Police removed the remains of 63 foetuses from a Detroit funeral home and regulators closed the business amid a widening investigation of alleged improprieties at local funeral homes.

The Detroit police chief, James Craig, said officers found 36 foetuses in boxes and 27 others in freezers during Friday’s raid at the Perry Funeral Home. He said he was “stunned” by the discovery, which came a week after the remains of 11 infants were discovered in a ceiling at Detroit’s defunct Cantrell Funeral Home. Those remains were found after state regulators received an anonymous letter.

Michigan’s department of licensing and regulatory affairs said the remains found at the Perry Funeral Home were turned over to state investigators, who immediately declared the funeral home closed and its licence suspended.

Inspectors at the state’s Corporations, Securities and Commercial Licensing Bureau said they had found “heinous conditions and negligent conduct” at the Perry Funeral Home, including numerous failures to certify death certificates and obtain proper permits for burial.

Remains of 11 infants found hidden in ceiling of Detroit funeral home Read more

The agency’s statement said Friday’s findings could be felonies “punishable by imprisonment for not more than 10 years or a fine of not more than $50,000 or both”.

Craig said the investigation into the Perry Funeral Home began after a man who has sued that business over its handling of remains of infants and foetuses saw coverage of the discoveries at the Cantrell Funeral Home and told his lawyer to contact police.

That lawsuit, filed in July, alleges that the Perry Funeral Home stored the remains of stillborn and live-birth babies in the morgue of Wayne State University’s school of mortuary science for up to three years without trying to notify parents, some of whom wanted to donate the bodies for medical research. It also alleges the funeral home may have fraudulently billed Medicaid, as well as the Detroit Medical Center, for burials it never performed.

The lawyers in that suit, Peter Parks and Daniel Cieslak, said they believe many more infants’ remains may be found in the improper possession of the Perry Funeral Home, perhaps as many as 200, based on research of log books kept by the school.

“I’m really wondering where all the rest of them are,” Cieslak said on Friday.

As part of a widening investigaion, Detroit police raided another funeral home, the QA Cantrell Funeral Home, and a home.

Since April, 38 unattended bodies and 269 containers of cremated remains have been discovered in the facility.