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Six families sue Abbey Parklawn Funeral Home. Eight other lawsuits are pending.
By LEONORA LaPETER
© St. Petersburg Times, published August 14, 2002
The three Ford brothers and their mother sat in leather chairs around a table in the lawyer's conference room in Clearwater. In another room, a man with polished steel instruments and a small brush sifted through the cremated remains of Bruce Ford Sr. searching for diamonds and small chunks of gold.
The family was tense. Charlotte Ford made small talk about her husband of 33 years, who died of renal cancer at age 51 in October 2000.
The cremation expert entered the room, and placed the bag of remains on the table. He told them the remains were too heavy for a man of 100 pounds, Bruce Ford's weight at his death. There were buttons, industrial staples and charred dental remains that didn't belong there. And there was no evidence of the diamond-studded Masonic ring that the family had cremated with him.
The room fell silent. Bruce Ford Jr. was stunned. Then he was nauseated. Then he grew angry.
"When he came back and told me there was no ring, my heart fell out. That ring wasn't just a piece of jewelry. It was a symbol of who he was, and to have it dealt with in this manner," the 33-year-old St. Petersburg man said of that day last month.
The Fords are among six new families who filed lawsuits Tuesday against Abbey Parklawn Funeral Home & Memory Gardens, former funeral director Michael P. Walsh, and funeral home owner Willard I. Timmer for alleged mishandling of their loved ones' remains. The plaintiffs each are seeking $1-million, their lawyer said. Another eight lawsuits are pending in Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court.
Among the others who filed suits Tuesday are Kylie McGrath-Frazier and Darren Frazier, a Tampa couple who were given an 8-ounce bag of ashes for a child Kylie miscarried, rather than the thimbleful they should have received. Also filing suits are a Clearwater woman whose 87-year-old husband's body was missing for two weeks; and another Clearwater woman who was unable to see her 78-year-old mother's body because it was in "bad condition" and received her mother's cremated remains while they were still hot, according to the lawsuits.
Timmer, who owned the funeral home and others in Florida, could not be reached for comment. His son, Edwin Timmer, and a funeral director at Willard Timmer's Bellevue Memory Gardens in Daytona Beach are in prison for fraud and mismanagement. Timmer agreed a year ago to pay $1.2-million in fines and state costs and turn over control of his Florida death care businesses to the state.
Local police said they do not have enough evidence to file criminal charges against anyone in connection with the alleged misconduct at the Dunedin funeral home on Belcher Road. The home was taken over by the state and sold last month to the owners of Clearwater Funeral Home and Cremation Options, Charles and Tracey Scalisi.
Pinellas sheriff's Detective John Spoor said he had investigated claims of theft and forgery made by former employees in depositions and found them to be either outside the statute of limitations or too vague and unconnected to any specific victim.
Spoor said Tuesday he had not been told of the missing Masonic ring in Bruce Ford's cremated remains. "They have not filed a complaint with me," he said. "If they did, I would have investigated it."
Thomas W. Carey, the lawyer representing what has now become 50 plaintiffs in lawsuits against Abbey Parklawn and other defendants, said he had not notified the police of the new allegations of theft in the Ford case.
"I've essentially become discouraged by the lack of interest, and frankly I'm astonished that the criminal authorities have not seen fit to open a full investigation on these people," Carey said.
The Fords said they gave the ring to Walsh to be cremated with the remains of Ford, who sold heavy equipment and machinery up until he was diagnosed with cancer 10 months before he died. Walsh, who left Abbey Parklawn less than a year ago, could not be reached for comment.
"I want people to be aware that this can happen to anybody," said Bruce Ford Jr. "When my father passed away, we had 101/2 months of pain and anguish, but then we had a coming to terms with it. Now there's no closure. We don't know if it's him. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine something as sacred as that turning into such a chamber of horrors."
The Fraziers also are not sure whether they have the remains of their child, Lucille. Kylie, 23, was 17 weeks pregnant in February 2001 when she had a miscarriage at her home in Gulfport, where they lived at the time.
The couple decided to have the body cremated. Kylie McGrath-Frazier had lost her job the month before, so they were in financial straits. They used Abbey Parklawn because the funeral home had the contract to provide indigent care in the county. The county yanked that contract last year.
The funeral home had told them not to expect much because the fetus was small, but then they received a half-pound bag of cremated remains.
The Fraziers had a baby boy, Jareth, last month. But they kept reading about Abbey Parklawn and grew concerned about Lucille's remains. Like the Fords, they took them to the cremation expert at Carey's office.
"We kept hoping it would be her, because then we could just go home," said Kylie McGrath-Frazier, looking at Lucille's mint-green urn with white flowers on her coffee table recently. "It's a terrible thing to think about, because now we don't have the closure that I thought we had. Now I look at it and I don't know if it's her."