Widow to allow burial after 12 years

Pat Burnett has kept her husband's body in storage because she is trying to prove his cancer was caused by toxins in the air.

By ANITA KUMAR

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 26, 2000

FORT MYERS -- Pat Burnett celebrated her 64th birthday by going to see her husband for the first time in a decade. But first, the funeral director had her put on rubber gloves.

Mrs. Burnett, a short woman with graying hair, stepped into the walk-in cooler in the storage room of Anderson Funeral Home on Thursday. The temperature hovered just above 30 degrees.

Ron Anderson opened a metal box that had been nailed shut for many years. He moved the colorful floral sheets aside and pulled away the plastic bag.

There was Roy Clayton Burnett -- the same way he had been for more than 12 years since he died of lung cancer Feb. 10, 1988, at age 67.

His widow never buried him.

Instead, she kept his body in cold storage, running up a tab of $25,000 and hoping one day she could use it to prove her husband -- and others -- became sick from the toxic waste she said that several nearby companies pumped into the air.

"I had no way of knowing what would happen if I buried him," Mrs. Burnett said. "If I buried him, then no one would ever know what happened."

Those in the funeral business say they have never heard of a case quite like this, particularly one that has gone on this long.

"It certainly does not happen every day," said Sharon Seay, executive director of the National Funeral Directors and Morticians Association.

In the first couple of years after her husband's death, Mrs. Burnett regularly visited the funeral home in Lehigh Acres outside Fort Myers, where she examined the body with gloved hands.

As the years slipped by, she continued her quest to prove Burnett got sick from pollution. She repeatedly called and wrote government officials.

But eventually she stopped visiting the body.

Anderson, a funeral director for 26 years, agreed to store the corpse while Mrs. Burnett had it tested. But he had no idea how long it would take.

He said he tried to convince Mrs. Burnett for years to bury the body, but she refused. And he didn't know what else to do except to abide her wishes.

When her husband died, Mrs. Burnett started paying Anderson $7 a day for storage, but she stopped when she ran out of money. Anderson said he is willing to forgive the $25,000 debt, and even absorb the $1,200 it will cost to bury Burnett if she would agree.

"She might as well bury him," Anderson said. "He can't stay that way forever."

Funeral directors are used to people wanting to wait to bury or cremate a loved one so a religious practice can be adhered to, medical tests can be conducted or out-of-town relatives can arrive.

But that usually takes days, maybe a week or two. Not years.

"The idea is not unusual," said Kelly Smith, spokesman for the National Funeral Directors Association. "What is unusual is the length of time. . . . But what is a funeral director supposed to do? It's a real quandary."

Florida law does not say how long a body can be refrigerated or when it must be disposed of, according to the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, which oversees funeral homes.

It does require that a body be either embalmed or refrigerated in a cooler less than 40 degrees within 24 hours of death, said department spokeswoman Lonnie Parizek. Mrs. Burnett originally paid $575 to cremate her fifth husband, but quickly changed her mind because she wanted to keep the body as evidence.

Burnett, an invalid in his final days because of lung cancer, died after he fell and hurt his back at the couple's home in Page Park, a mostly industrial area just outside Fort Myers, Mrs. Burnett said. He easily hurt his back, she said, because a tumor caused by the toxic waste had curved his spine, making it weak.

An autopsy report paid for by Mrs. Burnett showed her husband died from cancer and pneumonia and did not include any mention of a tumor near his spine.

Mrs. Burnett didn't believe the report and tried for years to find another doctor to conduct an autopsy or tests. She never did.

These days, Mrs. Burnett, a chain smoker afflicted with cancer herself and weak from chemotherapy, talks non-stop about a vast conspiracy that she says includes her arrest in 1968, Page Park flooding problems and toxic waste.

She says she works constantly on her "court papers," which protest various injustices in her life -- from being placed in a mental institution to having her house torn down because of code violations. On Thursday, she was working on an appeal to the 2nd District Court of Appeal.

"My mother always said I had a one-track mind," she said. "But I'm getting tired of this fight."

It's starting to show.

After not speaking to him for years, Mrs. Burnett called Anderson a couple of months ago to explain why she couldn't pay him. He tried again to convince her to bury the body, leaving her with the option to exhume it later.

This time, she agreed but told him she wanted to see her husband one last time.

On Thursday, her first trip to the funeral home in 10 years, she didn't recognize Anderson. "Pat, it's me," he said. He patted her on the back several times to comfort her.

"Funeral directors are great caregivers," said Smith, of the National Funeral Directors Association. "I can understand. He probably felt committed to serve the widow. He probably felt obligated."

After getting reacquainted, Mrs. Burnett and Anderson made their way toward the cooler and the metal box inside.

She was nervous before she looked at the body, wondering if the sight would be too much for her. The skin was now brown and shrunken with a waxlike appearance. He had some hair and a white beard as well.

But she remained composed, talking to Anderson about taking photographs of Burnett's back before they buried him.

Anderson promised he would have some of his employees turn the body over and take pictures that he would send to her. "You promise?" she asked repeatedly, cheering when Anderson said that he would do it.

Now, after 12 years, Roy Clayton Burnett finally will get a proper burial.

"I realized I had to do something," said Mrs. Burnett, whose eyes filled with tears as she realized that this would be the last time she would see her husband. "There's no reason to keep him. I think its way past time."

She has decided to bury him in the Florida National Cemetery in Bushnell, a cemetery for veterans, which Anderson's partner, Lee Downs, nicknamed the Arlington National Cemetery of the South.

"I think Roy would like that," Mrs. Burnett said.

Mrs. Burnett signed the paperwork Thursday before she left the funeral home and promised to see Anderson in about a week when Burnett is buried.

"Sorry it took so long to make the final arrangements," Mrs. Burnett said to Anderson before leaving.

"No problem," he replied.

- Times researchers Cathy Wos and Kitty Bennett contributed to this report.

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