WAUKEGAN, Ill., Dec. 3 (UPI) -- A suburban Chicago undertaker got a jail sentence and fine for sending grieving families the wrong ashes, authorities said.
Marcee Dane was sentenced to 30 days in jail after admitting desecrating human remains, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
Her sentence also includes 150 days of house arrest, 30 months' probation and a $10,000 fine. She also is forbidden to work in the funeral industry ever again.
In May 2010, the Burnett-Dane Funeral Home in Libertyville accidentally switched the cremated remains of two unrelated people.
When one family began to suspect they had the wrong ashes, Dane got the remains of an unidentified person from a crematory, prosecutors said. She then mailed those ashes to the family, assuring them they were their kin's.
When Dane learned of the investigation, she went to a Des Plaines, Ill., cemetery under the pretext of planting flowers and secretly dug up the urn belonging to one of the relatives of the families involved, prosecutor Christen Bishop said.
