Someone at Chicago‘s Leak and Sons Funeral Home might be looking for a new place of employment. A family that visited the Southside business made the awful the discovery that the funeral home lost their loved one’s body and buried it in the wrong grave.
As CBS Chicago reports, what was slated to be a funeral over the weekend became a memorial service after the funeral home couldn’t locate the body of Ms. Ella Mae Rutledge. Rutledge’s adult children came to Leak and Sons last Saturday morning to approve of the body for the burial ceremony but were in for a surprise.
From CBS Chicago:
“Me and my brother say, ‘Dang! That don’t look nothing like Mom!’” Williams says.
The deceased woman had long nails. Rutledge’s nails were always kept short.
“The wig that I brought for her, I pulled it back. This lady got black hair. My mother has gray hair. I said, ‘Oh, no,’” Williams says.
Funeral home representatives then showed her three other deceased women, in the preparation room. None of them was her mother, Williams says.
It turns out Williams’ mother had already been laid to rest, at Mount Hope Cemetery, on Friday – by another family.
“They 100 percent identified the person that they buried, on yesterday, as their mother. I said, ‘You all done lost my mother.’”
The other family allowed daughter Monique Williams to exhume the other body. The remains are now at Leak and Sons. Reps for the funeral home has declined comment on the matter, naturally.
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Photo: CBS News
