The Coffin Confessor: the world’s most unique job working beyond the grave

MEET the Coffin Confessor. Gold Coast businessman Bill Edgar gatecrashes funerals during the eulogy for one very strange reason.

MEET the Coffin Confessor.

Gold Coast businessman Bill Edgar has started a world’s first service in which he gatecrashes funerals during the eulogy and reveals “the skeletons in everyone’s closet”.

In January last year Mr Edgar had been hired as a private detective by a 79-year-old Coast man who had terminal cancer when he received one last request.

THE GOLD COAST’S MOST DEADLY SUBURB

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

“Bill, you have more front than Myer’s. I want you to interrupt my funeral,” the dying man told him.

“Are you for real?” Mr Edgar replied. He was handed a sealed envelope. Inside were instructions of what to say when the man’s so-called best mate began the eulogy.

Mr Edgar admitted that on arriving at the funeral it was “scary”. He stood up, opened the envelope and called out several names.

Continuing to read his client’s instructions, he told those people: “Can you please stand up – can you f… off. I haven’t seen you in 30 years. Why are you here? F…. you.”

Mr Edgar glanced towards “the best mate”.

“I know you were trying to screw my wife,” he read from the letter.

“To my wife, I love you more than anything and you didn’t do what my mate tried to put you through. I’m always thinking of you.”

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Mr Edgar said that of the 88 people at the service, about 50 scattered, fearful of getting a mention. He has performed seven jobs since – in Melbourne, Brisbane and northern NSW. Most cases reveal infidelities or abuse, some about minor crimes like theft, or removing sex items from units.

“That first one, I saw it in a way as being loving and revengeful but also confessing to a couple of sins that he had. He didn’t want to take them to the grave,” Mr Edgar said.

The private detective, who has spearheaded a campaign on behalf of alleged victims of abuse at The Southport School, now warns clients that confessions about serous crimes will go to police.

A coffin confession costs several thousand dollars but varies according to circumstance.

A woman at that first funeral spoke to her 56-year-old aunt in palliative care who “wanted to get a few things off her chest”.

HOW I LOST MY WIFE’S LEG ON THE WAY TO THE SHOPS

Bill Edgar during the campaign at TSS School. Pic by David Clark.

“I’m sending a letter once a month to a husband telling him that his wife loves him and will always remember him,” Mr Edgar said.

“This is until the 12th month, which is the last one. Part of it will say ‘Please don’t ever forget me because I will never forget you’. Some of this is just so beautiful.”

The woman, in her mid-50s, and her husband met when 14-year-olds. She instructed that the letters must be sent from a northern NSW post office in a small cafe town they both loved visiting.

“She did not want that he would get a morbid letter. They’re forget-me-nots,” Mr Edgar said.

He is silent after talking about the last delivery, aware his work goes beyond the grave. He knows what the note will be. In her handwriting, she says: “Let me go now. I will always be with you …’’