Casket Selfies & Tombstone Tots | 4M #186

Welcome to the hundred-and-eighty-sixth edition of Morticians’ Monday Morning Mashup, 4M #186, 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!

No, nope, not ok

Pretty much every aspect of Pope Francis’s visitation and funeral has been uber-scrutinized, so it’s no surprise that mourners who stopped at the coffin to TAKE A SELFIE with the late pontiff drew lots of attention. First, because phones weren’t supposed to be allowed in the Basilica, and secondly, because it’s just not cool. After these complaints, guards began enforcing their phone policy, only allowing photos outside the building.

A home run

A New York nonprofit needs $2500 to restore a historic cemetery, so they’re hoping that their latest fundraiser will not only raise that amount, but also unite even the worst of enemies — Mets and Yankees fans, to be exact. The founders of Gravestone Guardians are raffling off tickets to this year’s Subway Series, the annual event that pits the New York Mets against their rivals, the New York Yankees. Just a $10 donation to the effort to restore St. Mary of the Snow Graveyard could be just the ticket — literally. The drawing is set for April 30, so … good luck!

Same old, same old

The prison sentences of Megan Hess and her mom Shirley Koch, the disgraced former owners of Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors in Colorado who were convicted in 2022 of charges stemming from illegally selling body parts, will not be altered from their original maximum 20- and 15-year stints after all. Although these sentences were vacated in July 2024 after a district court found that the recommending sentencing guidelines weren’t followed in the original trial, last week both were resentenced to the exact same terms by the appeals court.

Little entrepreneur

What were you doing when you were 10 years old? Chances are you weren’t cleaning gravestones, or even running your own business. But a 10-year-old UK boy has turned his passion of cleaning graves into a business, offering 10% of his earnings to a charity that provides headstones for families who can’t afford them. “Cleaning graves gets me off PS5” video games, he said in a recent interview. 

New Colorado bill

The atrocities that took place at Sunset Mesa and Return to Nature prompted Colorado lawmakers to strengthen their state’s deathcare regulations, beginning with new laws, passed in 2024, regarding licensing for funeral directors and inspections at funeral homes. Now a new bill, if passed, will add to that body of legislation by making it a crime for anyone to abuse preneed funds. 

More issues in Texas

An Austin, Texas funeral home owner has been charged with abuse of the corpse and tampering with government records after a former employee complained of criminal conduct at the facility. In addition to falsifying information on death certificates, the 50-year-old owner allegedly conducted “experiments” on severed body parts prior to cremation, injecting some with embalming fluid asking her employees to “study” the “effects […] with and without formaldehyde.” The owner has bonded out of jail, but awaits a court hearing on May 9, during which she promises to add “context” to the allegations.