Widow Says Husband's Gold Teeth Lost During San Antonio Cremation

SAN ANTONIO -- A local widow's husband died and was cremated nearly a month ago. Now the woman says she wants to know what happened to her late husband's three gold teeth.

The widow says at first she wanted to sell the gold teeth, but now she just wants closure.

Doris and Joe Gerber shared 35 years together. Doris said they were the best years of her life.

Just two years ago things seriously changed for the couple.

"We came here on a visit. We always come (to Texas) in November or December," said the widow.

But, their visit became permanent after Gerber suffered from a stroke.

"They have really wonderful hospitals here in Texas... and rest homes, so I put him in a home here," she continued.

Then, last September Gerber died from a second stroke. The family chose to make his final arrangements at Schaetter's Funeral Home.

A few days after Gerber's cremation, Doris called the funeral home to ask about his death certificate and his three gold teeth.

"And they said, 'Well, gold teeth is of no value,' and I know they are," she says.

Previously Doris had sold two of her late husband's teeth for nearly $175.

"He had always saved his gold teeth in a little cup, in a little thing. And he said, 'Doris, when I die you get my teeth and you, you know, you sell them,'" she recalled.

Doris said the funeral home told her the teeth were cremated along with her husband and that the teeth dissipate in the process.

" I don't believe that, either," said the widow.

We spoke to the funeral president by phone. He did not want to go on camera but gave us this statement:

"Mr. Gerber was cremated as the family wished. We do not know anything about any gold teeth."

According to officials at the Texas Funeral Service Commission, something gold should not dissipate during the cremation process. However they plan to investigate the matter.

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Wiccan Church Honors Dead in Eco-Friendly Cemetery

Members of the Wisconsin-based Wiccan church Circle Sanctuary celebrated the last day of a pagan festival on Monday that rings in the new year and honors the dead.

Church members, several of whom come from the Chicago area, gather annually at the 200-acre Barneveld, Wis., site to mark Samhain (pronounced SOW-un), which culminates with members placing plates of food and chalices of beverages on an altar in the cemetery while reflecting on loved ones who have passed on.

For nearly 30 years, part of the celebration has taken place in a stone circle and on a nearby 1-acre ridge top, which in 1995 became an eco-friendly cemetery that holds cremated remains, or cremains, of humans and beloved pets.

But this year, the festivities will also take place in a new section of the cemetery that has been expanded to include environmentally friendly full-body human burials.

Although some cemeteries in the Midwest have designated areas for natural burials, the nearly 20-acre Circle Cemetery is believed to be one of the few in the region that handles only green burials, according to the Green Burial Council, based in New Mexico.

In April, the cemetery had its first and, so far, only interment.

The Rev. Ana Blechschmidt, a resident of Sycamore, Ill., and an ordained minister at Circle Sanctuary, said natural burials are important in paganism and other nature-based religions because it's difficult to fully honor a loved one who has passed on when that person is not buried in a way that preserves the land.

"The thought of getting filled up with formaldehyde and being placed in a sealed, laminated casket and put into a cement box in the ground is not in keeping with preserving Mother Earth," said Blechschmidt, a volunteer chaplain at Northern Illinois University.

"We believe the soul is eternal and immortal. So we want to leave as small a physical footprint as possible. If you honor the Earth you live on, how can you desecrate her and still honor the person you're burying?"

In natural burials, the body is not embalmed but refrigerated until the final services, and the casket or covering used is biodegradable. (Think bamboo caskets lined with unbleached cotton or natural-fiber shrouds.) Also, graves don't have liners or vaults, most of which are made of concrete or fiberglass to stabilize the ground.

And rather than being buried 6 feet under, bodies are interred no more than 5 feet — deep enough so that they're not disturbed by animals, yet shallow enough so that the microbes near the top of the soil can make decomposition happen more readily.

The Rev. Selena Fox, senior minister and founder of Circle Sanctuary, said the idea is for the body to decompose and return to the ground in the most efficient and thorough way possible.

"This is about the greening of the end-of-life process," Fox said. "If one is really choosing as part of their way of life to eat whole foods and reduce or eliminate additives and to really live a sustainable life, then when you die, it makes sense to be able to have your body naturally return to the earth without chemical preservatives.

"You want to continue the sustainable living even in death."

She said that a century and a half ago, natural burial was standard operating procedure.

"It was the Civil War that brought about the popularity and practice of embalming because of such mass kill-offs," Fox said. "Families wanted the bodies of their loved ones back, and the most practical way was to embalm."

She said that although cremation has long been considered an eco-friendly option, there has been some concern about its use of fossil fuels to turn the body into ashes.

Blechschmidt, who was part of the church's cemetery expansion team, said there were other concerns about cremation. While members were comfortable with it, some worried that their families wouldn't approve.

"My own father is very weirded out by cremation," said Blechschmidt, whose father is a Southern Baptist. "If something would happen to me before him, he would like a cemetery plot to visit. In some faiths, if you don't have a body, you can't be resurrected. For some of our members whose families are of those kinds of faiths, it's important for them not to be cremated."

Fox said a person needn't be a member of a pagan faith to be interred at Circle Cemetery. The church also doesn't require the use of a funeral home, although it is highly recommended.

"There have been such bad practices at some cemeteries over the last decade," Fox said. "That makes us extra careful. We have 20 acres and we're not looking at having huge numbers of people buried here."

She said the church offers recumbent grave markers made of granite, and gravesites can be positioned near existing trees. While the average funeral runs about $8,000 to $10,000, a green one can cost less than half of that.

"We know from history and our study of archaeology that natural burial has been done from the earliest of times," Fox said. "Having natural burial is not new. What is new is combining nature preservation with natural burial. This works well with our commitment to environmental preservation."

On Friday, the opening day of Samhain, Circle Sanctuary members walked in a procession through a restored prairie to the ridge top where their cat companions have been buried. The area is adjacent to the new natural burial site.

Church members laid to rest the 19-year-old Artemis, whom Fox said was the last of the cats who grew up on the Circle Sanctuary land.

Blechschmidt said all living things are of precious value and to be honored in life and death.

"When we bury Artemis, when we honor our dead, we celebrate our liberty," she said. "Their bodies were tired and old and not functioning properly anymore, and now their souls are liberated. We celebrate life by celebrating the passing of life into the next life. And, we always are aware of the great gift we have of living on this Earth."

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Eternal Image Launches STAR TREK Cremation Caskets

Eternal Image, Inc., a public company engaged in the design, manufacturing and marketing of officially licensed, Brand-name memorial products, today announced that it has launched its line of STAR TREK(TM) cremation caskets.

"Our Star Trek cremation caskets provide customers with a complete package for their loved one's cremation service," said Nick Popravsky, VP of Sales & Marketing for the Company. "We will soon be announcing the availability of a new Star Trek cremation urn that will provide the perfect complement to this cremation casket line."

Crafted from fiberboard and cloth, the official STAR TREK cremation caskets offer a new and previously unavailable option for families of STAR TREK fans that have arranged a traditional viewing.

The Company has three cremation casket models to choose from: Star Fleet Delta, Federation of Planets and Klingon. Consumers can view photos of these caskets as well as obtain ordering information by visiting the following link: http://www.eternalimage.net/product/star-trek/

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Thief Steals Cremation Ashes From Parked Car

Police were searching for a thief who stole cremated remains from a parked SUV just hours before the victim could transport her mother's ashes to the East Coast.

The burglar broke into the sport utility vehicle in the parking lot of the Westfield Promenade shopping center in Woodland Hills early Monday evening and took two bags of luggage and a black canvas carry-on, Los Angeles Police Department officials said in a statement.

The ashes were in the black bag.

The two pieces of luggage were recovered Tuesday afternoon, but some items that had been inside were missing, police said. The black bag was nowhere to be found.

An LAPD spokesman said detectives were seeking tips and did not have any suspects.

The victim told police she was going to take the ashes to the East Coast for spreading.

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Hotel for the Dead Opens in Tokyo

A facility to temporarily house bodies until funerals have been arranged has recently opened in Tokyo.

Dubbed a "business hotel for the dead," the facility was established by Tokyo-based nonprofit organization LISS System, which has arranged funerals and estate settlements for 17 years. The building called LISS Center Shin-Kiba is three stories with a floor space of 550 square meters and can hold a maximum of 37 bodies.

Bodies are identified with bar codes to avoid mix-ups, and the room is equipped with anti-bacterial lights. The facility also has Japanese-style rooms so families can discuss the funeral arrangements in relative comfort. The center's staff is available to give advice on choosing a mortician and deciding on funeral details.


Rates at the "business hotel" run 7,350 yen a night, or 3,675 yen for 12 hours. Renting a room for a funeral costs 2,100 yen an hour.

There are not many other NPOs that have built such a well-equipped facility for the dead.

"Bereaved families usually are rushed to decide on a mortician and often have problems later regarding the funeral," Nyokai Matsushima of LISS System said.

"We want the families to have time to think, so they can decide on a satisfactory ceremony while their deceased relatives have a place to rest (temporarily) at our 'business hotel.'"

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Man Arrested for Stealing from Boys Casket

A 37-year-old man has been charged with desecrating the casket of an 11th-grader by reaching in and stealing two handheld video systems and three games.

Jody Lynn Bennett of Mentcle was arrested and jailed Wednesday.

State police in Indiana said Bennett stole the goods about 9:30 p.m. Monday at the Rairigh Funeral Home. Viewing for Bradley D. McCombs Jr. of Clymer had been scheduled to conclude at 9.

McCombs died Christmas morning in Cherryhill Township when he lost control of the SUV he was driving on a snowy road and struck a utility pole.

The boy’s uncle, Robert McCombs Jr., approached Bennett after Bennett got in his vehicle and was about to drive away.

He asked Bennett about a missing Game Boy.

“The defendant told the uncle that he did not have the Game Boy,” according to the affidavit of probable cause.

“The uncle then told the defendant that he could see the Game Boy inside the vehicle. The defendant then produced the Game Boy and returned it to the uncle.”

As that video system was being returned to the casket, family members noticed that a Game Boy Light and three games were missing.

Upon returning home, the boy’s father, Bradley D. McCombs, called Bennett on the phone but Bennett told him not to call again.

Neither Bradley nor Robert McCombs returned a call for comment Wednesday.

The value of the stolen goods was placed at $46.90.

Bennett faces misdemeanor counts of desecration, theft or sale of venerated objects; abuse of a corpse; institutional vandalism; theft; receiving stolen property; disorderly conduct and harassment.

A criminal records check indicates Bennett has a history of drinking and drug offenses dating to 2000.

Dianna Bennett said her nephew has caused embarrassment to the family.

Her family is close friends with the parents of the deceased 17-year-old.

Jody Bennett “has been into drugs, he’s into alcohol,” she told The Associated Press.

“He’s just messed up.”

He was being held in the Indiana County Jail in lieu of $15,000 straight cash bail set by District Judge Susanne Steffee of Homer City.

Rairigh Funeral Home declined comment for this story.

Bradley McCombs Jr. – who also was known by the nicknames “Boog” and “Ham” – was remembered as a football player and a member of Future Farmers of America. His hobbies included playing video games, collecting mythical creatures, drawing and hunting.

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Vandals Desecrate Dad's Grave

A grieving family has been left devastated after flowers left on their father's grave were destroyed less than 24 hours after his funeral.
Mary White, along with family and friends, buried her late father Thomas Lydon, of Jarrow, on Monday afternoon at Jarrow Cemetery, and left floral tributes at his graveside.

But when the 63-year-old, of Wilton Gardens, Boldon Colliery, returned to the cemetery on Tuesday morning, she found the heads from the lettered tribute to her father had been pulled off and stomped onto the ground.

Mrs White and four of her five sisters – Anne Mirfin, 61, Sheila Lydon, 58, Christine Lydon-Carlile, 47, and Pauline Lydon, 45 – had paid for the flowers and had each bought their own bouquets.

She said: "I was absolutely devastated. I was in a state in tears at the grave.

"I rang my youngest sister to tell her and it broke my heart. I'm mortified – how could anyone do that?

"He was our dad and we loved him. The flowers were a symbol for him to show how much we cared.

"How low can people get by desecrating a grave? I can't believe it, and it wasn't an accident – it was a deliberate act."

Mr Lydon died on November 28 from lung cancer, aged 87. The cancer was diagnosed in July this year, but he quickly deteriorated in the following months despite a brave battle against the disease and undergoing 12 sessions of radiotherapy.

Mrs White added: "He showed great strength and dignity – he didn't complain."

The family have now contacted police as they have an idea who could have targeted the graveside.

A Northumbria Police spokesman confirmed they were investigating the matter and said: "This is a particularly reprehensible crime which has caused distress to the family.

"I'd urge any witnesses or anyone with information to contact us."

Man Charged With Stealing Hearse

A Londonderry man has been charged with stealing a hearse from outside a funeral parlour earlier this year.

Jonathan James Ayton, from Bond's Hill, is also accused of other offences including damaging funeral wreaths and flowers, dangerous driving, and damaging an electronic tag.

He is also charged with possession of a military uniform and boots as well as 750 euro and a laptop computer which were stolen in the Republic of Ireland.

He was remanded in custody.

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407 Unclaimed Cremated Remains Sit and Wait in Florida

Behind a bolted door, in the back of an old mortuary, is a purgatory on earth. Ashes of the dead sit in shoebox-sized containers on dusty shelves, cremated at the behest of loved ones who never retrieved them.

So now, they are kept inside a cooled 10-by-10 room. Current occupancy is 407.

They are sons and daughters of the poor, the rich and the middle-class. They lived through the Great Depression and Hurricane Andrew and 9/11, and run the gamut of South Florida's many cultures. They led robust lives before they were burned, then neglected.

Funeral home owner Donald Van Orsdel holds out hope that someone might want them one day, so he keeps them in his central office just outside Miami's Design Destrict in a room rarely unlocked to the public. There are hundreds of histories inside now, but Van Orsdel believes the future will bring many more.

RISE OF CREMATION

By 2025, nearly seven of every 10 bodies in the state will be cremated -- one of the highest rates in the country. The rest of the nation is following the trend. Cremation is set to grow another 64 percent by that time, becoming the nation's predominant way of disposing of the deceased.

Local funeral directors say a handful of families leave their kin behind each year. When that happens, funeral home owners are left with a pile of calcium and a quandary, guided by morality and legality: What to do with the ashes?

Van Orsdel's solution, storing them for decades, isn't typical, but it feels right to him.  After all, it's what his grandfather would have done.

Van Orsdel's South Florida roots are deep. He's a third-generation funeral home director and is training his daughter to be the fourth person at the helm of Van Orsdel's Funeral Chapels, one of the few locally owned funeral homes left in the county.

ROOTS OF BUSINESS

In 1924, Henry Van Orsdel and Clifford Van Orsdel began preparing funerals in Miami-Dade when the area was mostly agricultural and mostly Anglo. When it came to records, Henry -- Donald's grandfather -- made a vow to never throw away a single file.

Families deal with death in different ways, he'd say. Some organize elaborate ceremonies. Others are too busy or too pained, and just want to move on.

Coping changes over time, Van Orsdel's grandfather used to say. Sometimes, kin might return for a copy of the death certificate they threw away. Or to be reminded of where exactly they placed the grave. Or to retrieve remains they forgot to pick up.

When the Van Orsdels started, cremation was taboo -- many considered it a harsh treatment of the body created in God's image.

The tide started to change in the '60s, Van Orsdel said, after the Vatican declared that cremation was a suitable alternative to burial. By 1976, the Van Orsdels needed to purchase a crematory of their own.

Cremations, at the time, were usually requested by the wealthy. That was especially true in coastal states, such as Florida and California, where families wished to scatter ashes at sea.

Even then, the grandfather thought that ``one day, cremation was going to be big,'' Van Orsdel said.

BOTTOM LINE

At 58, Van Orsdel has seen the practice spread from the wealthy to everyone else. When the economy started to sag, the gradually increasing preference for cremation started to spike.

A cremation costs hundreds of dollars, on average, according to John Ross, president for the Cremation Association of North America. Burials are much more expensive: Between selecting coffins and finding grave sites, markers and tombstones, the entire tab can run well into the thousands.


In the past nine years, a Herald analysis of death statistics found, the number of cremations in the country has tripled. The largest jumps have been seen in the South -- Tennessee saw a 700 percent increase, for example -- and in the land-locked Great Plains.

``There are a couple of reasons,'' said Jim Ford of the Fort Lauderdale-based Neptune Society, whose national cremation business has seen double-digit increases over the past three years. ``There's price sensitivity, and there's also the transient nature of our society. People don't dig their roots as deep as they used to.''

Van Orsdel bought a new computer-operated cremation machine this year to deal with the increased demand. It burns at up to 2,000 degrees, reducing the body to eight to 12 pounds of powdery calcium.

Families typically show up before the body is burned to pay their last respects. The remains are then handed to the family in a container of their choice -- which include urns, clocks, lockets, cuff links, bird feeders, ceramic rose stems and environmentally friendly caskets that are biodegradable.

Sometimes, they ask for a pacemaker or grandma's prosthetic. One person asked for cremation workers to retrieve a relative's gold teeth.

OLDEST REMAINS

At Van Orsdel, the oldest remains are in an urn that dates back to 1939, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was president. Van Orsdel holds out hopes that someone might pick up the urn one day.

He isn't legally obligated to keep the remains. He's not allowed to hold them for ransom if a family can't pay for the ashes, nor does he charge for storage. State law allows a funeral home to discard human remains -- without ceremony -- after four months.

Many local funeral home directors do just that after failed attempts to contact the family. Ford, of the Neptune Society, said his organization sends certified notices before scattering the remains at sea.

Discarding human remains just makes Van Orsdel uncomfortable. His grandfather taught him that such ceremonies are sacred. He doesn't release the names or genders of the cremated remains to protect their privacy.

``I'd rather not have a family walk in and tell them we buried them at sea,'' Van Orsdel said.

``There was a family that came to pick up the cremains after 20 years, and I was so glad to help.''

He's vowed to keep his ashes until the area runs out of room. There are 407 now, and he thinks this purgatory can hold hundreds more.

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New Funeral Product Helps KISS Fans Go Out in Style

They might become must-have items for some KISS aficionados and, surprisingly, have more uses than memorializing the deceased.

They are officially licensed caskets, cremation urns, bronze memorials, memorial prayer cards and candles, and pet cremation urns — all emblazoned with the iconic rock band's images.

Featured prominently of course, is lead singer Gene Simmons.

In fact, the pet cremation urns were Simmons' idea, said Nick Popravsky, vice president of sales and distribution for Farmington Hills-based Eternal Image Inc.

The public company already designs, manufactures and markets officially licensed memorial products for Star Trek fans, the Vatican, Major League Baseball, and colleges and universities.

KISS will be the company's first rock band, Popravsky said.

Eternal Image signed a private label agreement with the band known for its copious makeup, distinctive outfits and sometimes frightening stage antics.

The relationship between the band and Eternal Image evolved this year through talks with the band's representatives and Simmons.

"We fleshed out the potential and it made more sense as it progressed," Popravsky said.

Some of the memorial items will be manufactured in Eternal Image's Canton Township facility.

Memorial products will be sold through Eternal Image's normal channels of funeral homes and industry distributors and also on kissonline.com, which Popravsky said gets about one million hits a month.

"KISS fans are very loyal," he said.

He added that the KISS caskets will have a variety of uses.

"I believe a lot of people will buy them and use them for ice chests for picnics."

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Lee Harvey Oswald's Coffin Up For Sale

It's one of the most ghoulish — and overlooked — American artifacts of the 20th century: A modest wooden coffin stashed in a storage room of the Baumgardner Funeral Home in Fort Worth, Texas.

Few people had any idea that the rotting wooden box, with its rust-coated metal ornamentation, held for nearly 18 years the body of Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who shot President John F. Kennedy to death in 1963.

Occasionally someone would learn its macabre history and at first be put off by it, said funeral home owner Allen Baumgardner.

"Then they become curious and want to know everything about it," he added. "They forget about all the gory stuff because it's history."

Now history is on the auction block, Baumgardner having consigned the coffin to Nate D. Sanders Auctions of Santa Monica. Bidding opened Tuesday at $1,000, and auction manager Laura Yntema expects it could go as high as $100,000 by the time the online and phone auction closes Dec. 16.

Baumgardner was 21 and working for the Miller Funeral Home when Oswald himself was killed just two days after he shot Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963.

By the time Oswald's coffin was dug up in 1981, as part of an effort to put to rest conspiracy theories that he wasn't buried in it, Baumgardner had bought the mortuary and changed its name.

He was surprised to learn Oswald's burial vault had cracked over the years and water had leaked in, damaging the coffin and the body. Still, authorities identified Oswald through dental records and reburied him in Fort Worth's Rose Hill Memorial Burial Park.

Before the burial, Baumgardner traded the Oswald family a brand new coffin in exchange for the old one.

"We placed Lee in a new casket, and I just brought that one back to the funeral home," he said Wednesday. "I've had it all these years."

He also kept the original embalming equipment and paperwork.

"I just think it's time to do something with all that stuff," the soft-spoken funeral director said. "I just felt like I'm 68 years old, I think this would be a good time to go ahead and see if anybody is interested in it."

An early version of Oswald's death certificate, in which the cause of death was listed as being shot by Jack Ruby (identified by his real name, Jack Rubenstein), was being auctioned separately. Yntema said it could fetch as much as $20,000.

The certificate had to be changed because Ruby hadn't yet been convicted of killing Oswald at a Dallas police station.

The Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, which is dedicated to the Kennedy assassination, has no interest in bidding on the coffin, said curator Gary Mack, adding its exhibits lean heavily toward photographs and videos.

The museum is located on the sixth floor of Dallas's old Texas School Book Depository Building, from which Oswald is believed to have opened fire on Kennedy as the president passed by in a convertible.

Baumgardner said he's hoping someone more interested in history than the coffin's macabre appeal will be the one to buy it.

Rachel Day, spokeswoman for the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, declined to comment.

Mack said he expects no shortage of bidders, adding that Kennedy's death and its circumstances continue to fascinate people 47 years later. The Sixth Floor Museum attracts more than 325,000 visitors a year.

"My experience as a curator has been, if people have room and it's a Kennedy item, they will collect it," Mack said.

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17-Year Old Jumps Into Girlfriends Funeral Pyre

Sirsa, India - In a shocking incident, a 17-year-old boy allegedly jumped into the funeral pyre of his girlfriend who had committed suicide after her parents refused to accept their relationship.

The incident took place in the Rori village of Sirsa district on Monday. While the girl, Veer Pal Kaur, was a student of Class IX, her boyfriend, Bittu Singh, a native of Malsinghwala village of Punjab, studied in Class XI. The two had been studying in the same school and had been going around for the past couple of years.

On November 26, Veer Pal immolated herself by pouring kerosene on her body after her family scolded her for her relationship with Bittu.

She was rushed to Sirsas civil hospital where she succumbed to burns on Monday evening. Sources informed that Bittu lived with his maternal grandparents.

As he came to know about the incident, he got upset and rushed to the cremation ground where Veers family had performed the rites. Investigations revealed that Bittu had gone missing from the house since Monday evening. His cycle was found from near the cremation ground. In fact, he had gone to the cremation ground after everybody had left the place around 3pm.

He might have jumped at that time, hence nobody came to know about his death until the family found two sets of mortal remains in the ashes of the pyre, sub-inspector Bachan Singh, the investigating officer from Roris police, station said.

The boys family members found his cycle and mobile phone from near the cremation ground, added the police official. Meanwhile, Sirsa SP Satinder Kumar Gupta denied any kind of foul play like honour killing into the incident. Prima facie, it appears to be a case of suicide. We have sent the bodies for post-mortem, Gupta added.

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Indiana Woman Charged for Faking Daughters Death

A Richmond woman who faked the death of her daughter last month in order to have a funeral service for the girl has been formally charged with attempted theft.

Charges were filed Nov. 24 by the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office against Angela J. Boyd, 38, and a warrant was issued for her arrest on a charge of attempted theft (Class D felony). Her bond has been set at $15,000.

Boyd arranged to have a funeral for her 15-year-old daughter at New Life Ministries Church of the Nazarene. She told Pastor Ron Chappell that the girl had been brutally raped and murdered by her father in Iowa and even made a heart-wrenching speech during the service.

The church took a collection during its Nov. 7 service to give to Boyd, and Boyd brought a collection jar marked in memory of her daughter to the Nov. 9 funeral service.

During the service, Boyd's brother, Brian LeMaster, told the congregation that the girl was still alive in Iowa.

Boyd fled the service without getting any money from the church or the jar. She later came to the Richmond Police Department to speak with detectives investigating the incident.

The range for a Class D felony conviction is six months to three years and a $10,000 fine.

Boyd had filed plea agreements in two separate felony theft cases in Wayne County Superior Court II. As a result of Boyd's latest charge, the state on Tuesday withdrew from the plea agreements in both cases. Boyd now faces trial 9 a.m. March 15, 2011, for both cases.

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Kim Kardashian is "Dead"

Kim Kardashian died on the Internet Monday.

At least that's what her new ad says.

The reality star and endorsement-loving star is taking part in a “Digital Life Sacrifice” campaign for World Aids Day, where she is quitting Facebook and Twitter until $1 million is raised for HIV/AIDS awareness.

Yes, that’s $1 million. An amount she probably could have just donated. We’re just saying.

But anyway, Kardashian poses in a coffin, in full hair, makeup and tight dress, all to send a message.

The event is organized by Alicia Keys’ “Keep a Child Alive” organization. Other celebs who opted to digitally die include Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake, Usher, Ryan Seacrest, Serena Williams and Katie Holmes.

"It's so important to shock you to the point of waking up," Keys said. "It's not that people don't care or it's not that people don't want to do something, it's that they never thought of it quite like that."

The campaign, she said, puts the disease in perspective.

"This is such a direct and instantly emotional way and a little sarcastic, you know, of a way to get people to pay attention," said Keys, who has more than 2.6 million followers on Twitter.

The foundation, which began in 2003, will accept donations through text messages and bar-code technology, which is featured in the charity's Buy Life campaign. Raised efforts support families affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa and India.

"It's about love and respect and human dignity," she added.

Keys said recruiting celebrities was difficult because of scheduling, but "once I got people on the phone and I was able to paint the concept for them, everybody was in."

Not one person said no, Keys recalled.

"I have a feeling that Gaga is going to raise it all by herself," Blake said. Lady Gaga has more than 7.2 million followers on Twitter, and nearly 24 million fans on Facebook.

Whatever happened to a good, old-fashioned telethon?

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Funeral Directors Mostly Likely to Laugh at...

Christmas cracker jokes have long been suspected of being the death to any good family lunch. And now there is proof of their deadliness: the only ones to laugh are funeral directors.

A study has found that of ten major professions or trades funeral directors find Christmas cracker jokes the funniest. Vicars are the least likely to laugh at the sometimes terrible puns traditionally found on the slips of paper.

A total of 1000 people were involved in the study, undertaken by the Christmas cracker firm Robin Reed, with 100 from each job tested on their reactions to the jokes. Each person's reaction was rated and classified into three categories: an audible laugh, a smile or little or no reaction at all.

Funeral directors, followed by doctors and then accountants were found to be the most likely to laugh out loud. Vicars were the least likely to laugh, followed by police and then butchers.

The jokes used were firmly in the tradition of terrible puns and creaking word play. One was: Q, "Why did the scarecrow win so many awards?". A. "Because he was outstanding in his field."

Another was: Q. "What kind of pants do clouds wear?". A: "Thunderwear".

Chris Parker, a former president of The Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors, said: "I'm not surprised by this at all. All funeral directors need to have a sense of humour, and a black one at that.

"It can be hard sometimes not to laugh in front of clients, but laughter really is the best medicine at times of grief.

The chief executive of Robin Reed, Julian Reed, said: “I’m not surprised that undertakers topped our chuckle chart – people often use humour to deal with difficult circumstances. We find that sillier jokes go down better in hard times."

Christmas crackers have been manufactured in Britain for more than 160 years. At its height after World War II, Thomas Smith, the original company to make them, was churning out 50 million products a year at two large factories, employing more than 500 people.

The cracker laughing league table:

1. Funeral directors

2. Doctors

3. Accountants

4. Librarians

5. Teachers

6. Hair dressers

7. Lawyers

8. Butchers

9. Police

10. Vicars

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Funeral Home Rents Reindeer

An Idaho funeral home is renting out reindeer for holiday events.

The reindeer available for rent at the Cloverdale Funeral Home in Boise all answer to “Prancer.”

Manager Robert Boetticher Jr. says the previous owner first brought reindeer to the funeral home grounds, where they have been rented out for years during the holidays.

The funeral home now has six reindeer, and a 12-year-old female named Prancer is the best-known, though she is now retired and no longer does events. The Idaho Statesman reports three other reindeer have been trained to help pick up the holiday slack.

Boetticher says the three weren’t given names, so he calls them all Prancer after their popular predecessor.

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No Mourners at Elvis Presley's Funeral

Millons of tearful fans tuned in to watch the funeral of rock and roll icon Elvis Presley more than 30 years ago.

But the contrast with his Midland namesake’s own send-off at West Bromwich Crematorium yesterday could not have been greater – or more poignant.

For Elvis Aaron Presley, believed to be from Sandwell, departed the world without a single mourner paying their respects at his funeral.
Neither was there a service or even any flowers.

A space reserved for floral tributes to Mr Presley stood empty next to wreaths and tributes to ‘mom’ – picked out in white blooms – left by mourners attending other funerals at the venue.

His death notice, carried in the Birmingham Mail, contained none of the usual touching tributes from family or friends, simply an acknowledgement that the 70-year-old died peacefully on November 3rd 2010.

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Crime Boss Dead - Mafia Funeral in Montreal

It was, by all accounts, a relatively modest Mafia funeral.

For a man who enjoyed a three-decade reign in the underworld, Nicolo Rizzuto's was a simple ceremony that eschewed much of the ostentatious pomp of past mobster farewells.

A procession of black vehicles — three town cars, six limousines, and one hearse — filed their way past a crowd of curious onlookers, transporting heaping white floral arrangements.

What followed was a 90-minute ceremony led entirely by an Italian-speaking priest. None of Rizzuto's relatives spoke. One witness said there wasn't even a eulogy.

At the end, hundreds of mourners filed out. A few distant family friends agreed to speak with the media outside and shared a few fleeting memories of their encounters with the man.

Rizzuto was often considered the last of a generation, an old-style don who grew up on Sicilian farms and always wore a fedora in public.

But his funeral was a far cry from some of the others for men who shared his place in the underworld hierarchy.

Outside this same church, in 1978, 31 black Cadillacs reportedly lined up for the funeral of Paolo Violi, who was killed in the purge that saw the Rizzutos rise to prominence.

Neither of those affairs could compare with the 1931 spectacle for murdered New York Mob boss Salvatore Maranzano, with its reported 100 Cadillac limousines, two-dozen separate cars carrying flower bouquets, his silver casket, and thousands lining the streets in a mile-long funeral procession.

The biggest surprise at Monday's funeral came, perhaps, in the form of a little black box.

The dark package — about the size of a shoebox, with a white cross taped onto the top — was left on the front steps Notre-Dame-de-la-Defense Church early Monday morning.

It was said to contain a note. The package was seized by investigators for analysis.

"The contents of the note will be kept confidential until our investigators have had a chance to look at it," said police Const. Daniel Lacoursiere.

Lacoursiere said it was unclear whether the box left at the church door was part of any Italian tradition. He said the Italian-born priest had never heard of any such practice.

Rizzuto's gold-coloured coffin was pulled from the hearse and carried inside by pallbearers. It resembled the gold-coloured coffin used at the funeral for his grandson and namesake, who was also gunned down last year.

The service ended with the soothing sound of bells, followed by a quiet retreat for burial. The immediate Rizzuto family — Nicolo's wife, daughter, daughter-in-law and grandchildren — were present.

But his son Vito, the reputed head of the Mafia in Montreal now serving out a sentence in a Colorado prison, was not present.

His extradition and sentence in the U.S. touched off the violence that has seen the once-dominant clan all but decimated over the last few years. He isn't due out of jail until 2012.

Vito Rizzuto has now missed the funeral for his son, several close friends and, Monday, for his 86-year-old father who was shot last week by a marksman lurking outside the family home.

One family friend painted a picture of the deceased that contrasted sharply with his popular image as a battle-hardened mobster.

"I remember him as a very nice and gentle person," said Francesco Bennici, 71, who knew Rizzuto for about 40 years.

Bennici, who came from the same Sicilian province as Rizzuto but said they met in Montreal, described the funeral as a sad affair and said of the mourners inside: "Everybody's sorry, everybody's sad."

Bennici brushed aside reporters' questions about Rizzuto's documented Mafia ties.

"What you hear, I don't know, and I don't hear the same thing," he said.

Alberto Pizzi said it was important to pay his respects to a man he'd met not long after he arrived in Canada some 57 years ago.

"For me, he's not a criminal," said Pizzi, an accountant who had business dealings with the family. "Everyone knew everyone and there was a respect between us."

A few hundred members of the public gathered on the sidewalk, standing two- and three-deep in some places, mainly out of curiosity. One man, sipping coffee from a paper cup, expressed incredulity that someone would have targeted Rizzuto at his advanced age.

"At 86 years old, it doesn't make any sense," said Frank Santomassimo, a local resident standing on the sidewalk.

"My own opinion is, if he did something wrong, go get him somewhere else, not in the house with the family present."

Nicolo Rizzuto's slaying is the latest in a series of attacks against the family: his grandson and namesake Nick Jr. was shot dead last December; his son-in-law Paolo Renda was kidnapped in May and hasn't been heard from since; and another Mafia boss close to the family, Agostino Cuntrera, was assassinated in front of his food-distribution business this summer.

None of those crimes have been solved.

The heightened police presence wasn't just there to protect the Rizzutos. It was also there gathering intelligence.

Police detectives kept an eye on comings and goings, with some officers filming both the mourners and their licence plates after a weekend of similar surveillance at the Rizzuto-owned funeral parlour.

Police officers snapped away, blending into the rest of the photo-snapping public. News photographers set up perches on balconies across the street to get a better vantage point.

A number of reporters also attempted to enter the church to cover the funeral in person. Many were either blocked at the entrance or whisked out by a swarm of burly security guards.

Leopoldo Seccarecca, a long-time church volunteer, called the funeral a typical Catholic service.

He estimated that as many attended Monday's crowded service as the one for Nick Rizzuto Jr. in early January. The church seats about 800.

"It's a person that everyone knows and people come here from the curiosity," Seccarecca said.

"I don't know him personally. I see what everyone else sees. I sell fruits and I see these people because we are in a business."

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Been Shopping at the Morgue Lately?

The morgue is about the last place you would think of to go shopping, so it's perhaps unsurprising that sales at Los Angeles County's coroner gift store are next to dead.

Tucked as unobtrusively as possible in a closed-door room off the coroner's lobby, the store is jam-packed with mortality-mocking merchandise: Water bottles marked "bodily fluids," boxer shorts dubbed "undertakers," toe tags, crime-scene tape and beach towels bearing the county coroner's trademarked symbol of a body outline.

Trouble is, few people know about the tongue-in-cheek store and its related website, "Skeletons in a Closet." The shop's biggest customers? No shock here — homicide detectives.

"Most people know it through word-of-mouth," said Craig Harvey, the department's chief of operations. "But we are mentioned in guidebooks and we get tourists."

County auditors, however, say given the unique nature of the trinkets — the department is believed to be the nation's only coroner with a trademarked merchandise line — the 17-year-old business could be a robust moneymaker if infused with marketing lifeblood.

They recommend the coroner hire an outside firm with an eye to marketing the merchandise in high-traffic tourist areas, such as Hollywood Boulevard and Los Angeles International Airport.

Harvey is first to admit the merchandise has potential. It just hasn't been a priority for a department that prides itself as one of the top forensic science units in the country, as well as the busiest.

"There is a mystique about the LA County coroner, something people identify with. People want to know what we do and how we do it," Harvey said. "We can do government services very well, but business is another thing."

A management audit released earlier this year found the store's losses totaled $270,000 from 2003 to 2008, and was in effect being subsidized through surplus funds from a drunken driving educational program.

Noting that retailing is not part of a coroner's mission, Harvey said the department is open to expanding the operation but is awaiting a forthcoming fiscal review from the county controller-auditor to develop a plan.

At one point, the department contracted a company to market the items in Japan, but the project was dead soon after arrival — with little consumer interest, Harvey said. The department hasn't sought new ventures since.

Still, the marketing opportunity is clearly there, given the department's unrivaled profile in a largely unheralded field.

Over the decades, some of the world's most captivating morbid mysteries have played out under the prying scalpels of Los Angeles pathologists.

There are the deaths of the famous such as Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe and James Dean; killings that led to charges against the famous such as O.J. Simpson, Robert Blake and Phil Spector; and the victims whose killers became famous such as the Menendez brothers, Charles Manson, and the victim herself, the Black Dahlia.

Numerous TV shows have added to the cachet, including the long-running 1976-83 drama "Quincy M.E.," in which Jack Klugman played a curmudgeonly crime-solving coroner, and the more recent documentary-style "North Mission Road," named for the department's street location.

"There's a definite interest in this," said Scott Michaels, who owns Dearly Departed Tours, which offers tours of LA's celebrated death landmarks. "Every other store along Hollywood Boulevard has LAPD and LAFD T-shirts. The LA coroner would be a natural."

The store has always been somewhat of a barebones operation. It evolved from a few coffee mugs and T-shirts the department had printed up to use as giveaways at conferences. Then people started requesting them and the department opened a small shop in a supply closet in 1993.

A following developed for the items that poke fun at death — there's nothing gory or bloody — and it landed in tourist guidebooks as a stop for unique souvenirs.

Tour buses stop there and tourists do seek it out. However, the shop's success has been limited by its location on the eastside of downtown Los Angeles amid a grimy strip of auto-glass businesses. The shop lacks a sign outside the coroner's office, a red-brick, century-old former hospital.

It makes for a lot of lonely hours for store manager Edna Pereyda, who had no customers during a recent visit.

The department has deliberately downplayed the store, mindful that most people who seek out the coroner's department are bereaved relatives. "They're really not in the mood for this stuff," Harvey said.

After a 2002 audit noted the store lost $100,000 in 2000-01, the department tightened up operations considerably with better inventory and cash controls, and limits on officials' using merchandise as gifts. The audit noted that officials gave away $2,600 worth of stuff over a four-month period.

In 2008, losses narrowed to about $55,000 on the $175,000 per year operation.

Marketing experts said the merchandise would likely be popular, although it could perhaps reinforce foreigners' perception of American cities as breeding-grounds for violence.

"It is part of the makeup of people's view of large cities in America," said Bill Baker, author of "Destination Branding for Small Cities." "But if this is more of a humorous thing, it could be a 'I survived it' sort of mentality. It'll possibly sell well."

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War Hero Euthanized Accidentally

A county employee in Arizona has been fired after mistakenly euthanizing a dog that saved soldiers in Afghanistan and lived through explosions in the war-torn country, officials announced Friday.

The unidentified Pinal County animal control employee euthanized the female shepherd mix on Monday and was immediately placed on administrative leave.

The dog named Target had been brought to the Phoenix area in August by Sgt. Terry Young after his tour of duty.

Target frightened a suicide bomber inside a military base and potentially saved dozens of soldiers' lives, Young said. He said the dog was treated like royalty from then on at the base at Dand Patan, near the Pakistan border.

The dog escaped from the family's back yard last Friday. Target didn't have a tag or microchip and eventually wound up at the county pound.

Last Friday night, Young found Target's picture on a Web site used by county dog catchers to help owners track lost pets. Young figured the shelter in Casa Grande was closed for the night and weekend.

He showed up at the facility to claim his dog on Monday, only to find out she was dead.

County officials say the employee mistakenly took the dog out of its pen Monday morning and euthanized it.

"I just can't believe that something like this would happen to such a good dog," Young told The Arizona Republic, which said the soldier and his family will get Target's cremated remains.

County officials are declining to name the employee because of threats made to that person and angry telephone calls to the facility.

"We are continuing to look into management practices and procedures to ensure that something like this cannot happen again," said Lisa Garcia, assistant county manager for Health and Human Services.

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