Funeral home puts body on porch

CROSS TIMBERS, Mo. -- Nancy King returned to her central Missouri home from picking up a gallon of milk to find a white body bag containing the corpse of her boyfriend on the front porch.

Hathaway Peterman Funeral Home returned the body of 74-year-old Robert L. Holder, who had died a week earlier of prostate cancer, to the home the two had shared in Cross Timbers after his daughter failed to come up with the $1,200 for cremation, King said.

"I'm just devastated," King said Monday. "As soon as I pulled up to the house, I knew what they'd done. He was there, lying on my front porch. He was just like they took him. I could see his blue night gown through the bag."

The State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors, which licenses funeral directors and funeral homes in Missouri, was looking into the matter. The funeral home could face a range of punishment from a disciplinary letter to revocation of its operating license if the accusations are true, said Pat Handly, board executive director.

Funeral regulations

Under state law, the funeral home is to contact the county coroner if the body is not claimed by a relative. The person is declared an "indigent," and the county then oversees disposition of the body.

Funeral director Gary Peterman declined Monday to discuss the incident.

"I think out of respect to Mr. Holder, let's just let this issue drop," he said. "I don't have any other comment."

Meanwhile, Jim Miller of Reser Funeral Home in nearby Warsaw picked up the body on Friday. It will remain refrigerated until Miller can get permission to cremate Holder.

Officials have been trying to contact daughter Joyce Henley -- his closest surviving relative -- but she reportedly left Friday for a two-week vacation. Henley did not immediately return calls Monday.

Holder, who had served in the Army in World War II, had been released Sept. 26 from a veteran's hospital in Columbia, King said. He had fought the disease for five years, but surgery last summer confirmed he was terminal, King said.

Holder died Sept. 28 at their home, said King, who then called Henley at her home in Oklahoma with the news.

King said she told Henley that her father wanted to be cremated. Henley arranged for Hathaway Peterman Funeral Home in Wheatland to handle the disposition of the body, King said.

Unpaid funeral

King said she had a strained relationship with Henley, and it wasn't until last week that King learned that the funeral home had not been paid. She said she called Henley and was told she didn't have the $1,200 to pay for the cremation.

King said she talked to a lawyer, who advised that she could not legally get involved because she and Holder were not married.

"The funeral home had told me that if they didn't get paid that they would bring the body back, but I never thought it would come to this," King said.