Authorities find more bodies after initial report of 115 two weeks ago, when owners were evicted and police investigated foul odor

The remains of at least 189 decaying bodies were found and removed from a Colorado funeral home, up from about 115 reported when the bodies were discovered two weeks ago, officials said Tuesday.

The remains were found by authorities responding to a report of a foul odor at the Return to Nature funeral home inside a decrepit building in the small town of Penrose, Colorado.

Efforts to identify the remains began last week with help from an FBI team that gets deployed to mass casualty events like airline crashes. Fremont sheriff Allen Cooper described the scene as “horrific”.

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[–] 74 points 3 years ago (18 children)

Wtf is this thread. There's a comment chain going wild about how to bury your own body.

Is there a Lemmy bestOf?

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  • [–] 60 points 3 years ago* (13 children)

    When you have a loved one pass away... and you get forced to pony up $10k for a basic service, cremation in a nice casket, and a pretty expensive "basic" urn for the ashes, because the funeral home won't let you use anything cheaper like a pine box or a shroud, with the only choice being between an "eco gas" cremation in your own city vs. a $2k cheaper "non eco" one a city over... you'll understand why people call funeral homes parasites and look for alternatives.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    I just had to do this. It was less than $4K for cremation, two services with funeral home staff (multi-hour, including on location at the church), and all of the guest books/cards/etc, plus announcements. I'd have to look at my paperwork for the exact amount.

    They even told us to bring our own urn because it would be cheaper than anything the funeral home could provide, so we did.

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  • [–] 12 points 3 years ago

    You're seeing that in-between moment when a wildly ignorant comment is upvoted to the top quickly but comes down slowly. It's still hot, but the OP has been downvotes far below most corrective comments.

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    [–] 73 points 3 years ago (72 children)

    Funeral homes are parasites. Families should prepare and bury their own, unembalmed with no casket. A dead body is the most biodegradable matter in nature. Why pump it full of formalin and doll it up like a tart? Mourn the life of the dead, not their physical body.

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  • [+] 141 points 3 years ago (5 children)
  • [–] 14 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    There is this clothing donation dumpster thing by my work that has a couch infront of it. It's pretty clear to me what happened. Someone brought it, noticed the sign that says no furniture donations, and decided that it wasn't his problem.

    It would be pretty much like that. Find random bodies everywhere.

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  • [–] 107 points 3 years ago (26 children)

    Preparing and burying your own is a recipe for cholera outbreak

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  • [–] 21 points 3 years ago (23 children)

    Easy fix: don't bury people, just leave the bodies out in the open so scavengers can do their job.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 years ago

    scavengers would die of toxicity from NSAIDs, chemo drugs, and whatever else modern humans load up on before their death. This already happened in places known for sky burials

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  • [–] 6 points 3 years ago*

    Cholera more requires the living and untreated water. Palestine is a recipe for a cholera outbreak. You'd need some spread among the living before the corpses become a real vector.

    E coli maybe, but once again, only with untreated water.

    For the most part, corpses don't really spread a lot of disease other than whatever killed them.

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  • [–] 43 points 3 years ago (15 children)

    It's illegal almost everywhere in the US to have a "natural" burial. There are laws on containers, treatment, and where the deceased can be buried. Dead bodies, while very biodegradable are also toxic and tend to get dug up and parts drug around by animals, up rooted by trees, or dug up during construction after the property is bought out. I do agree that funeral homes are soulless vultures who fleece people in mourning though, the last "fuck you" from capitalism.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 years ago

    I've looked it up years ago. In my state, you don't need embalmed, a vault, or anything really. You can throw a fresh body into the ground in a handmade pine box if you want.

    I think the only restriction is an approved site for burial.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    What constitutes a natural burial? At a cursory glance there are only about 5 states that don’t permit home burials and many of those just say it has to be in a cemetery, but you can apply for a family cemetery on your property and it’s completely legal.

    In Virginia and West Virginia at least there are no requirements whatsoever that you use a casket or bury them to any specific depth. I’d suspect that if you were disrespecting grandma and threw her in the garbage you would be breaking desecration of remains laws but doing a legitimate burial at home is completely fine.

    I can only speak to the laws of my state and those around me, and I suppose local municipalities might have differing laws, but it’s pretty open ended. You do not need a funeral home involved at all and frankly given how expensive these things are I totally support families that go that route.

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  • [–] 21 points 3 years ago (14 children)

    Fun fact. It’s completely legal and ok to take possession of your loved one, provided you are their legal next of kin, and you can effectively bury them yourselves. Find someone on Craigslist that can throw together a pine box and rent out an excavator for a weekend and you can bury grandma for a fraction of the cost.

    I have loaded a corpse into the bed of a pickup truck. We have sat bodies upright in the back of a suburban. All of this is completely legal so long as you don’t cross state lines and even then you just need a permit.

    Each state handles it differently but largely this is the same wherever you go.

    Spend the 5k to 10k on a nice trip to Vegas, Grammy would have wanted it that way.

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  • [–] 13 points 3 years ago (7 children)

    Is it legal to have a Viking funeral where you're set adrift in a longboat and someone fires a flaming arrow at it and it goes down on fire? Asking for a friend.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    My dad helped with a 'burial at sea' thing. I'm sure they had some sort of permit, because it was a real to-do with a big casket weighted down so it would sink and such. The story goes that the weights weren't enough to sink it, and the casket ended up being air tight, so they shot a few holes in it to let air out and water in. I'm pretty sure they did it in international waters.

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    [–] 29 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    In theory... Let's say I bury my loved one far away from the city. Couple months later some hiker finds an arm that an animal pulled out. Police gets involved. They blame it on the cartels... At what point do I say anything, and if I do, how much trouble am I in?

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  • [–] 18 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Nobody wants to talk about the fact that this is very clearly a former Pizza Hut?

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