Fee Victories & Orange Outlaws | 4M #185

Welcome to the hundred-and-eighty-fifth edition of Morticians’ Monday Morning Mashup, 4M #185, where we’ll serve up bite-sized, easily-digestible nuggets of the deathcare news you need to crush conversations in the week ahead. Bon appetit!

Finally fee-free

Ontario deathcare professionals are relieved that they no longer have to charge families a $30 nationally-mandated fee to register their stillborn child. On April 7, the BAO announced that it had eliminated “licensing fees associated with death care services for a stillborn child.” Funeral directors have vocalized their frustration for years with the Bereavement Authority of Ontario’s charge, especially when funeral homes, cemeteries, and even the cities have waived fees and/or provided products and services to these families free of charge.

Death on Broadway

If you’re planning a trip to NYC, you might want to add a Broadway show to your agenda — namely, the new musical called Dead Outlaw. The production brings to life (LOL) the true story of Oklahoma Outlaw Elmer McCurdy, whose overly-embalmed and unclaimed corpse was used as a carnival sideshow attraction for more than 50 years after his death. After being handled by multiple owners, Elmer’s body was eventually painted DayGlo orange and used as a funhouse jumpscare prop in California. It wasn’t until 1976, when a member of the crew of The Six Million Dollar Man TV show realized that the prop they were using was actually a mummified human body, that authorities finally laid Elmer to rest. Elmer’s story has inspired several books and a cult following of “McCurdyana” aficionados, but Dead Outlaw is the first musical in Elmer’s honor.

Piling on the pain

An already excruciating experience was compounded in Virginia last week when a man attending his young nephew’s funeral service was shot and killed. A fight among family members broke out at the graveside, with more than 20 shots being fired. Miraculously, no other injuries were reported in the incident, which the local police chief called a “new low.” The funeral director, whose brother was actually officiating at the time, expressed deep concern for the family, who were already grieving the loss of their 32-year-old loved one. As of last Friday, no suspect was in custody.

More questions and allegations

The Texas Funeral Service Commission has shuttered and may censure a Houston funeral home where a worker stabbed a man who entered the facility with his sister to document alleged corpse abuse. The agency has demanded that Richardson Mortuary comply with the state’s building, health, and safety regulations or face steep fines. The owner is also being investigated for alleged fraudulent, unprofessional, or deceptive business practices. Families have been gathering outside the building since news surfaced of multiple bodies —many who were assumed to have been cremated already — being stored in the un-air-conditioned facility.

Guilty, please

Two former funeral directors accused of separate horrific incidents in Colorado are officially guilty as of last week. Miles Harford, the Denver man who had dozens of cremated remains stored in the crawlspace of his rental house and a decomposing body in a hearse under his carport, pleaded guilty last Monday to charges of abusing a corpse and theft. He will be sentenced in June. In the meantime, Jon Hallford, who is facing multiple state and federal charges in conjunction with the 190 bodies found in their Penrose facility in 2023, is still sticking with his guilty plea, although his wife Carie withdrew hers. Families impacted by their actions were notified last week that neither Hallford would be appearing in court last Friday for sentencing.