Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Son Hopes for Dad's Resurrection, Steals Dad's Corpse!! Strange But Bizarro True.

Detroit police say son hoped to resurrect father

AP foreign, Tuesday January 15 2013

DETROIT (AP) — Detroit police say a man arrested in the theft of his father's corpse had hoped the body would return to life.

Lt. Harold Rochon tells The Detroit News (http://bit.ly/ZUviFC) that the son is "very religious" and was "hoping his father would be resurrected."

The 48-year-old man is in custody after police found the body of Clarence Bright in the son's home Tuesday.

Rochon tells the newspaper that the son bought a freezer to store the body.

Bright's funeral was Saturday but the burial was delayed. The body was reported stolen Monday. Bright's son and another man were arrested Tuesday while inside a van with an empty casket.

Police say the body is being returned to the family for burial.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

Police arrested a man Tuesday in the theft of his father's corpse, which was taken from a cemetery before it could be buried and was found in the son's basement.

Clarence Bright's 48-year-old son was arrested with another man when officers found them with an empty casket inside a van at a gas station, Officer George Day said.

Police did not disclose a motive for the theft of the body.

"The details, his mental state — I can't comment on," Stephens said.

Bright's final earthly journey was supposed to end Saturday at Gethsemane Cemetery on Detroit's east side, but soggy ground from recent rain postponed the burial of the 93-year-old.

The casket was placed near a chapel or a mausoleum on cemetery grounds and remained there through Monday morning when it was reported stolen, said Leon Jones, a mortician's assistant at Swanson Funeral Home, which handled Bright's funeral.

"This is a very, very bizarre situation," Jones said.

Acting on a tip that a white van had been seen at the cemetery around the time the body was taken, police spotted one parked at a gas station Tuesday, with the men and the empty casket inside, Day said.

Within an hour, investigators contacted by family located Bright's body a few blocks away in the basement of a bungalow that belongs to the arrested son, Sgt. Eren Stephens said.

"Nothing seems to be wrong with the body," Day told reporters. "Hopefully, the family can now get the body back and give it a proper burial."

Police declined to release the names of Bright's son or the 38-year-old man who was with him. They had not been charged and the theft remained under investigation.

Across the street, resident Terri Gaines, 36, said she didn't have much contact with Bright's son.

"He's so quiet. He just goes in and out. He never had company," Gaines said.

Jones said there was nothing unusual at the weekend funeral.

"People come in, they're grieving," he said. "We just try to comfort people."

Son steals dad's corpse: 48-year-old arrested

January 16, 2013

When a son steals his dad's corpse, he makes national news. A 48-year-old religious man stole his father's dead body from the cemetery in hopes of a resurrection. On Jan. 15, FOX News reported that the Detroit man stored his dead father's remains in a freezer and hoped for a "miracle."

Mr. Clarence Bright, 93, was set to be buried on Saturday but due to soggy ground at the cemetery, his burial was postponed. "The casket was placed near a chapel or a mausoleum on cemetery grounds and remained there through Monday morning when it was reported stolen," explained Leon Jones, a mortician's assistant at Swanson Funeral Home. "This is a very, very bizarre situation," he added.

The man's son decided to steal his dad's corpse once he learned that the casket had not been buried. He and another unnamed man placed the casket in to a van. After they moved Mr. Bright's body in to a freezer at his son's home, the men drove the van to a gas station -- with the empty casket still inside. Police caught up to the van after the theft was reported by someone at the cemetery -- someone there reported a white van being on the premises. Bright's son and the other man were arrested.

"In the interview with the son, he was very, very, very distraught. He is very religious, and he was hoping his father would be resurrected. He was hoping for a miracle," said Lt. Harold Rochon.

Although Bright's son stole his dad's corpse, no charges have been filed at this time.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Unclaimed Dead Stack Up In Morgue - Charlie LeDuff, Detroit News

August 6, 2009

Unclaimed dead stack up in Wayne County morgue

Charlie LeDuff
The Detroit News

Detroit -- Poor Grandpa.

His corpse lies at the bottom of a pile of other bodies unclaimed at the Wayne County morgue. But Grandpa -- whose name has been withheld to avoid embarrassing his family -- is a special case. He has been in the cooler for the past two years as his kinfolk -- too broke to bury him -- wait for a ship to come in.

"There is destitution," says Dr. Carl J. Schmidt, the chief medical examiner of this, the nation's poorest big city. "But when you're so destitute that nobody has claimed you, that's a whole different level of being destitute."

Peering into the small glass window of the cooler door, Schmidt counts 52 unclaimed bodies stacked like cordwood -- in some cases four to a shelf; always two to a gurney.

Generally, the economic well-being of a municipality is measured by unemployment rates and quarterly earnings reports. But Schmidt's cooler may say as much about metropolitan Detroit's financial health as any statistics released by the Federal Reserve.

"It really is a sign of how bad things have gotten," says Schmidt, 52, a 16-year veteran of the Detroit death scene. "Some people really have to make a choice of putting food on the table or burying their loved ones. It is very sad really. In all of my years here, I have never seen it this bad."

As a comparison, the doctor said that just a few years ago, when credit was easy and SUVs were a must-have, he would typically have no more than 10 unclaimed bodies at any one time.

But nowadays, people are using his cooler like a no-charge cold storage facility, he says. Corpses linger longer and longer as family members wait for a paycheck, a tax return, the lottery or a lawsuit to get the money needed to give their dead a proper burial. And thus, Grandpa lingers. Some of the dead have been signed over to the county by people either unable or unwilling to pay for the burial.

The dead who have been signed away by their families find themselves bound in bureaucratic red tape. They await a $700 check from the state Department of Human Services, which, because of its own budgetary constraints, last year slashed the burial grant from $900.

Once the state money is received, Wayne County will kick in another $250 and the remains will be contracted out to a funeral home that will place them in a pauper's grave. Cremation is never a consideration, says Schmidt, as state law prohibits it.

The process takes about two months, and by that time, another 15 to 20 corpses will have taken their places in the cooler. Schmidt may handle as many 200 indigent cases this year.

There are an additional 20 bodies in the cooler waiting for investigators to locate a next of kin. Another two bodies have yet to be identified, including a femur that has been there for several years.

Living on the margins

Any way you slice it, says Schmidt, the cramped cooler is a repository of the human condition. "How society treats its dead says volumes about the way society lives," he says. "Civilization requires intrinsically that we bury the dead. It distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom."

About 4,000 people died last year in Wayne County, with 2,500 requiring an autopsy. According to Schmidt, perhaps 15 percent of those were murdered. Another 20 percent died as a result of accidents, even drug overdose, and another 10 percent committed suicide. The remaining 55 percent died of natural causes.

It is this "natural cause" type of death that appears to be on the rise due to the bad economic times.

"There are some people living on the margins who simply can't afford their medication anymore," he says. "Diabetes and what have you. And sadly, these types of deaths are preventable."

Rarely will you find that children go unclaimed. "There is still a social connection to children," the doctor says. And rarely will a person of Jewish or Muslim descent have to wait. Religious law requires that they be buried within the day.

Being nice matters

Schmidt is a sort of Descartes to the deceased -- a detective of death who washes away the daily stress of his job by solving complex mathematical puzzles by lamplight. He continues to perform autopsies -- about one a day -- and has conducted more than 5,000 in his career. He believes in the concept of a soul and enjoys reading the existential philosophers Kierkegaard, Camus and Sartre, whose writings he boils down to this: You are really the consequence of your own actions.

"The essence of the dilemma is this: If you are nicer to people, your chances of ending up here are greatly reduced," he says during a midafternoon tour of the circular facility in midtown Detroit.

The morgue features seven dissection stations, an anteroom stuffed with jars of flesh samples, lighting the color of flypaper, a sickly stench of death that is something of a mix of cherry and ammonia and, of course, the metallic cooler.

Not everyone in the cooler is there because his family is poor. Rather, some have arrived because they treated their family poorly, the doctor explains. Consider the son of a dead man who said of his father: "I didn't like him when he was alive, why would I help him now?" Or consider the case of the man whose two wives first met over his dead body. Finding that they had little in common except for the cadaver, they left him.

"If you do end up here," Dr. Schmidt advises, "your chances of getting out of here are greatly increased the nicer you were to people when you were alive."

Looking for next of kin for unclaimed bodies at the Wayne County morgue

The remains of the following people are at the Wayne County morgue, their next of kin unknown.

If you have information, call (313) 833-2568.

Michael A. Brown : black male born Jan. 8, 1973; arrived at the morgue on Aug. 30, 2007
George Carter: black male born May 19, 1949; arrived at the morgue on Aug. 14, 2008
Prazetta Dixon: black female born Dec. 6, 1951; arrived at the morgue Feb. 24, 2007
Rafael Garcia : Hispanic male approximately age 50; arrived at the morgue on July 25, 2006
Daniel Gorski: white male born March 30, 1955; arrived at the morgue on Aug. 11, 2006
Charles Guthrie: white male born Aug. 12; 1948; arrived at the morgue on Dec. 2, 2008
Neal Harden: black male born July 11, 1960; arrived at the morgue on May 14, 2006
Dwayne Jackson : black male born April 20, 1949; arrived at the morgue on March 1, 2008
Richard Johnson : black male born May 19, 1949; arrived at the morgue on Sept. 6, 2008
Alan D. Jones : black male born Dec. 14, 1957; arrived at the morgue on June 28, 2006
Lee King : black male born Aug 20, 1955; arrived at the morgue on July 26, 2007
Joseph Lam : white male born April 11, 1950; arrived at the morgue on June 11, 2008
Dewanda McNeil : black female born April 16, 1950; arrived at the morgue on Oct. 29, 2006
Richard Nelson: black male born May 7, 1947; arrived at the morgue on Aug. 24, 2005
Robert Owens : white male born Jan. 13, 1949; arrived at the morgue on April 9, 2008
Dora Robinson : black female born July 4, 1951; arrived at the morgue on Oct. 7, 2007
Joseph Shelley: black male born Nov. 23, 1957; arrived at the morgue on Nov. 12, 2006
Beatrice Simms: black female born May 11, 1945; arrived at the morgue on May 1, 2008
Shawn Thompson : black male born April 25, 1973; arrived at the morgue on Sept. 30, 2006
Maurice Webber : black male born June 2, 1977; arrived at the morgue on Aug. 2, 2006