August. Since Oct. 12, five additional containers carrying remains have been collected from the funeral home.
Most of the fetuses discovered in a "mummified condition" were marked with a hospital label that could help examiners find existing records and identify them, Wayne County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Carl Schmidt said in a statement.
"The fact that these remains reached a funeral home means there should be a record somewhere that can help lead us to identifying information," he said.
The medical examiners office will be working with local and state officials to try and identify remains, then connect with families — but the process could take weeks or months, depending on what information may be in any funeral home and hospital records.
"If they exist at all," Schmidt added.
Lawsuit could bring answers
The Perry Funeral home in Detroit on Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. (Photo: Joe Cybulski, Detroit Free Press)
Craig told reporters on Friday that Detroit police held a meeting with the FBI, Michigan State Police, Wayne Country prosecutors, the Michigan Attorney General's Office and the state licensing authority as it plans to proceed with a criminal investigation.
Police expanded their investigation to Perry Funeral Home in Midtown after a lawsuit came to light alleging that the home improperly stored the bodies of stillborn and live birth babies in the Wayne State University School of Mortuary Science morgue, but failed to inform parents.
Later that day, police executed a search warrant at the funeral home and recovered 63 remains of fetuses and live births.
The lawsuit was filed by attorneys Peter Parks and Daniel Cieslak on behalf of Rachel Brown and Larry Davis, whose daughter Alayah died 27 minutes after she was born in December of 2014. The pair donated her remains for medical research, but to this day, they aren't certain where Alayah's body is.
Parks told the Free Press that Alayah's remains were among 37 babies found in the basement morgue of the Detroit Medical Center's Harper-Hutzel Hospital when it was consolidating it with another DMC morgue in 2015.
Parks said DMC reached out to Perry Funeral Home to arrange the final disposition of the bodies for $100 per body and they were picked up on May 13, 2015, but the funeral home did not keep records of the fetuses — the next time they were accounted for was Aug. 7, 2015, when the WSU Department of Mortuary Science logged that they accepted the remains.
However, Parks said some of the bodies never made it to the WSU Medical School, like Alayah's, and the DMC did not notify family members that it failed to complete the delivery.
Additionally, the lawsuit alleges that the funeral home may have fraudulently billed Medicaid and the DMC for burials that were never performed.
Parks added that his research into the log books kept by WSU indicates that there could be up to 200 more bodies within the improper possession of the Perry Funeral Home.
The attorneys are seeking class action status for the lawsuit.
"If our class action gets certified, we will make every effort to find out who every single one of those fetuses is in the possession of the funeral home,” Parks told the Free Press.
Contact reporter Aleanna Siacon at ASiacon@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter: @AleannaSiacon. Staff writers Bill Laitner, Frank Witsil, Marc Daalder, Fiona Kelliher, Omar Abdel-Baqui and Elisha Anderson contributed to this report.
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