When Georgia Robinson attended her sister’s wake Nov. 3, she was shocked to discover the corpse in the casket was not her loved one, according to a local report.
Georgia could immediately from a distance tell that the body in the casket at the Mississippi funeral home was not her deceased sister, Mary Jean Robinson, she told WLBT in a Nov. 14 report. The family also saw the unfamiliar body was allegedly dressed up in Mary Jean’s clothes and jewelry. (RELATED: ‘Green’ Funeral Home Customers In Colorado Allege They Were Given Fake Ashes)
Family says wrong person was put in their loved one’s casket https://t.co/X94gLQBRWx
— WIS News 10 (@wis10) November 16, 2023
“No ma’am, this is not my sister. This is her casket, this is the outfit that we brought her, this is the jewelry that we brought her, and I said these are her flowers, but I didn’t know who that is in the casket,” Georgia told WLBT. She then demanded to speak to the director of the funeral home but was reportedly met by what she described as a “very rude and very uncaring” response.
The funeral home director allegedly said the family was “going to have to pay for everything all over again,” Georgia told WLBT. Eventually, the funeral home met some of the aggrieved family’s demands and bought new clothes to put on Georgia’s sister, the outlet reported. However, they allegedly used the same casket after switching out the body.
“I feel terrible,” Georgia told WLBT. “Just to think, if we had a closed casket, we would have ended up burying someone else’s loved one instead of ours.”
James Stewart, one of the funeral home directors, declined to comment on whether there was mix-up and said the family was pleased with their services, according to WLBT.
A similar mix-up allegedly occurred in July 2022, when a funeral home and embalming company in New Jersey mistakenly placed the wrong body in a casket and lied about it to the family, North Jersey reported. An 82-year-old woman was discovered still alive and well at a funeral home after being pronounced dead earlier in her New York nursing home in February 2023.