A mortuary parlor in Inglewood, California has mistakenly buried a woman in the wrong casket and the wrong grave.The client, 73-year-old Evans Davidson, went to Simpson’s Mortuary after his wife of 51 years passed on. Preparations were made to bury the woman, but Darlene Davidson remained at the funeral home, while another woman was buried in her place.
Before the funeral, the grieving husband was shown the body of his deceased wife, and complained about not recognizing her.
"I was pretty certain it wasn’t my wife – unless she did some awful changing," he recalls for
NBC Southern California.
Staff at the mortuary dismissed his claims, and explained that the woman's appearance must have changed after she was embalmed.
"It wasn’t my wife and I knew it," Davidson stresses.
Even so, he allowed the home to carry on with the burial and only found out the truth a few days later. Another member of a deceased woman's family was "jumping up and down saying this is not her mother," and they decided to investigate.
Dr. Reginald Black, a spokesman for Simpson’s Mortuary states that an inquiry has revealed that a “body switch” has occurred. They wanted to confirm that the woman still in the mortuary was Darlene Davidson, and called him in to identify her.
"I didn’t know what to think. [...] Why am I going to ID a body when my wife’s supposed to be buried already?" he says.
"We have standards and systems in place to insure as much as we can that these type of things don’t happen; however, we are human beings and we can make mistakes," Black adds.
They offered to exhume the body and take care of all further burial costs, but Davidson has alerted the Cemetery and Funeral Bureau.
"They need to listen to family members who know best when they spot this," his attorney, Brian Witzer explains.
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