Maggots, heat, decomposition lead judge to find Munhall funeral director guilty of abusing corpse

The Pennsylvania statute defining abuse of a corpse is simple.

All that’s required is for a person to treat a dead body “in a way that he knows would outrage ordinary family sensibilities.”

For a funeral home director to let a body sit for several days in summer, decomposing without embalming or refrigeration, certainly does that, a judge said Wednesday.

And that’s exactly why she found a longtime Munhall funeral director guilty.

Following three days of testimony in a nonjury trial, Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Beth A. Lazzara on Wednesday issued her verdict in the case of Michael Aldrich, a funeral director since 1977.

“Would leaving the body of a family member on a table for two days under only air conditioning ‘outrage’ an ordinary family’s sensibilities?” Lazzara asked. “This case fits well within the statutory requirements of abuse of corpse.”

Aldrich, 76, of West Mifflin, will be sentenced on April 24 and likely faces a term of probation.

He was charged in November 2022 with the single misdemeanor count for his handling of the body of Dexter Owens, who was 64 when he died Aug. 31, 2022, at his girlfriend’s home in Munhall.

Owens’ brother, Kelvin Owens, contacted West Funeral Home, which is operated by Aldrich, to handle arrangements.

According to testimony at trial, the funeral home picked Dexter Owens’ body up that afternoon.

Kelvin Owens then met with Aldrich on either Sept. 1 or Sept. 2.

“He came across like he was going to be a total professional,” he testified.

Owens agreed to pay $3,390 for Aldrich to hold and cremate the body. He did not want his brother’s body to be embalmed.

Under Pennsylvania law, a body must be either embalmed, placed in a sealed casket or refrigerated within 24 hours.

None of those things happened.

Instead, the judge said in delivering her verdict, Aldrich left the body on a table in a prep room that only had air conditioning running for almost 48 hours.

State law says that dead bodies that are refrigerated more than 24 hours after death must be kept between 35 and 40 degrees.

According to testimony at trial, funeral homes without refrigeration units typically ask other locations with proper equipment to store bodies for them in case of delay, but Aldrich didn’t do that.

By the time Dexter Owens’ body was placed in a body bag on Sept. 2 to be sent for cremation, the judge said, it already had an odor.

Kelvin Owens testified that he and his sister felt like Aldrich was over-charging for cremation, so he contacted another funeral home, House of Paradise Cremation and Funeral Services in Pittsburgh’s Allentown section, which offered the same services for $1,000.

When the family asked Aldrich to transfer the body, police said, Aldrich at first said it had already been cremated.

Then Aldrich demanded they pay $1,200 to store the body before he would release it. Kelvin Owens paid on Sept. 8, 2022.

But that day, when Shamiah Coulverson, the owner of Paradise, went to pick up the body from Aldrich, she testified that she could smell it from the alleyway behind the funeral home.

The body, she said, was on a stretcher in a pile of liquid, and when they moved it, fluid poured to the floor.

The smell, Coulverson told the court, “was almost unbearable.” The next day, she said, the body was covered in maggots.

She testified that the Owens family wanted to see the body one last time, but she didn’t think it was viewable.

They never did see him again, and she took him to be cremated.

On cross-examination, Coulverson agreed with defense counsel that once a family authorizes cremation, there’s to be no additional visitation.

State law says that the public should not view an unembalmed body — even one that has been kept in refrigeration — after 36 hours.

Coulverson also testified that most funeral homes, including her own, don’t have their own refrigeration systems.

During closing arguments last week, defense attorney William Difenderfer argued that the abuse of corpse statute is vague and was intended by the legislature to criminalize mutilation and sexual abuse of a corpse.

The prosecution, he said, was trying to prove his client intentionally left the body to decay to upset the family.

“That’s just not here, judge,” Difenderfer said. “To say he intentionally did that … let a body decompose to horrify someone. That’s just not in this case — let alone beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Assistant District Attorney Marnie Potter, though, argued that Kelvin Owens was never told by Aldrich that his brother’s body wasn’t refrigerated.

“Aldrich accepted the body knowing he didn’t have refrigeration,” she said.

In reaching her verdict on Wednesday, Lazzara noted how stressful the process of burying a loved one can be.

“Grieving family members turn to funeral professionals to help them navigate this unfamiliar landscape to assist them,” she said.

And they expect those professionals to do so with respect and dignity.

“Families are entrusting funeral professionals with their loved one, not a body, not a corpse, not a decedent, but a parent, a spouse, or, as in this case, a sibling — a beloved brother,” Lazzara said. “Whether the family wanted direct cremation, they did not want their brother to lay unrefrigerated on a work table decomposing.”

After Lazzara announced her verdict, Difenderfer, shaking his head in disgust, asked the judge “What did he do?”

“I’ve explained already,” Lazzara answered. “Mr. Difenderer, I’m not going to debate this with you.”

After the verdict, the defense attorney railed against the judge’s decision.

“I’m absolutely shocked and stunned,” he said. “I still don’t know what my client did.”

Because the family did not want Dexter Owens to be embalmed, and because they had requested cremation, Difenderfer said, they were not to see the body again.

“It happens all the time,” he said. “This is shocking to the whole industry. By a short delay, that somehow is a crime?

“It’s unconscionable.”

Afterward, Kelvin Owens said he was pleased with the verdict.

“I thought I would get an apology but I’ve never gotten anything,” Owen, of Pittsburgh’s North Oakland neighborhood, said. “I don’t want this to happen to anybody else.”

Kelvin Owens sued Aldrich and West Funeral Home in June for negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, breach of contract, unfair trade practices, unjust enrichment, fraud and interference with a dead body.

Aldrich operates funeral homes in Munhall, Homewood and Monessen, according to the company’s website.