A bereaved woman has said she feels “physically sick” after learning that her grandmother’s body is believed to have been found along with the remains of 34 other people at a Hull funeral home at the centre of a police investigation.
The woman said her grandmother was supposed to have been cremated three months ago but she had been told by police last week that what were suspected to be her remains had been recovered along with a name tag at Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in Hull.
“I even collected [her] ashes, to be told months later by police she wasn’t even cremated,” she told the Guardian on Wednesday. “I’m disgusted. I feel physically sick.”
More than 1,000 grieving relatives have contacted a police hotline set up as part of an investigation into what a senior officer described as a “truly horrific incident” at the funeral home.
Police have recovered 35 bodies and suspected human ashes during an inquiry into concerns over the handling of the deceased.
A 46-year-old man and a 23-year-old woman have been released on bail after being arrested on suspicion of prevention of a lawful and decent burial, fraud by false representation and fraud by abuse of position.
The granddaughter, who does not want to be identified, said her grandmother died in November last year and was supposed to have been cremated after a funeral service the following month.
The family had been happy with the service, she said, describing the staff as “friendly, polite and sympathetic”.
She collected what she believed to be her grandmother’s ashes last month, placing some in an urn in the living room and others in a special “memorial corner” in the family garden.
She said police officers turned up at her house on Friday night to tell her they had recovered a female body with her grandmother’s name on a tag at the funeral home on Hessle Road.
“I’m disgusted. I feel physically sick,” she said. “I’ve got someone’s ashes which I don’t even know if it’s grandmother or not. We paid £1,799 [for the funeral service] and we don’t even know if she was in the coffin because, like I say, everything was fine.”
Detectives are in the process of identifying the remains found on the premises and are understood to have asked possible relatives for DNA samples.
The granddaughter said she had provided officers with a photograph of her grandmother and her birth certificate, along with details of identifying body features such as scars. She was due to give a DNA sample this week.
Another person, Martin Stone, told the BBC he had been contacted by police who said the cremation of his mother, Susan Stone, had never taken place.
Stone told the broadcaster that the company had said the family could pick up her ashes within a couple of weeks. He said: “If I had collected her, I’d have had somebody else’s ashes – it wouldn’t have been my mum.”
More than 120 police officers and civilian staff are working on the investigation. Scene-of-crime officers continued to gather potential evidence on Wednesday from the Hessle Road premises, where a number of floral tributes have been laid.
Dave Marshall, the deputy chief constable of Humberside police, said: “We are continuing to support the families involved through this extremely difficult and distressing time. This has been a truly horrific incident, and understandably they are distraught and have many questions to be answered. I want to reassure them and the wider public that we are doing everything we can to give them that reassurance, and the answers to the questions that they desperately want.”
The National Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors (SAIF) said on Wednesday it was “deeply distressed” by the allegations. It said Legacy “is not and has never been” a member of the industry body, which has a strict code of practice covering care of the deceased and the return of ashes.
