New funeral home manager puzzles over 170 abandoned cremains

THE manager of a funeral home is trying to find relatives for the cremated remains of about 170 people left in the basement.

Matt Boyle sorts through unclaimed remains in boxes on the shelves, which had been cremated and left at the funeral home in Montrose, Colorado. Boyle is trying to find relatives for the cremated remains of over a hundred people that were left in the building's basement after going unclaimed. Boyle said he moved Rose Memorial Parlour into the Montrose building in October and found the cremains during renovations. Picture: Dean Humphrey/The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel via AP

THE new manager of a Colorado funeral home is trying to find relatives for the cremated remains of about 170 people that were left in the building’s basement after going unclaimed.

Matt Boyle said he moved Rose Memorial Parlour into the Montrose building in October and found the cremains during renovations.

Some of the remains have no name and no way to identify who they belong to, or when the person died, he said. Some of them date back to 1947.

Boyle said he wants to locate the relatives, even though it is not his responsibility.

“When we first found it, I felt so overwhelmed,” he said. “But we’re trying to do the right thing, and I think that’s giving these people a dignified committal.”

Two state agencies are investigating allegations of fraud and misconduct with a past owner, the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reported.

The first business opened in 1931, and a number of mergers and owners have clouded the investigation.

Grand Junction lawyer Joe Coleman, who owns the building, said he did not know about the remains until after a previous tenant left.

After Boyle moved in, they learned many of the remains were labelled, and they contacted the local historical society and published the names to try to notify families.

Some of the remains are too damaged by recurring basement flooding to read the remains, or resemble bags of sand with names scribbled in marker, the paper reported.

One of the remains was left in a pickle jar with only a question mark scrawled on the lid.

Another belonging to a woman who died in 1980 had “scatter in the mountains” written on her box, but sat in the basement for 35 years.

“In all that time, they couldn’t find time to scatter these?” Boyle said. “Those souls know that they’re here in this basement.”

The new owner, who has been in the funeral business for 20 years, said he was “going to make this right”.

“Because these were people, they were somebody,” he said. “They were somebody’s aunt, somebody’s uncle, somebody’s baby. They were somebody.”

Remains not claimed by May 29 will be included in a multi-denominational service at a cemetery.