Truesee's Daily Wonder

A miscommunication at a funeral home led to the burial and memorial service for the wrong person.

In late April, Falls Funeral Home and Cremation Center in Wichita Falls accidentally mixed up the bodies of two people, which not only had grieving friends and families paying closed-casket respects to the wrong woman, but also resulted in having one body exhumed after six days to be replaced with the correct one.

It all started about three weeks ago when James Elser and Shanon Aradillas got word their mother, Sylvia Wallace, had died at a nursing home in Wichita Falls.

Wallace had frequently told her children she wanted to be buried at her mother's grave site in Smyrna, Ga.

"That was her last request," Aradillas said. "She just wanted to be reunited with her mom."

So when the family members arrived at the nursing home, they had an embalmer, contracted through Falls Funeral Home, take her to the funeral home's facility to be prepared for burial as they arranged ways to get her to Georgia.

Falls Funeral Home's director, Rick Shaffer, said when Elser came to the funeral home, he started giving him prices and looking into airports that would receive a casket in Georgia.

Shaffer said he also showed Elser a pink casket in the funeral home that was meant for another woman, whose funeral was set for later that day.

"He said he liked the casket and I told him I'd order one for him that would come in the next day or two," Shaffer said.

Shaffer then asked the man who had prepared Wallace to dress the other woman before her service. And that's when the mix-up began.

"I said, 'Get that pink casket out and get her ready and get her in that casket,' " he said. "And he was thinking for some reason that I was talking about Mrs. Wallace. But I was talking about the other woman."

As a result, the man dressed Wallace and placed her in the casket and took her to be buried at the other woman's service at Crestview Cemetery — where an unsuspecting family paid their respects to the body of Wallace while their actual loved one was still at the funeral home.

"I have been in the funeral business for over 20 years, and this has never happened," Shaffer said. "It was my mistake. I assumed he had the right lady in the casket."

He realized the mistake when he returned to the funeral home later that night and saw the other woman's body still in the holding facility.

"I said 'Oh, my god,' I buried the wrong body."

He said he then tried to reach Elser over the next few days, and left him voice mails telling him to call back.

He did reach him finally, but — to add to the confusion — Elser was being evacuated from his home located in the path of the Possum Kingdom wildfire. Shafffer said he couldn't hear him that well over the phone, so he elected to tell him at a better time.

In the meantime, he broke the news to a member of the other woman's family.

"He said he understood the mistake and said, 'Let's just get it corrected and move on,' " Shaffer said. "He said he understood and he was glad I came to him first thing to tell him."

But the reaction from Elser and Aradillas was entirely different.

After Shaffer told them what had happened, they came to the funeral home and signed paperwork to have the bodies exchanged.

The next day, the casket containing Wallace's body was exhumed and the casket containing the correct woman's body was immediately put in its place. Wallace's body was brought back to the Falls Funeral Home, where it was shown to Elser, Aradillas and Bonnie Conaway, Elser's fiancee.

They didn't like what they saw.

"She just didn't look good at all," Elser said. "I wondered if they even embalmed her. It looked like they didn't. I mean, it was a really, really tough sight to see my mom, an angel, look like that after being buried in the ground for six days."

Shaffer said she was embalmed and he provided documentation.

The disgruntled siblings sought legal counsel, even though Shaffer said he tried everything he could to rectify the situation with them.

He said he offered to eliminate all service-related costs, including embalmment and holding fees.

"I felt absolutely terrible. I instantly asked them to tell me anything I could do to make this right for them," he said.

He said in addition to waiving fees, they wanted $2,000 to cover costs of renting two cars so they could personally take their mother's body to Georgia.

"I agreed to it and tried to reach them about it, but they never called me back," he said. "If they wanted more money, I wish they would have told me so I could work it out with them. I just wanted to make things right for them."

But the siblings said they were never contacted with an offer and they sought legal advice.

The family's attorney, Michael Payne, said it was a tragic situation that his clients obviously didn't ask for.

He said there are financial negotiations with the funeral home's insurance adjustor, but he wouldn't comment on specifics.

Shaffer said he was asked in a letter for a $55,000 settlement.

"Their objective from the moment of their mother's death was to get her buried where she wanted, in Georgia," Payne said.

"But we believe there have been rights violated," he said. "We are hopeful that this matter can be concluded quickly."

During the two-week long back-and-forth legal process, Wallace's body has stayed in a preservation facility at Falls Funeral Home.

Wednesday afternoon the family went to another company, Owens & Brumley Funeral Home, to take over the situation.

That day, Owens & Brumley funeral director Steve Mendenhall said Wallace was taken from Falls Funeral Home to Owens & Brumley, where she will be kept until they fly her out of Dallas today and to Atlanta, where they have arranged to have another funeral home pick the body up and take it to Smryna.

He said she will be buried Saturday, the eve of Mother's Day, by her mother's grave.

Elser, Aradillas and Conaway plan to rent a car and drive to Georgia for the service.

Mendenhall also said Falls Funeral Service is still covering the costs of the embalming and the casket.

To Elser, Owens & Brumley's handling of their mother is "a vast comfort" and a "bulldozer off my back," he said.

But he said the emotional stress is already done, and what he and his family have seen and endured will never fully subside.

"I still see the look of my mom after she had been buried for six days ... and it just, well, it will be in my mind forever," he said. "I'm stuck with that image. That will go to my grave. It will never go away."