Scammer
Banned
State inspectors mull over several large containers Tuesday at Memory Gardens
Inspectors examine the stained remains of wooden crates previously used to transport cadavers, but now used as a fence.
Human bones lie in the sun earlier this month at Bisbee's Memory Gardens
ST. DAVID, Ariz. (KGUN9-TV) - A group of state inspectors paid a surprise visit to Cochise County Tuesday morning to investigate the "field of bones" at Bisbee's Memory Gardens Cemetery. First stop: the cemetery's crematorium, located about 40 miles away in St. David.
The five investigators from the Arizona Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers gathered plenty of evidence, although the facility was locked and Paul Parker, the owner of Memory Gardens and San Pedro Funeral Home & Cremation Services, was not present.
Among the evidence: aluminum garbage cans that the five investigators looked at repeatedly, before loading them onto their trucks. Although they declined to tell KGUN9 News the contents of the containers, it was apparent to 9 On Your Side's Claire Doan – who was standing about 10 feet away – that on the ground, near the containers, were human bone fragments that investigators also collected.
Investigators also spent a lot of time scrutinizing the left side of the funeral home, where Parker had apparently more than a dozen crates to construct a fence. Investigators said the crates are normally used for transporting body bags and human remains; in fact, some of the crates were stained with bodily fluids.
"We live right next to him and he piles these body part boxes up along our fence!" said neighbor and former friend JT Moffett. "You got body fluids and stains on them and that's just gross."
Empty body bags also littered the back of the funeral home.
"Mr. Parker had no knowledge we were arriving," Rudy Thomas, Executive Director of the state board's Funeral Director and Embalmers, told Doan. "We wanted to inspect the crematory. We wanted to look at some records. And we wanted to conduct any kind of investigation that would either reveal violations or non-violations of our laws."
Earlier this month a visitor was aghast to discover human bones lying scattered over the ground and stacked in pits in a brushy area next to the Bisbee cemetery. The medical examiner found that the bones were partially cremated human remains. The material consisted of bone bits and larger fragments including parts of human skulls that had not been put though a pulverizer as is customary with cremations.
Because Memory Gardens does not have its own crematorium, investigators suspect the bones came from the San Pedro facility.
Bisbee Police earlier told KGUN9 News that the remains all appear to have come from a medical research firm. Typically such firms obtain human remains by way of cadavers donated to science.
Police said the unorthodox disposal appeared to have violated no laws. But state funeral regulators told KGUN9 News earlier this month that the matter was embarrassing, and said they would investigate to see whether cemetery owner Paul Parks may have violated the standards and practices of his profession.
Last week Parks caved in to public pressure and covered over the bones that had been lying exposed in the field.
"I've never seen anything like this, other than on TV. I'm just not real happy about it. It means someone let us down – what they should've been doing, they didn't do it properly," said Ron Adair, a volunteer compliance officer for the state board and owner and President of Adair Funeral Home in Tucson.
Investigators said the evidence to be gathered was equally as crucial – records and logs of the names and times of those cremated, along with an assessment of the equipment Parker uses in the cremation process.
Parks has insisted he did nothing wrong and has told Doan that he was sorry for what he did. But it was not immediately clear Tuesday whether Parks was cooperating with the investigation. One member of the inspection team told Doan that Parks had just told them by phone that he was in Tucson. But Doan had spotted Parks on site just minutes earlier.
