Tampabay: Funeral home accused of mishandling bodies

DUNEDIN -- From Belcher Road, Abbey Parklawn Funeral Home & Memory Gardens appears serene, a place where a fountain sprays over a large pond, palms sway over a rock garden and family members visit their deceased loved ones on manicured lawns.

But inside the tiny cluster of buildings at the front of the 13-acre property, current and former employees said, onetime funeral director Scott M. Daley frequently mishandled the bodies entrusted in his care.

They say Daley forged death certificates; took jewelry, drugs and clothes from the dead; and left a garbage can filled with the cremated remains of as many as 100 people in his garage so long that his orange tabby, Kit, began to use it as a litter box.

These and other gruesome practices have begun to emerge in a series of sworn statements taken by lawyers for at least 10 families suing the funeral home.

The claims are so egregious that the statements have been turned over to the State Attorney's Office, and the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office is investigating whether crimes have been committed.

"When I looked at these depositions, every page was something outrageous. It was sick," said Mark McGarry, felony division director at the Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney's Office. "I agreed with (the lawyer's) assessment, and said, "This is brutal.' So I hooked it up with someone at the Sheriff's Office, and they have those statements to get their investigation kicked off."

Abbey Parklawn had the Pinellas County contract to bury and cremate poor people and unclaimed bodies until last year, when the county canceled it over botched burials. Several current and former funeral home employees said in sworn statements that three people buried under the county contract were sometimes placed in a single grave. The funeral home, which has been in operation for more than 40 years, is now run by the state.

Daley denies the allegations, but lawyers in the case say the testimony is part of a pattern of troublesome behavior at Abbey Parklawn. Among other revelations in the sworn statements:

Lon E. Wesner, 53, a registered child molester who was a gravedigger at Abbey Parklawn until 1999, was nicknamed "Necrophiliac" and had access to the bodies night and day, one deposition said. Wesner denies he did anything sexually with the bodies.

Wayne DeaKyne, 54, a cremator and felon who still works at the funeral home, would keep the cremation oven going all day, sometimes mixing the cremated remains of several people before he divided them up for families. One former employee said in a sworn statement she saw him cremate a fetus and a body together.

DeaKyne acknowledged in an interview with the Times that he kept the oven going all day, but he said he separated the ashes.

"I have pretty good information that hundreds, if not thousands, of bodies were improperly cremated here," said Thomas W. Carey, the Clearwater lawyer working for the families. "I don't have a number yet, but we're working on it. But (lots) of people are going to be mad."

The statements from the co-workers not only offer a window into a troubled funeral home's past, but they also raise questions about whether the licensed professionals involved should be working today.

In 1999, Daley left Abbey Parklawn and went into business with two co-workers, opening Abbey Affordable Cremation & Funeral Services at a Largo strip center. That company today offers cremations for $295.

Daley, 42, declined to comment, but his lawyer said he denies the allegations.

"My belief is that ultimately the allegations made against Scott will be shown to be false," said Bjorn Brunvand, a Clearwater criminal defense lawyer. "At this point, because of the ongoing criminal investigation, I've instructed him not to answer any questions from anyone. He'd like to talk, but not until the investigation is over."

State law bars funeral directors, embalmers or cremators, known as direct disposers, from getting or keeping a license if they have been convicted of a felony that "relates to the practice" of that profession.

Over the past 17 years, Daley has been charged with several felonies, including arson, setting off a destructive device, receiving stolen property and forgery. He was found not guilty of the arson and setting off a destructive device in 1993. He pleaded guilty to grand theft in 1985 and unauthorized possession of a forged driver's license in 1987. Adjudication was withheld in the theft and forged driver's license cases.

"If (Daley is) asked in the state of Florida if he's a convicted felon, he's not," Brunvand said. "He's never been adjudicated of a felony charge."

DeaKyne, the cremator, spent a decade in prison for armed robbery and aggravated battery, according to court records and his deposition. He continues to work for Abbey Parklawn and received a positive endorsement from the state-appointed funeral director, Mark Riposta.

"I don't know Wayne to be any other than a hard worker," Riposta said. "He's done his time and that was years ago. I believe people deserve second and third chances."

Daley came to Abbey Parklawn in the early 1990s after being fired from another Palm Harbor funeral home, according to depositions in the 1993 criminal arson case against him. In that case, Daley was accused of placing a stick of dynamite on his former boss' home and igniting it, causing a window to blow up. A jury found him not guilty.

Once at Abbey Parklawn, he quickly earned a reputation as a workaholic who was always trying to make money on the side.

The strongest allegations about Daley come from Dawn Allen, who worked at the funeral home and dated him for eight months.

Recalling his entrepreneurial skills, Allen said he bought dozens of refrigerators from a nursing home that is being renovated for $20 a piece, fixed them up and sold them for $100 -- all from Abbey Parklawngrounds, she said. He drove a red Corvette and had numerous rental properties.

In his job as a funeral director, though, he was "nonchalant" when it came to dealing with the dead, recalled Allen, who acknowledged that she and Daley do not get along.

He would go through the bags attached to the dead bodies and take pills, she said in her deposition. Once she saw him take a gold rope chain and a silver watch. He would take business suits and wear them, she said in the sworn statement.

Other employees back up parts of Allen's allegations about Daley.

DeaKyne said in a sworn statement that he saw Daley give Wesner several watches. And in an interview, Wesner, the gravedigger, also said he saw the garbage can of cremated remains in Daley's garage. He said Daley gave him clothes, jewelry and a hearing aid that he got from the bodies.

Several employees questioned about these incidents said they did not recall Daley taking jewelry, clothes or drugs from the dead, forging death certificates or mishandling cremains.

Abbey Parklawn got the $175,000-a-year county contract to bury indigents and unclaimed bodies more than five years ago when Daley was a funeral director there. But the facility was not large enough to handle the volume of bodies coming through the funeral home.

At one point, upward of 100 bodies a month came through a single cooler, according to the sworn statements. Former employees said the bodies would be stacked up outside the cooler and in the prep room, sometimes without covering, sometimes for two days.

State law requires them to be refrigerated within 24 hours. But some former employees recalled one overweight corpse left out in the prep room so long that gases built up under the skin and it burst, hitting the ceiling and the walls.

Melissa Henry, a secretary who worked there twice in the late '90s, recalled a woman from a nursing home dumped outside the cooler on a Friday with her head on the floor and her legs up. By Monday, the woman's tongue was sticking out of her mouth and her face was black.

Henry is the employee who told state officials in 1999 that things were awry at Abbey Parklawn. She told state officials that Michael Walsh, the funeral director who took over from Daley, gave a man whose wife had died the cremated remains of someone else.

In a deposition taken Thursday, Henry said she saw DeaKyne cremating a fetus and a person together in the cremation oven. Another employee said in a sworn deposition he observed DeaKyne burning body after body, stopping to remove the ashes of several people and then continuing on.

"They'd get behind and then (DeaKyne) would start cremating them like an assembly line," recalled Daniel Jones, who worked on the Abbey Parklawn grounds crew for several months in late 2000.

Jones said DeaKyne kept a can where he placed gold teeth from bodies. He and others also said DeaKyne drank on the job and was disrespectful to the bodies.

"Twice I saw him kick two bodies when he dropped them," Jones recalled in his deposition of the 5-foot-6 DeaKyne. "He'd drop them on the floor. Both times he kicked them in the head."

DeaKyne denied the allegations in his sworn statement this month and during an interview at the funeral home last week.

"I never took gold teeth," he said. "I treat these bodies like I treat my mother."

Sworn statements taken in the case also raise questions about Wesner, the former gravedigger at Abbey Parklawn.

Wesner said he didn't mistreat the bodies. During an interview at the front door of his apartment in Clearwater, however, he acknowledged he was guilty of child molestation charges. He said he is married to his stepsister.

Wesner was convicted in 1982 of giving and receiving oral sex from an 11-year-old and a 13-year-old boy. In 1993, he was convicted of molesting a 4-year-old girl he babysat. He received probation for the charges.

Wesner, who said he volunteers at a Clearwater homeless shelter giving people rides, said: "I don't rape dead people. You can give me a lie detector test."

Wesner said that Daley taught him to cremate bodies and that he cremated bodies without a license. He said he was "let go" from Abbey Parklawn in 1999.

Riposta, the state-appointed funeral director at Abbey Parklawn, thinks many of the claims involving the funeral home are exaggerated. He proudly showed how the state has cleaned up the funeral home and removed the remaining bad actors. There are new rules and regulations for employees. The grounds, cooler, crematorium and prep room have been redone or fixed up.

The funeral home, crematorium and cemetery are about to be sold within the next three weeks for $850,000.

Riposta said the funeral home has been inspected several times by state officials since he took over in January. The state's funeral home and cemetery industry was recently the subject of a state audit that found regulation of the industry was fragmented and in need of change.

The funeral home industry has been under increased scrutiny recently after the grisly discovery of hundreds of bodies strewn at a Georgia crematory and violations at several Florida funeral homes.

Abbey Parklawn was owned by Willard I. Timmer, who owned funeral homes in Daytona Beach that were investigated for mistreatment of bodies, burying them in the wrong location and allowing cemeteries to fall apart.

George Howell, a lawyer representing the state receiver, said legal claims against Abbey Parklawn for potential violations must be submitted by Sept. 30. All of Timmer's Florida properties have been placed in a receivership and have been sold or are being sold.

"The spotlight is on the funeral industry right now . . . but as a member of the board I'd like to see things tightened up," said Dwayne Elliott Matt, owner of Zion Hill Mortuary in St. Petersburg and a member of the state Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers. "We're disturbed. There are some people who have slipped by. Their motives are impure. I'm glad all this is happening (in the industry) because it's keeping us on our toes. Hopefully we can get some control and upgrade the integrity of funeral directors across the state."

The same state inspectors who come to funeral homes and crematoriums such as Abbey Parklawn for the Department of Business and Profession Regulation also inspect veterinary clinics, barber shops and cosmetology salons.

-- Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

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