A
Company Charged With Desecrating Corpses Hired To Collect Deceased Victims
Of Hurricane Katrina
By Jason Leopold
15 September, 2005
Countercurrents.org
A
funeral services company which recently learned that one of its subsidiaries
is negotiating a lucrative contract with the Federal Emergency Management
Agency to remove dead bodies in areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina,
paid $100 million to settle a class-action lawsuit several years ago
alleging the company desecrated thousands of corpses, and dumped bodies
into mass graves.
Moreover, the company
paid $200,000 to settle a whistleblower lawsuit that sought to expose
that two members of the Texas funeral commission, the agency which regulates
the funeral industry, were actually employees of the company they were
supposed to monitor--an obvious conflict-of-interest.
In the civil matter,
which took place at two Jewish cemeteries in Florida, the plaintiff's
attorney said that SCI secretly broke into and opened burial vaults
and dumped remains in a wooded area where the remains may have been
consumed by wild animals.
Additionally, SCI
buried "remains in locations other than those purchased by plaintiffs;
crushing burial vaults in order to make room for other vaults; burying
remains on top of the other rather than side-by-side; secretly digging
up and removing remains; secretly burying remains head-to-foot rather
than side-by-side; secretly mixing body parts and remains from different
individuals; secretly allowing plots owned by one part to be occupied
by a different person; secretly selling plots in rows where there were
more graves assigned than the rows could accommodate; secretly allowed
graves to encroach on other plots; secretly sold plots so narrow that
the plots could not accommodate standard burial vaults; secretly participated
in the desecration of gravesites and markers and failed to exercise
reasonable care in handling the plaintiff's loved ones remains."
Kenyon International.
a unit of SCI, is presently in charge of the delicate task of collecting
the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of dead bodies in the aftermath of
the hurricane. The fact that a subsidiary of SCI is in talks with the
federal government, largely due to its close ties to the White House,
to remove bodies in New Orleans is ghastly.
The whistleblower
suit dates back to 1999 and alleges that while he was governor of Texas,
George W. Bushs office interfered with an aggressive state investigation
into the embalming practices by Service Corporation International, a
Houston-based funeral conglomerate headed by Robert Waltripa close
friend of the Bush family who also contributed heavily to then Gov.
Bush's gubernatorial campaigns, and donated $100,000 to former President
George Bushs presidential library.
An attorney for
Eliza May, a former whistleblower who served as executive director of
the Texas Funeral Services Commission, the state agency that regulates
the funeral business, claimed that she was fired from her state job
because she raised questions about SCI's embalming practices and sought
to expose the company's misdeeds. She filed a whistleblower suit in
1999 alleging "she was the victim of "political" retaliation
because she was threatening the interests of a well-connected political
patron of the governor," Newsweek reported in an April 21, 2001,
story.
May claimed that
current White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales was also complicit in the
matter and even helped SCI in a cover-up. Gonzales, who was also Bushs
gubernatorial counsel, reportedly received a memo on April 22, 1996,
suggesting possible improprieties by two funeral commissioners with
ties to SCI.
"Bush and his
top aides have heatedly denied the charges and suggested the entire
matter was drummed up by Democratic lawyers with political motives,
Newsweek reported.
The memo, written
by Marc Allen Connelly, who was general counsel to the funeral services
commission at the time, and sent to Dick McNeil, the Bush-appointed
chairman of the funeral commission, stated that Connelly "received
information" from Texas state officials that two of the funeral
commissioners charged with regulating the state funeral business actually
worked for SCI-the largest funeral firm in the state. Although one of
the commissioners was openly an SCI officer (the one appointed by Bush),
Connelly stated that state banking records he inspected showed that
another of the commissioners," Newsweek reported.
The revelation represented
a "a possible statutory conflict." Texas law prohibited any
two commissioners from having ties "directly or indirectly "to
the same funeral company.
In the memo, Connelly
told McNeil that he should "immediately inform the Governor of
this apparent conflict and also recommend that the Governor take action
to remove both (the two SCI-related commissioners) from the commission
because both individuals knew or should have known of this conflict
yet failed to notify the governor's office."
McNeil stated in
a deposition that after he received the Connelly memo, he faxed it to
Polly Sowell, who then served as Bush's appointments secretary. "When
she was questioned, Sowell was asked what she did with the memo. "I
sent it to the General Counsel's Office," she said. But Sowell
said she did not remember what happened after that and, in his interview
with NEWSWEEK, Gonzales said such a memo was merely one of many that
might have crossed his desk and was otherwise not memorable. In any
case, Bush never acted on the memo's recommendations that the SCI affiliated
commissioners be removed."
Jason Leopold is
the author of the explosive memoir, News Junkie, to be released in the
spring of 2006 by Process/Feral House Books. Visit Leopold's website
at www.jasonleopold.com for updates
© 2005 Jason
Leopold