What happens to nearly 400 human remains at Cantrell?

Frank Witsil | Detroit Free Press

Show Caption Hide Caption Detroit Police Chief James Craig presser on remains at funeral home Detroit Police Chief James Craig gave an update to media on the remains found at Cantrell Funeral Home

Brian Joseph was among the first people last week to see the cardboard box and small, white coffin holding the tiny fetal remains hidden in the ceiling of the now-defunct Cantrell Funeral Home. What he saw, he said, sickened and horrified him.

"How," the devout Catholic asked, "could anyone do that to innocent babies?"

The macabre discovery late Friday of the decomposing remains has received worldwide media attention, spurred a $1-million lawsuit, and has shaken an industry under heightened scrutiny as police investigate why the remains were hidden there — and for how long.

But Joseph, the owner of Verheyden Funeral Homes in Grosse Pointe Park, said he is focused on helping families and the dead find peace by offering what could be worth tens of thousands of dollars in funeral services to make sure the 11 fetuses uncovered at the east-side Detroit funeral home are properly buried.

"If we cannot bury our own dead, we are no better than a Third World country," Joseph, 53, told the Free Press. "To paraphrase our Holy Father Francis, it is our obligation to help the marginalized and the ones in need."

In addition, Joseph said he also is making arrangements for the interment of ashes of more than 370 bodies, nearly two dozen of which appear to be military veterans, that were abandoned at Cantrell in the spring.

Those services, which likely would be at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Detroit, could begin in a couple weeks.

Identifying the remains

Joseph said authorities asked him on Friday to go to the Mack Avenue funeral home to assist.

A new owner, who purchased the building about a month ago, said the interior smelled horrible. The owner had removed four dumpsters of garbage as he started renovating the space to turn it into a community center.

In addition, someone tipped off state officials that remains were hidden in the building.

Joseph, who arrived at Cantrell even before the state investigators, was let in by the owner.

The state contacted Joseph, he said, because in the spring, as Cantrell's financial and regulatory problems became evident, he had offered to help the operator, Raymond Cantrell II, who had inherited the business after his father died in 2016.

Cantrell then asked Joseph to honor more than 500 of his pre-arranged funeral contracts.

The money paid on the contracts is held by a third party and Joseph said he does not profit from them. He agreed, he said, because Cantrell's father had been a contemporary of the former owner of his funeral home, and he believes that he has a duty to help others in need.

In April, the state suspended Cantrell's license, citing "deplorable, unsanitary conditions." Among the problems authorities found were six decomposing bodies — three men, two women and a male fetus — in the funeral home.

Again, to help, Joseph quietly arranged for the bodies to be buried during the summer at Mount Olivet, which donated space and services. Santieu Vaults in Livonia donated the burial vaults which protect bodies while in the ground.

Joseph is now trying to help identify the hundreds of containers holding cremated remains, some of which appear to go back to 1996. Many of the remains have names with the date the person died, Joseph said, but finding relatives and loved ones is a challenge.

In addition, within the last two days, four more containers have been found.

On Tuesday, Joseph said, he spoke with a woman who, after hearing the latest news, suspected that one of the hundreds of plastic containers of ashes left at the Detroit funeral home might have been the remains of her brother.

Meanwhile, authorities also are trying to identify the newly found fetuses.

Initially, they were all thought to be infants. Nine remains were in a plain cardboard box, and two were in a white body bag in a white casket. On Monday, authorities clarified that 10 of the bodies were fetuses, and one might be a child.

By Tuesday, the Wayne County Medical Examiner determined all 11 were fetuses.

“Due to the conditions of the remains, the best path toward positive identification is finding existing records," said Wayne County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Carl Schmidt. "The fact that these remains reached a funeral home means there should be a record somewhere.”

It's unclear when the fetuses would be released.

A long history

Joseph, a native Detroiter and graduate of Notre Dame High School, started working part-time at a funeral home at age 15.

He attended Macomb County Community College, then Wayne State University, and gradually worked his way up in the business, until he ultimately bought it.

Verheyden Funeral Homes, started more than a century ago in Detroit by Charles Verheyden, is about 2 miles away from Cantrell Funeral Home.

The Verheyden, Joseph said, believes that everyone deserves a dignified funeral, and that sentiment has been embodied in its motto, "The same always to all," which is emblazoned in Latin across the bottom of the firm's crest.

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In the meantime, people who had taken relatives to Cantrell now fear that their cremation services were compromised.

And a Southfield firm, Moss & Colella, has filed a $1-million lawsuit in Wayne County Circuit Court on behalf of a widow, Katherleen Bonner, who has alleged the body and now-cremated remains of her husband, Drewery Bonner, were improperly handled.

"It's a horrible situation," said John Desmond of A.J. Desmond & Sons Funeral Directors, summing up the problems with remains that were hidden and left behind. "This is the most egregious behavior that I have ever heard of in my 50 years of being licensed in the state of Michigan."

Desmond, who cochairs a Michigan Funeral Directors Association effort to help put to rest hundreds of bodies that go unclaimed at the Wayne County Medical Examiners Office, said he can not fathom why the Cantrell funeral home did not care for the remains of nearly 400 people.

"It's so wrong; it's so unprofessional; it's so unethical," he said. "I don't know of a funeral home that would not have helped Cantrell solve their problem. I don't know of a funeral director that wouldn't have helped a family do something. It's outrageous."

Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or fwitsil@freepress.com. Staff writers Aleanna Siacon and Elisha Anderson contributed to this report.