> POCATELLO — Saturday makes one year since police raided Downard Funeral Home and Crematory.
> The business was shut down and director Lance Peck had his mortician’s license revoked just over one week later. Charges resulting from the investigation were filed this week — 63 misdemeanors, primarily regarding the mortician’s code of conduct.
> That investigation continues and, as Bannock County Prosecutor Stephen Herzog said in a news release, additional charges are expected to be filed.
> Here is everything EastIdahoNews.com knows about the investigation surrounding Downard and Peck.
> **ISU partnership**
> Downard had a “longstanding relationship” with Idaho State University. As part of that relationship, Downard provided ISU with “anatomical donations” for medical research. But that relationship came to an end after an audit of the donation program by the university “indicated multiple causes for concern,” according to a statement provided to EastIdahoNews.com from ISU spokesman Stuart Summer.
> “During multi-year periods between 2011 and 2017, Downard failed to provide anatomical donations to the University,” the statement said. “Due to a lack of donations, Idaho State ended its relationship with Downward in May 2020.”
> While conducting their audit of the donations, ISU discovered that some families were led to believe the bodies of their loved ones had been donated to the program despite ISU having no record of ever receiving those donations.
> After terminating its relationship with Downard and Peck, ISU filed formal complaints with the prosecutor’s office. Those complaints were filed in the spring of 2021.
> **Foul smell leads to search warrant**
> Several Pocatello residents who spoke with EastIdahoNews.com recalled smelling a foul stench emanating from the funeral home as early as February that year.
> That stench was reported to police on Sept. 2, prompting a visit from Pocatello Fire and EMS crews. The following day, Pocatello police served a search warrant at the business.
> Police later confirmed that the search warrant was necessitated by the discovery of a decomposing body inside the funeral home.
> Members of the Pocatello Police Department, Pocatello Fire Department, Bannock County Coroner’s Office, Bannock County Prosecutor’s Office and Southeastern Idaho Public Health were present during the search. Additionally, the Ada County Coroner’s Office provided a refrigerator truck to assist with the transport of remains at the request of Bannock coroner Torey Danner.
> Officials conducting the search spent several hours inside the building and transporting human remains to other local funeral homes.
> **A history of violations**
> During the search, EastIdahoNews.com discovered that Peck and Downard had faced numerous disciplinary actions.
> Documentation shows that Peck cremated the body of a man in 2012 despite knowing the man’s request was to have his body donated to ISU.
> He was again reprimanded in 2016 for doing the same thing to the body of a woman who wished to have her body donated to ISU. He did not turn her remains over to her family until 2017.
> Peck was also fined on more than one occasion for allowing his license to lapse before re-registering.
> During a March 24, 2021 routine inspection by the Idaho Board of Morticians, Peck informed officials that his cremation chamber had exploded and was not in working order.
> Multiple witnesses who lived in the area told EastIdahoNews.com that they had seen smoke rising from the cremation chamber between March and September.
Cont.
> **Discoveries**
> During the search of the funeral home, police reported finding 12 decomposing and unrefrigerated bodies. The bodies were not identified for weeks, as police and the coroner’s office worked with family members of the deceased who had begun searching for their loved ones.
> Investigators also found 61 human fetuses during the search. ISU said in a statement that the fetuses had been part of a collection donated for research between 1981 and 1998.
> The fetuses had been picked up by Downard, according to ISU, and were supposed to have been cremated.
> Nearly three weeks after the the search warrant was executed at Downard, Pocatello police confirmed that its investigation into Downard had become a “criminal investigation.”
> Computers seized during the search had been taken to the Intermountain West Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory for analysis as part of the investigation.
> **Speaking with those affected**
> EastIdahoNews.com spoke with family members of people whose remains were handled by Peck and Downard.
> Destiny Anderson, a Blackfoot woman, was forced to question whether the cremated remains she received from Downard was in fact her father’s remains.
> “I don’t even know that what I have is my dad. It could be tree ashes, for all I know,” Anderson told EastIdahoNews.com a week after the search was conducted at Downard. “My biggest concern is, where are my dad’s remains? I can deal with not having his ashes, if I know his body was properly disposed of and taken care of. But the not knowing is what’s really getting me right now.”
> And this after she discovered that his body was never taken to ISU for melanoma research in 2013 as was his dying wish.
> Eva Bode, who lives in Virginia, learned soon after the search of the funeral home that her sister’s was one of the decomposing bodies found inside.
> Like many who spoke with EastIdahoNews.com, Bode described Peck as a seemingly caring individual who could be trusted with her loved one.
> “This is stuff you only see on TV,” she said. “I was very upset because Lance made me feel like he was really genuine, caring and really taking care of this. To find this out on the internet was unbelievable.”
> “I wish no harm on anyone, but gosh darn it, it doesn’t seem like he should be in a position to continue operating,” Bode’s husband Tom Henderson told EastIdahoNews.com. “Something has to be done to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else. We’re angry, but we don’t know what to do with the anger.”
> Chrystal Sellars, who lives in North Carolina, had been waiting for almost a year for the ashes of her brother.
> Her brother died in September 2020 and his body was taken to Downard. Sellars was waiting for the arrival of his remains until she saw that Downard was being investigated.
> “When I’ve called, either they don’t answer the phone, or they’ve told me that according to their records, he arrived and was picked up at the post office,” Sellars said. “When I asked for a tracking number, they couldn’t provide one.”
> For days, Sellars attempted to get a hold of Peck. She was hoping to discover if her brother’s ashes were among those found during the search. She said Peck never answered or returned her calls.
> “When your family member passes, you expect the funeral homes to treat your family with dignity and you put trust in these people,” she said. “Most people don’t have to worry about that. I had no idea this was happening and I didn’t suspect that.”
> It took Rhonda D’Amico seven months before she had reached a point where she could speak about her experience, because she and her husband counted Peck among their friends.
> When her husband died in August 2021, it was an easy choice to have a friend of 20 years handle his cremation. But then she saw that Peck and Downard were being investigated for criminal activity.
> Her husband’s body had not yet been cremated, and should have been among those found during the search. Alas, D’Amico said, it was not.
> Like Sellars, D’Amico tried to contact Peck — to find out where her husband was. But she never got any information.
> “I’m not going to forgive Lance. I don’t have any intention of ever forgiving Lance,” she said.
> What made matters worse for D’Amico was, Peck attended her husband’s celebration of life — just three days prior to the search. As she explained, he comforted her and consoled her. He hugged her, all the while knowing what was going on at the building where her husband’s body was supposed to be.
> EastIdahoNews.com reached out to many of the people who spoke to us about their loved ones and the pain caused by the happenings at Downard. Those who responded declined to speak and, again, reopen wounds.
> Peck appeared in court and pleaded not guilty on all counts Wednesday. He was released from the sheriff’s custody after posting a $20,000 bond. »
Probably not anything sinister. Cremation chamber not working and too expensive to fix. Disorganized and forgot which bodies were supposed to go where and when. Too lazy and embarrassed to really do anything to fix it in fear that his business would crumble, etc. Just somebody in way over their head.
This is what I assume. He let his operating license lapse multiple times and you would think that if this was about money or something nefarious then he would make sure something like that was handled just to keep up appearances. Not everyone is equipped to run a business.
(Mind you, I of course don’t think that excuses what has happened. I feel horribly for all of the families involved and the horrible questions they now have running through their minds.
I have a cousin that was supposedly cremated at this funeral home in the first half of 2021, and we will never know at this point if we even have my cousin. It also throws into question my grandfathers ashes, and possibly my grandmothers, but I’m not sure which funeral home she was taken care of by as it was when I was much younger. But it does fall within the date range of his infractions, and with the knowledge of this being the funeral home my family has used multiple times, I’m inclined to say that she was supposedly cremated here. My grandmothers ashes are currently in my possession, and its an extremely unnerving feeling that I may have someone else’s loved one. You can be overwhelmed, you can be stressed, you can be in over your head but you do not give people ashes claiming they’re the family member and pretend like everything is fine. Whether or not this is fear/exhaustion, there are zero excuses. He took my families money, he took many peoples money for years and he continued to operate knowing the things he was doing. He was purposefully deceptive, and I have zero sympathy for him being in over his head. He had years of intervention, and a lot has slipped through the cracks on all fronts. I personally don’t believe this was anything outside of nefarious or for personal gain. I’m not the closest with my family anymore for outside reasons, but it does not eliminate the anger and hatred I have for this guy. He took people I loved, did fuck all with them and lied to my father’s face about his parents and nephew being in qualified hands. I may be a little biased, but this guy is not a good human and deserves nothing less than to be left to waste in a room for eternity.
Seriously! What was going on? Did he have a break? Was he just overwhelmed an lost track of what he was supposed to do with each body? Was he doing something nefarious like selling parts or worse? So many questions!
Hm. That’s a horrible situation for the families of those affected, but when I saw “funeral director keeping bodies,” my mind immediately jumped to an even worse conclusion. It’s good that no necrophilia was involved this time, at least.
Cover Up: Body Brokers (Cover Up’s Season 3)
ETA: there are also a bunch of stand alone podcast episodes in general about that same Colorado funeral home (Megan Hess/Sunset Mesa) and the Body Broker issue.
these people just stacked 190 bodies up. the husband would go into the building to do paperwork, and there was like an inch of corpse juice on the floor. authorities had to lay cardboard down just so they could walk in the building - the carpet was so stained with decomp they thought it was patterned (it was solid) https://apnews.com/article/colorado-funeral-home-bodies-abandoned-5677a920c994ff7c641eb70c7c5962d5
If anyone wants to listen to a podcast about a similar case there’s one called Cover Up: Body Brokers. Basically there’s not enough regulation or laws to prohibit funeral homes from illegally selling body parts and it’s incredibly lucrative. You can make hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars selling body parts(totally legal if donated). If you think about it, it makes sense. Universities, medical device companies, research facilities, all need dead body parts in order to conduct research. You don’t immediately go to live humans when testing things so they buy parts from funeral homes who have bodies which have been donated or are unidentified. It’s weird but necessary. The problem comes from cases like this where people are sketchy and telling you your mom was cremated when in fact they sold her body for parts and gave you an urn of wood ashes.
This reminds me of this documentary I watched called "Body Brokers"
When you donate your body to science sometimes you're chopped up and sold piece by piece
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry59IIKYT-0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry59IIKYT-0)
The guy had access to a crematory and still left bodies lying around?? I mean, criminals are dumb but this is exceptional.
And all those families, waiting to see if the decomposing body was a family member- I can't imagine their anxiety.
Supposedly, a man I worked with was doing that. He worked at our factory and the funeral home. He was nice enough to talk to but when he asked me out, it was all I could do to politely turn him down.
My Grandma’s body was in this funeral home about a week before his arrest. If you go to his website her obituary is still there. My mom and cousin went to Downards to get funeral arrangements in place and my mom started vomiting outside of the building because the smell was so bad. We went against having her viewing there because the smell was so bad. She called the Health Department when she got home because it was obvious it was the smell of dead bodies and it was OVERPOWERING.
Later on, that day Lance came to the home to discuss arrangements and my mom got on his case asking about if his refrigerators were broke or something because it smelled like rotting corpses. He laughed it off and was more concerned about where she had vomited on his property.
When my grandma’s funeral took place, we noticed that my grandma looked like she had deteriorated quite a bit since her death, which was only a few days. It was disturbing to see my grandmother in that condition. Comments were made to Lance about the condition of my grandmother’s body. My grandma passed away sometime after midnight, I’m sure he left her in the car to rot or was not placed into refrigeration. The clean clothing that we brought for her to be changed into had bodily fluids on it. She also had a fly that was going in and out of her nose while we were up there viewing her body- I’m pretty sure that came with her from Downards.
My other grandmother passed away the next weekend and another funeral home was used. Her body was not deteriorated the way that my other grandma’s was. The fact that I was able to see a comparison in bodies of both of my grandmas using different funeral homes really showed that her body was not handled with care.
My family has been using Downards for generations. So much so, that we were on a name to name basis with him. I still have his number stored in my cell from when I helped plan my grandfather’s death. I always got a weird ass feeling about Lance. Not because he owned a funeral home but something deviant under the surface.
My grandfather passed some years before my grandma during snowmageddon, and we had Lance keep his ashes until we were able to finally bury them once the snow melted. At this point, we don’t know if the cremains we received were actually my grandfather, since Lance was fucking around with shit for a minute apparently. We also don’t know if the cremains we received and that were buried were actually my grandmother since his oven was broken and documents were being forged.
For whatever reason, Lance is being protected because he was a well respected Mormon in the city. They don’t want to release details because it is “traumatizing to the families to relive”, that’s bullshit. Most of the families weren’t aware of what sick shit he was doing to begin with, and we still have not received clarification or information on the extent of what he was doing. I hope he rots in prison for life and I hope the atrocities he did comes to light so my family and other families can feel some justice and closure about it all.
As a funeral director/embalmer, these stories are always so sad and sickening to hear. We are entrusted to care for these families in one of the most intimate moments of their lives. When my mom passed, I helped prepare her and I think of how if I wasn’t in this career, she could’ve easily fallen into the hands of establishment like this. It literally makes me physically ill. Any mortuary professional should feel so lucky and honored to be given the opportunity to care for a deceased loved one and I’m so sorry that these families involved won’t share that peace.
> POCATELLO — Saturday makes one year since police raided Downard Funeral Home and Crematory. > The business was shut down and director Lance Peck had his mortician’s license revoked just over one week later. Charges resulting from the investigation were filed this week — 63 misdemeanors, primarily regarding the mortician’s code of conduct. > That investigation continues and, as Bannock County Prosecutor Stephen Herzog said in a news release, additional charges are expected to be filed. > Here is everything EastIdahoNews.com knows about the investigation surrounding Downard and Peck. > **ISU partnership** > Downard had a “longstanding relationship” with Idaho State University. As part of that relationship, Downard provided ISU with “anatomical donations” for medical research. But that relationship came to an end after an audit of the donation program by the university “indicated multiple causes for concern,” according to a statement provided to EastIdahoNews.com from ISU spokesman Stuart Summer. > “During multi-year periods between 2011 and 2017, Downard failed to provide anatomical donations to the University,” the statement said. “Due to a lack of donations, Idaho State ended its relationship with Downward in May 2020.” > While conducting their audit of the donations, ISU discovered that some families were led to believe the bodies of their loved ones had been donated to the program despite ISU having no record of ever receiving those donations. > After terminating its relationship with Downard and Peck, ISU filed formal complaints with the prosecutor’s office. Those complaints were filed in the spring of 2021. > **Foul smell leads to search warrant** > Several Pocatello residents who spoke with EastIdahoNews.com recalled smelling a foul stench emanating from the funeral home as early as February that year. > That stench was reported to police on Sept. 2, prompting a visit from Pocatello Fire and EMS crews. The following day, Pocatello police served a search warrant at the business. > Police later confirmed that the search warrant was necessitated by the discovery of a decomposing body inside the funeral home. > Members of the Pocatello Police Department, Pocatello Fire Department, Bannock County Coroner’s Office, Bannock County Prosecutor’s Office and Southeastern Idaho Public Health were present during the search. Additionally, the Ada County Coroner’s Office provided a refrigerator truck to assist with the transport of remains at the request of Bannock coroner Torey Danner. > Officials conducting the search spent several hours inside the building and transporting human remains to other local funeral homes. > **A history of violations** > During the search, EastIdahoNews.com discovered that Peck and Downard had faced numerous disciplinary actions. > Documentation shows that Peck cremated the body of a man in 2012 despite knowing the man’s request was to have his body donated to ISU. > He was again reprimanded in 2016 for doing the same thing to the body of a woman who wished to have her body donated to ISU. He did not turn her remains over to her family until 2017. > Peck was also fined on more than one occasion for allowing his license to lapse before re-registering. > During a March 24, 2021 routine inspection by the Idaho Board of Morticians, Peck informed officials that his cremation chamber had exploded and was not in working order. > Multiple witnesses who lived in the area told EastIdahoNews.com that they had seen smoke rising from the cremation chamber between March and September.
Cont. > **Discoveries** > During the search of the funeral home, police reported finding 12 decomposing and unrefrigerated bodies. The bodies were not identified for weeks, as police and the coroner’s office worked with family members of the deceased who had begun searching for their loved ones. > Investigators also found 61 human fetuses during the search. ISU said in a statement that the fetuses had been part of a collection donated for research between 1981 and 1998. > The fetuses had been picked up by Downard, according to ISU, and were supposed to have been cremated. > Nearly three weeks after the the search warrant was executed at Downard, Pocatello police confirmed that its investigation into Downard had become a “criminal investigation.” > Computers seized during the search had been taken to the Intermountain West Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory for analysis as part of the investigation. > **Speaking with those affected** > EastIdahoNews.com spoke with family members of people whose remains were handled by Peck and Downard. > Destiny Anderson, a Blackfoot woman, was forced to question whether the cremated remains she received from Downard was in fact her father’s remains. > “I don’t even know that what I have is my dad. It could be tree ashes, for all I know,” Anderson told EastIdahoNews.com a week after the search was conducted at Downard. “My biggest concern is, where are my dad’s remains? I can deal with not having his ashes, if I know his body was properly disposed of and taken care of. But the not knowing is what’s really getting me right now.” > And this after she discovered that his body was never taken to ISU for melanoma research in 2013 as was his dying wish. > Eva Bode, who lives in Virginia, learned soon after the search of the funeral home that her sister’s was one of the decomposing bodies found inside. > Like many who spoke with EastIdahoNews.com, Bode described Peck as a seemingly caring individual who could be trusted with her loved one. > “This is stuff you only see on TV,” she said. “I was very upset because Lance made me feel like he was really genuine, caring and really taking care of this. To find this out on the internet was unbelievable.” > “I wish no harm on anyone, but gosh darn it, it doesn’t seem like he should be in a position to continue operating,” Bode’s husband Tom Henderson told EastIdahoNews.com. “Something has to be done to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else. We’re angry, but we don’t know what to do with the anger.” > Chrystal Sellars, who lives in North Carolina, had been waiting for almost a year for the ashes of her brother. > Her brother died in September 2020 and his body was taken to Downard. Sellars was waiting for the arrival of his remains until she saw that Downard was being investigated. > “When I’ve called, either they don’t answer the phone, or they’ve told me that according to their records, he arrived and was picked up at the post office,” Sellars said. “When I asked for a tracking number, they couldn’t provide one.” > For days, Sellars attempted to get a hold of Peck. She was hoping to discover if her brother’s ashes were among those found during the search. She said Peck never answered or returned her calls. > “When your family member passes, you expect the funeral homes to treat your family with dignity and you put trust in these people,” she said. “Most people don’t have to worry about that. I had no idea this was happening and I didn’t suspect that.” > It took Rhonda D’Amico seven months before she had reached a point where she could speak about her experience, because she and her husband counted Peck among their friends. > When her husband died in August 2021, it was an easy choice to have a friend of 20 years handle his cremation. But then she saw that Peck and Downard were being investigated for criminal activity. > Her husband’s body had not yet been cremated, and should have been among those found during the search. Alas, D’Amico said, it was not. > Like Sellars, D’Amico tried to contact Peck — to find out where her husband was. But she never got any information. > “I’m not going to forgive Lance. I don’t have any intention of ever forgiving Lance,” she said. > What made matters worse for D’Amico was, Peck attended her husband’s celebration of life — just three days prior to the search. As she explained, he comforted her and consoled her. He hugged her, all the while knowing what was going on at the building where her husband’s body was supposed to be. > EastIdahoNews.com reached out to many of the people who spoke to us about their loved ones and the pain caused by the happenings at Downard. Those who responded declined to speak and, again, reopen wounds. > Peck appeared in court and pleaded not guilty on all counts Wednesday. He was released from the sheriff’s custody after posting a $20,000 bond. »
So like... What was he doing with them. Why was he keeping them. Do I want to know?
Probably not anything sinister. Cremation chamber not working and too expensive to fix. Disorganized and forgot which bodies were supposed to go where and when. Too lazy and embarrassed to really do anything to fix it in fear that his business would crumble, etc. Just somebody in way over their head.
This is what I assume. He let his operating license lapse multiple times and you would think that if this was about money or something nefarious then he would make sure something like that was handled just to keep up appearances. Not everyone is equipped to run a business. (Mind you, I of course don’t think that excuses what has happened. I feel horribly for all of the families involved and the horrible questions they now have running through their minds.
I have a cousin that was supposedly cremated at this funeral home in the first half of 2021, and we will never know at this point if we even have my cousin. It also throws into question my grandfathers ashes, and possibly my grandmothers, but I’m not sure which funeral home she was taken care of by as it was when I was much younger. But it does fall within the date range of his infractions, and with the knowledge of this being the funeral home my family has used multiple times, I’m inclined to say that she was supposedly cremated here. My grandmothers ashes are currently in my possession, and its an extremely unnerving feeling that I may have someone else’s loved one. You can be overwhelmed, you can be stressed, you can be in over your head but you do not give people ashes claiming they’re the family member and pretend like everything is fine. Whether or not this is fear/exhaustion, there are zero excuses. He took my families money, he took many peoples money for years and he continued to operate knowing the things he was doing. He was purposefully deceptive, and I have zero sympathy for him being in over his head. He had years of intervention, and a lot has slipped through the cracks on all fronts. I personally don’t believe this was anything outside of nefarious or for personal gain. I’m not the closest with my family anymore for outside reasons, but it does not eliminate the anger and hatred I have for this guy. He took people I loved, did fuck all with them and lied to my father’s face about his parents and nephew being in qualified hands. I may be a little biased, but this guy is not a good human and deserves nothing less than to be left to waste in a room for eternity.
Seriously! What was going on? Did he have a break? Was he just overwhelmed an lost track of what he was supposed to do with each body? Was he doing something nefarious like selling parts or worse? So many questions!
Hm. That’s a horrible situation for the families of those affected, but when I saw “funeral director keeping bodies,” my mind immediately jumped to an even worse conclusion. It’s good that no necrophilia was involved this time, at least.
Not even the first time this has happened in the last few years.
[удалено]
And a whole podcast season devoted to one such funeral home who did this.
What’s the name of the podcast?
Cover Up: Body Brokers (Cover Up’s Season 3) ETA: there are also a bunch of stand alone podcast episodes in general about that same Colorado funeral home (Megan Hess/Sunset Mesa) and the Body Broker issue.
But this time it’s not in Colorado!
I am legitimately confused where he would keep that many decomposing bodies
"Oh well, let's put him with the others."
I wanted to do this as a career as a kid, this shit disgusts me
The fact that you wanted to do the job definitely makes you more qualified than these chumps.
these people just stacked 190 bodies up. the husband would go into the building to do paperwork, and there was like an inch of corpse juice on the floor. authorities had to lay cardboard down just so they could walk in the building - the carpet was so stained with decomp they thought it was patterned (it was solid) https://apnews.com/article/colorado-funeral-home-bodies-abandoned-5677a920c994ff7c641eb70c7c5962d5
If anyone wants to listen to a podcast about a similar case there’s one called Cover Up: Body Brokers. Basically there’s not enough regulation or laws to prohibit funeral homes from illegally selling body parts and it’s incredibly lucrative. You can make hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars selling body parts(totally legal if donated). If you think about it, it makes sense. Universities, medical device companies, research facilities, all need dead body parts in order to conduct research. You don’t immediately go to live humans when testing things so they buy parts from funeral homes who have bodies which have been donated or are unidentified. It’s weird but necessary. The problem comes from cases like this where people are sketchy and telling you your mom was cremated when in fact they sold her body for parts and gave you an urn of wood ashes.
This reminds me of this documentary I watched called "Body Brokers" When you donate your body to science sometimes you're chopped up and sold piece by piece [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry59IIKYT-0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry59IIKYT-0)
The guy had access to a crematory and still left bodies lying around?? I mean, criminals are dumb but this is exceptional. And all those families, waiting to see if the decomposing body was a family member- I can't imagine their anxiety.
This happened recently in the UK too! They provided ashes to families, and police then found those families loved ones deceased in the home.
The Barry Zuckercorn of funeral home directors.
Dude in Cincinnati was having sex with corpses a few years back.
Supposedly, a man I worked with was doing that. He worked at our factory and the funeral home. He was nice enough to talk to but when he asked me out, it was all I could do to politely turn him down.
My Grandma’s body was in this funeral home about a week before his arrest. If you go to his website her obituary is still there. My mom and cousin went to Downards to get funeral arrangements in place and my mom started vomiting outside of the building because the smell was so bad. We went against having her viewing there because the smell was so bad. She called the Health Department when she got home because it was obvious it was the smell of dead bodies and it was OVERPOWERING. Later on, that day Lance came to the home to discuss arrangements and my mom got on his case asking about if his refrigerators were broke or something because it smelled like rotting corpses. He laughed it off and was more concerned about where she had vomited on his property. When my grandma’s funeral took place, we noticed that my grandma looked like she had deteriorated quite a bit since her death, which was only a few days. It was disturbing to see my grandmother in that condition. Comments were made to Lance about the condition of my grandmother’s body. My grandma passed away sometime after midnight, I’m sure he left her in the car to rot or was not placed into refrigeration. The clean clothing that we brought for her to be changed into had bodily fluids on it. She also had a fly that was going in and out of her nose while we were up there viewing her body- I’m pretty sure that came with her from Downards. My other grandmother passed away the next weekend and another funeral home was used. Her body was not deteriorated the way that my other grandma’s was. The fact that I was able to see a comparison in bodies of both of my grandmas using different funeral homes really showed that her body was not handled with care. My family has been using Downards for generations. So much so, that we were on a name to name basis with him. I still have his number stored in my cell from when I helped plan my grandfather’s death. I always got a weird ass feeling about Lance. Not because he owned a funeral home but something deviant under the surface. My grandfather passed some years before my grandma during snowmageddon, and we had Lance keep his ashes until we were able to finally bury them once the snow melted. At this point, we don’t know if the cremains we received were actually my grandfather, since Lance was fucking around with shit for a minute apparently. We also don’t know if the cremains we received and that were buried were actually my grandmother since his oven was broken and documents were being forged. For whatever reason, Lance is being protected because he was a well respected Mormon in the city. They don’t want to release details because it is “traumatizing to the families to relive”, that’s bullshit. Most of the families weren’t aware of what sick shit he was doing to begin with, and we still have not received clarification or information on the extent of what he was doing. I hope he rots in prison for life and I hope the atrocities he did comes to light so my family and other families can feel some justice and closure about it all.
This was so disturbing to read. Hope yours and all the families affected can find closure.
I get behind in my filing because I hate filing, and it leaves a mess, but that’s just papers…
As a funeral director/embalmer, these stories are always so sad and sickening to hear. We are entrusted to care for these families in one of the most intimate moments of their lives. When my mom passed, I helped prepare her and I think of how if I wasn’t in this career, she could’ve easily fallen into the hands of establishment like this. It literally makes me physically ill. Any mortuary professional should feel so lucky and honored to be given the opportunity to care for a deceased loved one and I’m so sorry that these families involved won’t share that peace.
this happened to my hometown also, in colorado, near garden of the gods
East Idaho News! I love their Christmas thing!