Detroit police investigate second funeral home, raid a third

Fiona Kelliher , Marc Daalder | Detroit Free Press

The probe into allegations of improper burials of infants has been widened to cover multiple funeral homes in metro Detroit, with a number of state agencies joining Detroit Police.

At a news conference Friday, Detroit Police Chief James Craig said that DPD had held a meeting with representatives from the FBI, Michigan State Police, Wayne County prosecutors, the Michigan Attorney General's Office and the state licensing authority.

"We’re looking forward to our continued collaboration with our federal and state partners on this, because this will be a wide probe," Craig said.

Craig said the criminal investigation, which will still be helmed by DPD for the foreseeable future, has been widened to include a second funeral home, Perry Funeral Home in Midtown.

The Perry investigation was spurred by a lawsuit alleging that the home improperly stored the bodies of both stillborn and live birth babies in the Wayne State University School of Mortuary Science morgue for years without telling their parents. Some parents had asked to donate the remains to medical research.

The lawsuit also alleges that Perry fraudulently billed Medicaid to pay for burials it never performed. Attorneys for the case declined to give an estimation for the amount of money that Perry could have pulled in, but according to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, the state can pay up to $555 to a funeral director for disposition of an unclaimed body.

Attorneys Peter Parks and Daniel Cieslak filed the suit on behalf of Rachel Brown and Larry Davis, whose deceased daughter, Alayah, was one of at least 37 improperly stored in the WSU morgue. Earlier this month, attorneys filed a motion to make the case class action.

"If our class action gets certified, we will make every effort to find out who every single one of those fetuses is in the possession of the funeral home,” said plaintiff attorney Parks.

The Detroit Medical Center and Harper-Hutzel Hospital, where the babies originated, are also named in the lawsuit, along with Wayne State University and Knollwood Memorial Park Cemetery.

The announcement came after Detroit homicide detectives raided QA Cantrell Funeral Home in Eastpointe early Friday to investigate a potential connection with the 11 fetuses found in the ceiling of Cantrell Funeral Home on Mack Avenue.

Detectives seized computers, business cellphones, and paperwork, according to a news release. They also raided the home of the owner, Anetta Cantrell.

The raid comes just after an inspection earlier this week that revealed no problems except a door in need of painting. Craig declined to comment on the raid.

At the news conference, Craig said he was unable to rule out whether more funeral homes could potentially be investigated.

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"I would like to look at you and say 'I hope not. I hope this isolated.' I can’t say that with certainty. This could be larger than we might know," he said.

"I’ve never seen anything (like this) in my 41 and a half years. It’s disturbing. But we will get to the bottom of this; we will find the evidence."

Craig said police were tipped off to alleged violations at the Perry Funeral Home by a father involved in a civil suit over the improper burial of his child.

The late Raymond Cantrell started the Mack Avenue funeral home.

The Eastpointe location was later opened by his widow, Anetta Cantrell, who was almost 40 years younger than him. Cantrell Sr.'s son, Raymond Cantrell II, inherited the home on Mack Avenue.

Arnold Reed, an attorney for QA Cantrell, said the initial investigation was started by a competitor "trying to run QA Cantrell out of business."

It is unclear what charges might be filed against funeral home owners caught up in the probe. Craig said a state statute made improperly disposing of human remains a felony if the remains were more than 180 days old.