crime
Burial of urns with false ashes – “super meltdown”
The accused is said to have deliberately filled several urns with other ashes, dust or dirt between 2016 and 2019 and buried them. photo
© Focke Strangmann/dpa
Family and friends mourn their loved ones at the open grave. Months, sometimes years later, it turns out that the ashes of the deceased were not in the urns. The case is now before the court again.
With sand, dirt or someone else’s ashes: For reasons of time, an undertaker should have several urns otherwise filled and buried – before the district court of Oldenburg, the accused again denied the allegations. “It’s completely absurd,” said the 39-year-old at the beginning of the appeal process on Wednesday. In August 2021, a district court had sentenced the accused to eight months’ imprisonment on probation for inciting to disturb the peace of the dead and aiding and abetting in the disturbance of the peace of the dead. The man had taken action against the verdict.
“What happened there is a total meltdown,” said one of the owners of the funeral home in Bad Zwischenahn, west of Oldenburg, in court. Only after the accused had been released did he and his brother discover the ashes – in a closet, on a desk, in the coffin store. “Suddenly something appears that should have been underground long ago.”
And when the affected graves were exhumed for examination, a fourth incorrectly assigned ash capsule appeared in one of the urns, his brother reported. “The shock was big enough.” They first had to explain their discovery to the families concerned, two employees could no longer stand the pressure and left the company.
A total of four cases
According to the court, the crimes occurred in December 2016, in April and May 2017 and in April 2019. Accordingly, there are four cases. The accused is said to have taken on the task of advising as one of the managing directors: discussions with the relatives, the organization of flower arrangements, agreements with the crematorium, the cemetery administration and the parishes. All work at the desk, he was only rarely in the cemetery.
But in the cases concerned, the ashes did not come back from the crematorium in time for the planned burial, according to the first judgment of the Westerstede District Court. So the accused filled the urns with sand, shiny black carbon-like particles or other ashes.
When the ashes did not arrive as planned in spring 2019, according to the district court, a trainee asked the man what to do. He is said to have instructed the young woman to bury the urn empty. He himself wants to take care that the ashes are added afterwards.
Impossible – or is it possible?
“That’s almost impossible,” the defendant asserted before the Oldenburg district court. For each ash capsule, a so-called cremation certificate must be submitted to the cemetery administration or to the parish. Often on the day of the funeral, or a week later at the latest. This certificate is to ensure that the urn is buried with the correct ashes.
“That shouldn’t have happened normally,” said one of the brothers from the funeral home. But they worked on a basis of trust, including with the cemetery administration. “How do you say? A handshake.” Everyone would have relied on that.
An isolated case? In Bremen, the police crime statistics listed 2 cases of disturbance of the peace of the dead last year, and 155 cases in Lower Saxony. According to the Criminal Code, anyone who “takes away the ashes of a deceased person or who commits abusive mischief on them” faces up to three years in prison or a fine. But also the devastation of graves and memorials falls under paragraph 168.
Most recently, an undertaker in Achim near Bremen made the headlines: The man admitted that between 2015 and 2019 he had buried urns with the ashes of the deceased in any grave in eight cases. A district court sentenced him to a suspended fine.
The verdict in the appeal proceedings before the district court of Oldenburg is expected on July 25th. However, the undertaker has already drawn the first conclusions: The employees must now document with photos that they are burying the right ashes. “And we instruct the cemetery administration itself to check the documents,” said one of the owners.