[Image: Freerange Stock]
For at least five families, what was supposed to be a final farewell turned into a rather agonising situation.
Believing their loved ones had been cremated with dignity, they were instead laid to rest in pauper graves without their families’ knowledge.
The deceit came to light after one Cape Town family, desperate to retrieve their mother’s ashes after the funeral, found themselves stonewalled and increasingly suspicious.
This prompted an investigation by the City of Cape Town’s compliance office together with the police, into burials and cremations conducted by St Francis Funeral Services in Kraaifontein.
Their relentless search uncovered fraudulent cremation certificates allegedly created by a 64-year-old undertaker. The dodgy undertaker was expected to appear in the Kuils River Magistrate’s Court last Friday for the five cases of fraud.
Police spokesperson, FC van Wyk, confirmed the case with Cape Argus noting that “the matter is being investigated by SAPS and no further details are available at this point,” he said.
The investigation is said to include DNA testing, which is expected to include the exhumation of bodies and the ashes obtained.
The distraught woman who managed to bring this case to light is Anita Momberg, the daughter of Tersia Murray from Kuils River, who died in August last year due to cancer at the age of 66.
Anita was horrified earlier this year when she learnt the ashes she received were not that of her mother, and that she had in fact been buried six weeks after her death as a pauper at Welmoed Cemetery, among four other people.
In voicenotes shared with the Cape Argus, the undertaker from St Francis Funeral Services told Anita he was experiencing delays with the crematoriums. But then around 10 days after her mother’s funeral, the ashes were dropped off with no word from the undertaker.
To her horror, she then received a call from a compliance official from the City of Cape Town who revealed that they were investigating crematorium fraud.
“In the new year the head of compliance from the City of Cape Town called me and said they needed to come and see me because my mother was buried and not cremated,” she said. “She said the reason she was reaching out was because another family had a similar situation where their mom was supposedly cremated and the ashes were to be buried.
“When the woman was going to bury her mother, the graveyard asked for a cremation certificate, which she gave them, which had been provided by the undertaker. She was told the cremation certificate was fraudulent by authorities and that is when she lodged an application at the City for access to information and her mother’s burial application was discovered.
Anita said she only found her mom’s grave this month. She says her mother was supposed to be cremated at Maitland Crematorium, but the detective confirmed that her body was booked out of the Blackheath mortuary and she was buried on September 18, 2024, at Welmoed at Kuils River at a public burial.
This situation is certainly bound to complicate the grief that these family members are feeling already.
[Source: Cape Argus]