Exactly 19 years ago on Monday, Wyatt Puryear’s wife delivered their stillborn son at Methodist Hospitals Northlake campus in Gary.
The couple named him Marcus.
Then Puryear, of Gary, paid Smith, Bizzell, Warner & Son funeral home to have the body buried. He met two funeral home representatives at a Gary cemetery and saw the small container they claimed held his son. They showed him the burial plot, then asked him to leave while they completed their assignment.
But earlier this month, Puryear learned that his son’s remains weren’t buried and were, instead, found stashed in the ceiling of the funeral home at 4209 Grant St., in Gary. The identification tag placed on the fetus at the hospital was still attached.
A seven-page lawsuit filed Friday in Lake Superior Court makes these and other claims.
Puryear is seeking a jury trial. He is suing E.R.W. Enterprises Inc., an Indiana company, and LSC Indiana Corp., “a foreign, for-profit corporation” with headquarters in Chicago. LSC has operated the funeral home for “at least the past 10 years,” the lawsuit states.
In March, deputy coroners and Gary police went to the Glen Park funeral home and recovered the mummified remains of a stillborn fetus and a baby who possibly lived a few months. Funeral home operators claimed they had tried to reach relatives and provided conflicting stories of how the two bodies ended up in the rafters above the ceiling in the morgue. Records showed the mummified stillborn had been at the funeral home since 1996, and the newborn had a hospital tag from 2012, police said.
The state funeral home licensing board lodged a complaint with the Indiana Attorney General’s Office, and that office is investigating. Smith and Bizzell could lose its license as a result.
Puryear’s attorney, Marissa McDermott, a Highland lawyer, told the Post-Tribune on Monday that her client wants answers.
“He wants to know why Marcus wasn’t buried, he wants to know why the death certificate was never filed, and he wants to know why the remains were put in the ceiling of the funeral home,” McDermott said. “We hope that this action will answer those questions.”
Attached to the lawsuit is a copy of the certificate of fetal death required by the Indiana State Board of Health. The certificate was never filed, a violation of state law, the lawsuit states. “The certificate of fetal death for Marcus Puryear is, and has been in the possession and control of defendants,” the suit states.
The Indianapolis-based Walker Law Group issued a response to the lawsuit Monday afternoon, claiming the current operators are “not legally connected to the funeral home that failed to bury the Puryear fetus.” The firm claims the fetus was “abandoned” by the family and attempts by the funeral home to reach relatives failed after “an extensive search.”
The Walker group states it was a prior owner that closed shortly after receiving the body and adds the funeral home “will continue to support the Puryear family and has in no way aggrieved or contributed to the neglect caused by the former funeral home operator.”
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