Here’s The Wild Story of a Body That Went Missing From a Maine Funeral Home
Thankfully, this whole issue was resolved, but what a wild story. A few days ago, Reddit user SVT_Lightning posted a wild tale about how their aunt, who was later identified as Jeanne Kirkpatrick, unfortunately passed away on March 16. The family had arranged to have Affordable Cremation Solution in Lewiston pick up her body, and they told the family it would take a few days until Jeanne would be cremated.
According to the post on Reddit, two weeks of unanswered and unreturned calls went by before a family member decided to head over to ACS and find out in person what was going on. When he got there, the funeral home was closed and looked like it had been cleared out after peeking through the window.
The family called the police next, who ended up tracking down the home address for the owner and went with the family member to confront them. Whoever answered the door told police and the family member that the owner had a mental breakdown, was no longer at the home and his whereabouts were unknown.
After hitting that dead end, the family reached out to another cremation service provider in Maine, Grace Lawn based out of Lewiston. That's where things started to get even more interesting, as they wouldn't release any information due to lawyer involvement -- the family of Jeanne weren't the only Mainers going through the same missing body issue (which is equal parts insane, wild, and slightly creepy when you really think about it.)
Eventually, Grace Lawn released information and said the last body they received was on March 15, one day before Jeanne's passing, so they never received her body. It turns out the family kept hitting dead ends because ACS had never actually filed Jeanne's death certificate, leaving no trail of where she was after passing.
Thankfully, according to Channel 8 WMTW, the family ended up contacting another funeral home, who was able to track down Jeanne's remains and have them transported to another funeral home. And while it's costing them a lot more than they originally planned on, at least this "case of the missing body" has been solved.
Unfortunately, there are still families out there who ran into the same issue as Jeanne's family, but thankfully for them, a representative of the Maine Funeral Directors Association (which ACS is not part of) said their members in the Lewiston area are more than happy to step in and help out.