‘Coffin Confessor’: The man who crashes funerals to speak for the dead

He’s the man who tells grieving funeralgoers to ‘sit down, shut up or f**k off’ because he’s got a message from the dead. This funeral crasher reveals the deepest, darkest secrets.

Bill Edgar stands up, heart pumping, in a room full of strangers as he steels himself to interrupt a funeral just as the deceased’s best mate starts delivering the eulogy.

“Excuse me, but I’m going to need you to sit down, shut up or f--k off. The man in the box has a few things to say,” he says, looking directly at a now very nervous-looking man standing at the lectern delivering the eulogy.

It is 2018 and the first time Edgar has been paid to interrupt a funeral and deliver a few home truths from a now departed client, and he is as surprised as anyone that it’s turned into a booming business with international notoriety.

Growing up on the streets of Surfers Paradise, Edgar says there is no way he could ever have imagined that one day he would be signing a deal to have his life made into a Hollywood film, but that’s exactly what has happened.

Former Private investigator Bill Edgar. Picture: Glenn Hampson / Newspix

Speaking from his home in the Gold Coast hinterland, the self-described “coffin confessor” is busily preparing to head to the United States for a few months so he can film a new reality TV series based on his unusual career.

Edgar, 53, says he was surprised to receive a call from an acclaimed American movie producer in January.

“I got a phone call off a guy called Neal Moritz and I didn’t know who Neal Moritz was, didn’t even care. Then he said ‘I work with Paramount Pictures and I want to do a movie’,” he says.

“I only just signed the deal and as far as I know they’re talking to actors at the moment … there’s been talk they’re going to go down the road of a comedy … and Mark Wahlberg might play me.”

It’s not by good luck that Edgar turned his life around following a few stints in Queensland’s notorious Boggo Road jail in the late 80s, but rather a lifelong determination to stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves, which began long before he became a voice for the dead.

Bill Edgar is now the "Coffin Confessor". Picture: Glenn Hampson

A devastating childhood riddled with physical, emotional and sexual abuse saw Edgar run away from home at 13 and grow up on the streets of Surfers Paradise, eventually ending up in jail for property offences.

Always an enterprising type, having scored a scholarship to the The Southport School, Edgar found a way to make money off his peers while also finding a warm place to sleep after leaving home.

His first ever business was charging fellow schoolboys $2 to sleep in their beds to make it look like someone was there after he’d helped them sneak out undetected and ferried them by boat over to the Gold Coast’s nightclub strip.

Tragically, his time at TSS was marred by further sexual abuse that saw him leave school for good in 1984. Decades later he would share his story publicly in order to help seek justice for himself and others.

“I came forward and now 133 boys have come forward – the lost boys of TSS,”

he said.

TSS’s dark past saw abuse of children during the 70s and the school has since paid out more than $1m to at least 11 sex abuse survivors.

Leaving school at such a young age meant Edgar didn’t learn to read or write properly until he was 30, yet he’s just published – The Coffin Confessor – a rollicking read that switches between his own remarkable life’s journey and those of his clients.

Former student at The Southport School (TSS) Bill Edgar wrote a book about his time at the school. Picture: David Clark

The first time

It was his work as a Gold Coast private investigator that led Edgar to his first funeral client – a self-made man who believed not only that he was being swindled by his accountant but that his wife may have been having an affair.

Cheating spouses were a private investigator’s bread and butter in those days, Edgar explains, and it didn’t take him long to find evidence that confirmed his client’s suspicion – he filmed the wife cheating with his best mate.

“I didn’t know he was dying when he first engaged me but he later told me when we were talking about death and the afterlife that he had terminal cancer,” he says.

“He said he had a few things he wanted to say and I suggested he do his own eulogy and he said that he’s been to too many funerals and they don’t play them.”

Tongue planted firmly in cheek, Edgar suggested that he crash the man’s funeral so he could deliver the message.

The dying man jumped at the idea.

“It was a joke to start with,” he says.

“I was just mucking around and then when he said to do it. I thought ‘you know what, I’ve got no problem telling your best mate to sit down and shut up or f--k off’.”

Bill chalks up this coffin confession as being his most difficult.

“It was the very first so you’re anxious, you don’t know how people are going to react and you think to yourself: ‘Is it too confrontational? Is it disrespectful?’ he says.

But asked whether he finds the whole business of coffin confession awkward, his answer is an unequivocal “no”.

“People say to me ‘oh, you disrespect the living’ and I say ‘yes, I do. I’m respecting the people in the coffin, they’re my clients’,” he says. “These people need a voice.”

Bill Edgar. Picture: Glenn Hampson

The scariest time

It might surprise you to learn that in the 40 times he’s interrupted a funeral to drop a truth bomb or two, Edgar has never been physically attacked or even kicked out before he could deliver his message.

And there has only been one time he was genuinely afraid of being punched in the mouth – during a bikie’s funeral.

“Letting a room of bikies know that the man in the box is ... gay and his lover is in the crowd, I mean geez,” he says.

A call from Northern New South Wales led Edgar to a bikie dying of “Jack Dancer” (cancer). His demands were clear – he wanted Edgar to ensure he would be buried with his Harley and that he wouldn’t take one tightly held secret to the grave.

“Now that I’m gone, I’ve got something to tell you. As some of you might have known deep down, or suspected: I was bisexual. I was in love with a man, and that man stands amongst you,” the letter Bill was instructed to read at the funeral said.

One person in attendance told him to “piss off” but was quickly overshadowed by those wanting to hear the fallen mate’s last words.

The bikie refused to reveal who his lover was and said that was up to the man if he wanted to come forward himself.

The grave diggers were paid a couple of hundred dollars to make themselves scarce after the funeral so the Harley could go in, because burying a bike was illegal, and with that his client’s last requests were fulfilled.

Bearers carrying a coffin.

A diverse business

For a fair price – less than the $10k coffin confessor fee – Edgar will go to your home after your death and dispose of any embarrassing items or hide things from greedy relatives.

He’s been asked to dismantle a sex dungeon so the deceased’s family didn’t see it, to delete browser histories or destroy computers and even get rid of the odd implement used for smoking marijuana.

One of his favourite jobs, though, was making sure a hoarder’s husband was careful not to throw out her belongings before checking inside them first.

“She had money hidden all over the house in clothes, shoes ... everywhere. It was about $14,000 and he was about to get rid of it,” he says.

It took Edgar’s wife of 36 years, Lara, a little time to get used to his new business.

“She was like everybody else. It is very confronting and she asked: ‘Do you think you’ll get a lot of flak for it?’ And I said ‘probably, but these people need a voice’ and at the end of the day I’ve always been that type,” he says.

Most of us are afraid of dying but for some of Edgar’s clients there’s a fate much more terrifying – being buried alive.

“I have people pay me to stick pins in their legs during a viewing and if there’s any sign of movement ask that I get help,” he says.

“Many people want me to drop in their mobile phone into the coffin so they can call if they’ve accidentally been buried alive. I even had one bloke who wants me to put a bloody oxygen tank in his coffin.”

A fear of death is not one that Edgar shares with his clients.

“I’m not afraid of death, it’s time that scares me,” he says.

“You can’t buy time and time just flies.”

It probably comes as little surprise that when asked if the coffin confessor himself would like his own funeral interrupted, he answered with an emphatic “f--k yeah”.

“Have you left a little note somewhere for your loved one telling them that you really love them if you do go out one day and never come back?” he asks.

“Death is such a taboo thing and we never talk about it, yet we are all going there.”

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