RETURN OF THE BODY SNATCHERS: FIRM WITH HISTORY OF GRAVE DESECRATIONS OWNS 10 CEMETERIES & FUNERAL HOMES IN SAN DIEGO COUNTY

By Miriam Raftery, Editor
East County Magazine
 

September 11, 2009 (San Diego) –Tonight, CNN reports that hundreds of graves were allegedly desecrated to make room for more remains in a Los Angeles cemetery, where employees are accused of ripping up concrete vaults with backhoes, shattering caskets and discarding body parts including a human skull. The story had a sickening sense of déjà vu for me—since I’ve previously reported on the cemetery owner, Service Corporation International (SCI). This now-infamous company has been involved in body-dumping scandals in multiple states and also handled bodies during Hurricane Katrina. SCI owns 2,000 cemeteries and funeral homes across the nation, including 10 right here in San Diego County. (see list at the end of this story).

A lawsuit filed yesterday in Los Angeles Superior Court alleges that these atrocities occurred at Eden Memorial Park, a large Jewish cemetery in Los Angeles that holds remains for Hollywood celebrities including Groucho Marx and Lenny Bruce. The cemetery is owned by Houston-based SCI, the largest funeral industry company in the nation.
 

After Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, I reported for the national news site RawStory.com that an SCI subsidiary had been hired to set up a mobile morgue to handle bodies of the disaster victims. The headline read: FEMA, La. outsource Katrina body count to firm implicated in body-dumping scandals.
 

As I reported back then, SCI paid $200 million to settle a lawsuit accusing the company of desecrating vaults and removing hundreds of bodies from two cemeteries in Florida. Bodies from the Menorah Gardens cemetery owned by SCI in Florida were reportedly dumped in woods frequented by wild hogs and a back hoe was used to crack open at least one vault, scattering corpses to make room for more bodies.
 

SCI also owned 15 funeral homes that were sued by surviving family members alleging “macabre mishandling, abuse and desecration of bodies” by Tri-State Crematory in Georgia, where never-incinerated corpses were found piled in a woods and stuffed into sheds in 2000. SCI’s operatives also stuffed multiple bodies into a single vault—as many as 67, in one instance. SCI paid a settlement fee to family members.
 

Why would President George Bush’s administration have hired a company with such a scandalous record? Perhaps because SCI shelled out $55,000 to help settle a case involving firing of Eliza May, a former Texas Funeral Service Commission Director who filed a lawsuit accusing then Governor George W. Bush of obstructing an investigation into SCI violations in Texas. May attempted to force Bush to testify in the cover-up case, but was fired after Bush met with an SCI lobbyist and SCI chairman/founder Robert L. Waltrip. Waltrip, a close friend of Bush’s father, former President Geore H.W. Bush, also donated $45,000 to George W. Bush’s presidential campaign and a whopping $200,000 to construction of the George H.W. Bush presidential library.
 

Melanie Sloan, executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, called the Bush administration’s choice to hire SCI to handle Katrina victims’ bodies “appalling.”
 

Jennifer Crider, a spokesperson for then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi also voiced concern over SCI’s selection and the potential for fraud or abuse of taxpayer funds as well as appropriate respect for disaster victims. “The tragedy in the Gulf States must not be compounded by disrespecting those who have died,” she told me at the time.

Despite calls to assure that Katrina victims’ bodies were appropriately handled, to my knowledge no such investigation was ever conducted by the Bush administration. Whether bodies were callously tossed into swamps or mass graves, we may never know.
 

I thought that my article, which exposed the totality of SCI’s known abuses, would surely result in the company either reforming or in regulators clamping down on the funeral industry’s bad apple to assure that such circumstances would never occur again.
 

Sadly, I was wrong.
 

The company’s website states that people working for SCI “assist families with compassion and guidance at difficult times, helping them celebrate the significance of lives that have been lived, and preserving memories that transcend generations, with dignity and honor.” But to the families of thousands of deceased individuals whose bodies have been desecrated by Service Corporation International, the company’s actions appear anything but honorable.
 

I urge local law enforcement authorities and the California Attorney General to investigate all SCI-owned funeral homes and cemeteries to determine whether its unscrupulous and unsavory business practices have occurred elsehwere, including here in San Diego County.

In the meantime, if you lose a loved one, do your homework before choosing a mortuary and final resting place—since an interment at SCI may prove to be less-than-final.
 

Here is the list of mortuaries and cemeteries in San Diego County that are owned by SCI, according to the company's website, including facilities in San Diego, Lemon Grove, Chula Vista, and Bonita:

1 Merkley-Mitchell Mortuary
3655 5th Avenue , San Diego, CA 92103 U.S.A.
Phone No: (619) 295-2177

2 Greenwood Memorial Park
4300 Imperial Avenue , San Diego, CA 92113 U.S.A.
Phone No: (619) 264-3131

3 Greenwood Memorial Park & Mortuary
4300 Imperial Avenue , San Diego, CA 92113 U.S.A.
Phone No: (619) 264-3131

4 Goodbody\'s Mortuary
5027 El Cajon Boulevard , San Diego, CA 92115 U.S.A.
Phone No: (619) 582-1700

5 Beardsley-Mitchell Funeral Home
1818 Sunset Cliffs Boulevard , San Diego, CA 92107 U.S.A.
Phone No: (619) 223-8100

6 Clairemont Mortuary
4266 Mt. Abernathy Avenue , San Diego, CA 92117 U.S.A.
Phone No: (858) 279-2211

7 Conrad Lemon Grove Mortuary
7387 Broadway , Lemon Grove, CA 91945-1533 U.S.A.
Phone No: (619) 460-4601

8 Humphrey Mortuary
753 Broadway , Chula Vista, CA 91910 U.S.A.
Phone No: (619) 425-9111

9 Glen Abbey Memorial Park
3838 Bonita Road , Bonita, CA 91902 U.S.A.
Phone No: (619) 498-4600

10 Glen Abbey Mortuary (8.02 miles)
3838 Bonita Road , Bonita, CA 91902 U.S.A.
Phone No: (619) 498-4600