Police: Fetus remains found at a 2nd funeral home

Attorneys believe case’s scope may be far wider

DETROIT – In a rapidly widening investigation of metro Detroit funeral homes, Detroit police executed a search warrant Friday at a west-side funeral home and removed the remains of 63 fetuses, police said. The discovery comes after 11 infants’ remains were found last week at the defunct Cantrell Funeral Home on Detroit’s east side. Custody of the latest remains – found at the Perry Funeral Home – was turned over to state investigators, who immediately declared the business closed and its license suspended, according to a statement from Michigan Licensing and Regulatory Affairs. Of the grisly total, there were 36 fetuses stored in boxes and another 27 found in freezers, police said. Friday’s raid at the Perry home came after Detroit homicide detectives also raided QA Cantrell Funeral Home in Eastpointe, Michigan, to investigate a potential connection with the fetuses found in the ceiling of Cantrell Funeral Home in Detroit. Detectives seized computers, business cellphones and paperwork, according to a news release. They also raided the home of the owner, Anetta Cantrell, the widow of the founder of the Detroit home with the same name. Detroit Police Chief James Craig said he was stunned. “I’ve never seen anything (like this) in my 41 and a half years” as a police officer, Craig said at a news conference Friday. “It’s disturbing, but we will get to the bottom of this.” He said police were tipped off to violations at the Perry Funeral Home by a father involved in a civil suit over the improper burial of his infant daughter. Lawyers for the father as well as the mother of the deceased baby said the parents are plaintiffs in a lawsuit they hope will allow them to represents dozens, perhaps scores, of parents whose infant remains were allegedly improperly handled by the Perry Funeral Home. The case could become a class-action lawsuit representing every parent who comes forward with a similar complaint, Troy attorney Peter Parks said. “We already thought we had a strong case, and then when the news starting hitting the media about Cantrell, our clients agreed that we should take what we knew to the highest level” of the Detroit Police Department, he said. Parks said he and his co-counsel on the case, attorney Daniel Cieslak, presented what they knew Friday to a meeting led by Craig that included “the FBI, Michigan State Police, Wayne County prosecutors, the Michigan Attorney General’s Office, LARA (the state’s Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs), you name it.” The attorneys 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 their research of log books kept by the Wayne State University School of Mortuary Science. The funeral home routinely deposited infant remains at the WSU school’s morgue, then failed to follow up with parents’ wishes for the remains to be used in research by the WSU School of Medicine, they said. “I’m really wondering where all the rest of them are,” Cieslak said Friday. The lawsuit charges that Perry might have fraudulently billed Medicaid, as well as the Detroit Medical Center, for burials it never performed. The lawyers said they can’t estimate how much money might be involved, “but it must be significant,” Parks said. “We already have people calling us, after seeing the news, saying, ‘This happened to me,’ ” he said. Parks and Cieslak filed the civil suit against Perry – also naming the DMC, Harper/Hutzel Hospital, Wayne State University and Knollwood Memorial Park Cemetery as defendants – on behalf of Rachel Brown and Larry Davis. Their daughter Alayah suffered at birth from severe respiratory problems and survived only 27 minutes after she was born Dec. 8, 2014, they said. Her remains were among those improperly stored by Perry at the WSU morgue. Parks said the case “involves issues that quite clearly touch on matters that as a society we hold as sacred” – specifically, “honoring the final disposition of loved ones.” In a statement late Friday by inspectors for the State of Michigan’s Corporations, Securities & Commercial Licensing Bureau, regulators in Lansing said they found “heinous conditions and negligent conduct” at the Perry Funeral Home, including numerous failures to certify death certificates and obtain proper permits for burial. Friday’s findings point clearly toward criminal offenses of state laws regulating funeral homes that could be felonies “punishable by imprisonment for not more than 10 years or a fine of not more than $50,000 or both,” said a statement from the agency.

“I’ve never seen anything (like this) in my 41 and a half years” as a police officer. “It’s disturbing, but we will get to the bottom of this.” Detroit Police Chief James Craig

JOE CYBULSKI/USA TODAY NETWORK Police say they found the remains of dozens of fetuses at the Perry Funeral Home in Detroit after receiving a tip from a man who has filed a civil suit against the facility over his infant daughter’s improper burial.