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Niles Police Department inundated with calls regarding funeral home
By Ed Runyan
NILES
Investigators with the Niles Police Department are working to get through a list of “100 calls at least” from people with questions and concerns after the revocation of the license of former Niles funeral director Robert P. McDermott.
McDermott and his Robert P. McDermott Memorial Home on Warren Avenue lost their licenses to operate July 9 after investigators with the Ohio Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors found that McDermott misappropriated more than $150,000 in prepaid funeral expenses for more than 50 customers.
McDermott has appealed the license revocation.
On Aug. 20, an investigator executed a search warrant at the funeral home the day after it was sold at sheriff’s sale, seizing the cremated remains of 42 people on suspicions that the remains had not been handled properly.
A published list of the names connected with some of the remains has led to numerous calls from customers of the funeral home who have questions and concerns about the funeral home, especially those who say they received ashes at the time of a funeral and don’t know why the funeral home still had ashes in the funeral home with their loved one’s name on them.
Calls are being directed to the Niles Police Department.
Niles police Capt. Ken Criswell said his voicemail had about 40 messages when he returned to work this week. Some people are asking what to do if they pre-paid for funeral expenses through the funeral home. Some are asking what to do if their loved one’s remains are among those confiscated from the funeral home.
And some want to know if they should be concerned about cremations in general carried out at the funeral home.
Criswell says so far, he doesn’t have the answer to those questions, but he’s hoping to learn more this week in a meeting with the Trumbull County Prosecutor’s Office and Ohio Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors.
“If it were me, I’d have most of those same questions,” Criswell said.
The department took possession of the remains only for “safekeeping” after the sheriff’s sale, but the list of names on the remains has “opened Pandora’s Box,” he said.
Vanessa Niekamp, executive director of the Ohio Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors, said law enforcement is the proper place to call with information or questions about the prepaid funeral arrangements and the status of cremated remains, because her agency’s job is only to regulate licensing in the embalming and funeral-home business.
“We can revoke licenses, but that’s all we have authority over,” she said.
When asked whether there was any likelihood that customers who bought prepaid funeral services will get those services or a refund, she said she “can’t comment,” but McDermott can’t do it because he’s no longer licensed.
A call to McDermott on Tuesday was not returned.
One hope is that any criminal proceedings that may take place in Trumbull County will include an order from a judge requiring restitution to customers, Niekamp said.
“The Niles Police Department has the remains, and the Ohio Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors will assist, but the Niles Police Department will determine how the remains came into the possession of the funeral home and work to get them back to the families,” she said.
She said her organization will assist in getting the remains “to a cemetery and getting them buried.”
As for Ohio laws, they say it is permissible for funeral homes to store them indefinitely when they are unclaimed by a family.
But one of the temporary containers recovered from the funeral home contained “extra, leftover” ashes, according to court documents.
Niekamp said that should not happen. There’s no legal reason for partial remains to be in the funeral home, she said. “They must all go to the family.”
As for buying funeral services in advance, Niekamp says the practice is fairly safe, but consumers can protect themselves by calling the insurance company or trust 45 days after entering into a contract with a funeral home and verifying that the funeral home put the money where it promised.
“This is very unfortunate but very rare,” Niekamp said of fraudulent funeral home practices.
“Millions of contracts with funeral homes are appropriately funded,” she said. In the past two years, the board has investigated four instances (including McDermott) of funeral homes not putting funds for prepaid funeral expenses into the proper place, she said.