Burial Lotteries & Intimidating Mowers | 4M #214

Welcome to the two-hundred-and-fourteenth edition of Morticians’ Monday Morning Mashup, 4M #214, 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!

The importance of being buried

Regular folks who might want to be buried next to such famous figures as author Oscar Wilde and The Doors’ frontman Jim Morrison may soon have that opportunity — but they’ll have to work for it. In exchange for this privilege, participants in the lottery sponsored by the council in charge of three of Paris, France’s most popular (and overcrowded) cemeteries will have to submit an application with two estimates for restoring 10 headstones in each of the properties.

Funeral Homes Across America Trust Treasured Memories

From caskets to credit card processing, from outreach to memorial keepsakes — Treasured Memories brings together the industry’s leading providers under one roof. If you’re already using two or more (and chances are you are), you’re leaving rewards on the table.

Trusted by hundreds of funeral homes nationwide, Treasured Memories has become the go-to rewards network for owners looking to make their operations more profitable. Every month, members receive detailed point statements, so you know exactly what you’ve earned and how to use it.

Whether you reinvest in supplies, redeem for cash value, or let your points build, the choice is yours. Don’t miss out on benefits your peers are already taking advantage of.

Pleading his case

The father of a young veteran who died by suicide after killing her three-year-old son is fighting authorities who say she is not allowed to be buried in a New Hampshire veterans’ cemetery. Although, technically, the mom was never charged with the murder of her child, the cemetery’s director says her actions make her “not eligible for interment” based on a 1997 federal law that prohibits veterans convicted of serious crimes. Her father hopes that authorities will reconsider their decision based on his daughter’s struggles with mental health, for which she had been working with a VA therapist, and is appealing the decision to a higher court.

Rejected!

Last week a Colorado judge rejected a plea deal proposed by the attorneys of Carie Hallford, who co-owned Return to Nature Funeral Home in Penrose with her husband Jon. The deal would have led to Carie pleading guilty to 190 counts of abuse of a corpse and serving 15-20 years in prison, concurrent to any federal sentence. Family members of some of the 190 deceased, whose bodies were discovered in various states of decomposition in October 2023, were present to share their feelings about the proposed deal. Now, Carie will go to trial for these charges in October 2026. She will be sentenced this December in federal court after pleading guilty to financial charges.

Was it worth it?

A 33-year-old Indiana former funeral director faces felony charges of theft, fraud, forgery and corrupt business influence charges after spending more than $47,000 of funds she pocketed after overcharging families. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the courts have shared the list of what she spent the money on, including hairdressers, massages, country club dues, personal lawn care, and multiple payments to friends and family members. Ugh.

It took their job?

It appears that we content creators aren’t the only workers who should be afraid that technology will one day replace us. It seems that tech has its digital eye on cemetery groundskeepers, as well. Autonomous commercial lawnmowers are being adopted by some larger cemeteries, including the veterans’ cemetery in Abilene, Texas, which uses its “completely automated platform mower” to maintain its 10-acre property. There’s still hope for the humans, though. “While it’s mowing, I could be doing something else, but I’m still out here with it,” says Abilene’s cemetery manager. “Weed eating or doing some other kind of maintenance. That’s taking a guy from standing on a mower for 45 minutes, and he can be doing something else.” Let’s just hope the next innovation isn’t an autonomous weed eater.