Crematory owners took 2-month-old’s body home with them in MD, attorney says
.png "The remains of a 2-month-old baby were found at a crematory owner’s home in Maryland, an attorney for the family said.")
The parents of a 2-year-old boy who died are suing a Maryland crematory service after their attorney says they were given the wrong ashes and their baby’s body was found at the owners’ home.
The crematory service has also been accused of stacking bodies on top of one another, not storing bodies at the proper temperature, letting arms and legs hang out of body bags and more, according to the lawsuit filed May 5 in the Superior Court for the District of Columbia.
The lawsuit lists Heaven Bound Crematory Services in White Plains, Maryland, and Stewart Funeral Services in Washington, D.C., as defendants.
McClatchy News reached out to Heaven Bound Crematory Services and Stewart Funeral Services for comment June 9 but did not immediately hear back.
2-year-old Coi’Seir
In August, Laquanda Brown and Christopher Parham welcomed their son Coi’Seir into the world. But just two months later, Coi’Seir died, according to a civil complaint.
The parents went to Stewart Funeral Services to have their son cremated and have a funeral for him. They were unaware, however, that the funeral home had an agreement with Heaven Bound Crematory Services and that Coi’Seir would be sent there to be cremated, the lawsuit said.
Three weeks after the October funeral, Brown and Parham were told their son’s ashes were ready to be picked up, according to the complaint.
“Parham had an instinctual feeling that something was amiss about his baby’s ashes,” but he trusted the funeral home, the lawsuit said.
Then, on Feb. 27, he got a call from a police officer telling him that the ashes he received were not his son’s and that his son’s body was found at Heaven Bound Crematory, the complaint said.
However, the parents recently learned that Coi’Seir’s body was not at the crematory but at the crematory owners’ home, decomposing and still in the same clothes from his funeral, their attorney said in a June 4 news release.
“We’re like … why was he in their home? So many other thoughts, like, just rushing through our mind,” Brown told WTTG. “Like, what were they trying to do? Like, what were they doing?”
Bodies stacked on bodies
Heaven Bound Crematory Services had been under scrutiny for several years after officials accused the business of not properly storing and disposing of bodies.
Between December 2017 and January 2025, the Maryland Board of Morticians and Funeral Directors found the business in violation of multiple operating requirements.
On March 21, 2024, an inspection showed the business had “human bodies in cardboard boxes stacked on top of each other with no support between the boxes; human bodies in ripped body bags with arms and legs hanging out of the body bags; human remains that were not being stored at temperatures below 40F; and blood on the outside of refrigeration unit and bodily fluids on the floor,” the lawsuit said.
The next month, an investigator said there was a “strong odor of decomposing remains” and “flies coming out of boxes containing human bodies,” the complaint said.
The business owners were fined in September, put on a 2-year probationary period and ordered to complete a recertification. However, in January, investigators found bodies were still stacked on top of one another, fluid was leaking into boxes with bodies, there was dried blood on the ground and bodies were “accumulating” instead of being disposed of, the lawsuit said.
On Jan. 17, the state board suspended the business’ permit, and it shut down, McClatchy News previously reported.
“The reports regarding Heaven Bound Crematory are deeply unsettling,” a spokesperson for the Maryland Department of Health told McClatchy News in a Jan. 27 email. “The Maryland Department of Health condemns in the strongest terms any mistreatment of human remains—on the basis of policy, respect for Maryland families, and basic decency.”
Brown and Parham are each asking for $10 million in damages.
White Plains is about a 30-mile drive south from Washington, D.C.
