Army veteran's family seeks criminal probe of funeral home that left him to rot

Maj. Richard Morgan served the nation in the Army for 20 years. Along with many more bodies, he was left to rot waiting for burial at Arlington National Cemetery. The funeral he earned for serving this country. The funeral where the sacrifices he made in life would be honored upon his death. If you read these reports and do not cry, feel ashamed this is happening in this country, then please, in the name of humanity, go and visit a veterans hospital and tell them you just don't care.

'I Never Could Have Imagined'
Dignity Was Denied the Dead as Bodies Were Stored and Handled Using 'Disturbing' Methods, Area Funeral Home Workers Say

By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 5, 2009; Page A01

Ronald Federici's father, a retired Army colonel, had just died, and Federici wanted to escort his body to Demaine Funeral Home in Alexandria. But the driver who came to pick up the remains at the hospital said he wasn't going to Demaine, he was going to some other place.

Upset and confused, Federici followed the van driver, who pulled up to National Funeral Home in Falls Church. When the white garage door opened at the edge of a cemetery just off Lee Highway, Federici said, the foul odor of decomposition smacked him in the face. A body lay on a gurney in the garage near a rack holding coffins, and the walk-in cooler where his father was to be left was filled with exposed bodies.

"The stench was horrific," Federici, 53, said about the cooler. "Bodies were laying buck naked all over the place. There was no dignity whatsoever. It was disgusting, degrading and humiliating."

What Federici witnessed Dec. 6 echoed what embalmer-turned-whistleblower Steven Napper had been complaining about for months, first to his supervisors, then to the state. Napper documented the atrocities he saw in notes and photographs and turned them over to authorities.

Napper, a retired Maryland state trooper, had been hired in May by National Funeral Home, which also acts as a regional clearinghouse that embalms and stores bodies for four other Washington area funeral homes -- Arlington Funeral Home, Danzansky-Goldberg Memorial Chapel in Rockville, and Demaine Funeral Home in Alexandria and Springfield. From May to February, when he quit, Napper said that the walk-in coolers could not hold all the bodies and that a manager told employees to store them in unrefrigerated areas.
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'I Never Could Have Imagined'

Family Asks Fairfax Prosecutor To Investigate Funeral Home
By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 7, 2009; Page B01

The family of a deceased U.S. Army veteran whose body was stored for months in a Falls Church funeral home's unrefrigerated garage is asking Fairfax County prosecutors to investigate the case as a crime.


Richard Morgan Jr., a Harrisonburg, Va., criminal defense attorney, hand-delivered a letter to Commonwealth's Attorney Raymond F. Morrogh's office yesterday arguing that the actions of National Funeral Home and its parent company, Houston-based Service Corporation International, amount to felonies. Morgan said his father's body was "defiled" because it was left to rot on a garage rack, a possible felony under a Virginia law regulating the treatment of corpses.

The body of Maj. Richard Morgan was left from November to February in a light oak coffin in the garage at SCI's central care facility, located in the same building as National Funeral Home, according to current and former employees who saw the coffin and the body inside. Morgan's family identified photographs of his remains -- dressed in a dark green suit, white shirt and red tie -- that were taken by former funeral home employee Steven Napper on Dec. 12 as he catalogued problems he felt the company was ignoring.

Napper, an embalmer and former Maryland state trooper, reported unsanitary and unethical conditions to the Virginia Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers before resigning in February. His accounts were bolstered by other employees -- including one who came forward publicly yesterday -- and a client who stumbled upon the conditions in the garage and a walk-in cooler at the funeral home. The building serves as a central clearinghouse for bodies coming from five area SCI funeral homes.

Napper said as many as half a dozen bodies destined for burial at Arlington National Cemetery, including Morgan's, were left on the unrefrigerated racks because coolers were full and his supervisors said the company did not want to spend more money.

Morgan, 41, said he felt betrayed by what happened to his father's body. He said he was told it would be refrigerated from the time of the death in November until his burial with full military honors Feb. 6 at Arlington. Morgan said he and his family members -- including a sister in Montgomery County and another sister who is deployed to Afghanistan with the Virginia National Guard -- were distraught after learning that their father's body was instead left on a storage rack to decompose.
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Family Asks Fairfax Prosecutor To Investigate Funeral Home