The Morning Glory Funeral Home scandal took place at the Howell Morning Glory Chapel in
Jacksonville
Jacksonville is a city located on the Atlantic coast of northeast Florida, the most populous city proper in the state and is the List of United States cities by area, largest city by area in the contiguous United States as of 2020. It is the co ...
,
Florida
Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...
, in 1988, and involved improper disposal and burial of bodies by the
funeral home
A funeral home, funeral parlor or mortuary, is a business that provides burial and funeral services for the dead and their families. These services may include a prepared wake and funeral, and the provision of a chapel for the funeral.
Services ...
's owner, Lewis J. Howell. Investigation eventually revealed bodies stacked in the funeral home without preservation or refrigeration and multiple bodies buried inside single caskets.
Investigation
The scandal first came to light June 7, 1988, when a number of
decomposing
Decomposition or rot is the process by which dead organic substances are broken down into simpler organic or inorganic matter such as carbon dioxide, water, simple sugars and mineral salts. The process is a part of the nutrient cycle and is e ...
bodies were found inside the funeral home. A total of 36 bodies, including one fetus, and three sets of body parts were uncovered inside the building. Most of the corpses were stacked in a closet, and some had been in the building for as long as a decade.
Later, three caskets buried by the funeral home at Hillside Cemetery, a " pauper's cemetery" where the city's
indigent
Poverty is the state of having few material possessions or little
population are buried, were exhumed and found to contain a total of eight bodies and "a bag of mixed bones." The case was investigated by the Duval County Medical Examiner's Office, headed by Chief
Medical Examiner
The medical examiner is an appointed official in some American jurisdictions who is trained in pathology that investigates deaths that occur under unusual or suspicious circumstances, to perform post-mortem examinations, and in some jurisdictio ...
Peter Lipkovic.
Conviction and sentencing
Howell was convicted of felony grand theft for accepting money for funerals that were not performed. He was sentenced to one year in prison, but he served only 2 months and was released in February 1989.
Reaction
The incident led to a tightening of Florida's regulation of the funeral industry.
The case was featured in the Season 3 episode "A Deadly Business" of the
cable television
Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with bro ...
medical examiner
The medical examiner is an appointed official in some American jurisdictions who is trained in pathology that investigates deaths that occur under unusual or suspicious circumstances, to perform post-mortem examinations, and in some jurisdictio ...
with the Duval County Medical Examiner's Office, and the episode detailed her role in the extensive investigation.