37 boxes of cremains found in funeral home storage room
ATHENS, Mich. (WOOD) – A surprising discovery after the owner of a funeral home in Athens, Michigan, recently died: more than 35 boxes of cremains were found in storage.
A Battle Creek woman whose mother died more than two years ago thought she was given her mom’s cremains immediately after her mom was cremated. But Julie Decker got a call from the medical examiner’s office saying a box of her mom’s cremains were found in “a room” last week.
Now, Decker is left questioning everything about her mom’s cremation.
“Who knows whose ashes they have?” Decker said. “If they have a box of my mother’s ashes, who did I get? I don’t know. Did I get just half of her? Did I get half of somebody else?”
Dr. Joyce DeJong, medical examiner, told WISH-TV’s sister station WOOD that Joy Spencer, also known as Joy Spoors, recently died. She and her husband Jim used to own Spencer’s Funeral Home in Athens.
It was Spoors’ family who found 37 boxes of cremains. DeJong said her office is just starting the process of identifying the cremains and returning them to families. She doesn’t know yet why the remains were being stored.
In statement provided to WOOD on Thursday, Lighthouse Funeral & Cremation Services, which bought Spencer Funeral Home at a federal bankruptcy auction, said it received “several boxes … that contained the cremated remains of those that had not been claimed” from Spoors’ family members following her death.
“While it is unusual for the former owner to hold to them for nearly two years, it is not unusual for a funeral home to be in possession of unclaimed cremated remains,” the statement continued.
“If they filed for bankruptcy, were they saving money and just giving people other ashes? Who knows?” Decker said.
Lighthouse said it turned the remains over to the county medical examiner’s office at the Western Michigan University School of Medicine.