The children of a 70-year-old Long Islander are suing a funeral home for allegedly burying a stranger in their father’s clothes. They didn’t admit the mistake until a week later, after insisting it was the real body.
“It was heartbreaking [de devoir] “They must endure a second burial with their father’s real body,” the family reportedly said in the lawsuit, reported by the National Post on Friday.
Last February, Clifford Zaner, 72, died of natural heart failure. According to the court document, the 70-year-old had asked to be buried in a Led Zeppelin sweater with black jeans but no shoes.
But when his eldest daughter, Stacy Holzman, opened the coffin to check that all requests were in order, she is said to have been surprised to find another man there, dressed in the ensemble her father had chosen.
The moustache-free man also had stitches on his forehead, unlike his father, who wore a mustache all his life, suggesting an autopsy had been performed on the body contrary to requests.
But the employee at the Star of David Memorial Chapels company allegedly insisted the body was the right one after conducting checks, the lawsuit said it was normal for changes in appearance to occur.
Therefore, despite their doubts, the grieving family would have proceeded to bury the body in the place designated for Clifford Zaner, near the bodies of both his parents.
It wasn’t until a week and a half later that the funeral home called the family to admit their mistake, “I’m very sorry,” and told them the body hadn’t been moved from South Carolina, where he originally died, the woman confided to the National Post.
Since a court order would have been required to exhume the unsub’s body, the family reconciled themselves to finding family land in a cemetery in Jacksonville, Florida, where several family members live, according to English media.
The family would be seeking $60 million from the funeral home and the Fletcher Funeral & Cremation Service, which was responsible for the body in South Carolina, specifically to reimburse the approximately $30,000 the family paid for the two burials, the New York Post reported.