South Alabama funeral home under investigation after wrong body is buried

PRICHARD, Ala. ( WKRG ) — Three different women in a casket, three grieving families’ worst nightmare and a funeral home under investigation.

The concerns of these families have prompted the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office to launch an investigation into Memorial Funeral Home on Saint Stephens Road in Prichard.

WKRG News 5 sat down exclusively with two families who said Memorial Funeral Home presented the wrong loved ones to them in their caskets.

It all started on Aug. 30 for the Williams family when Lakishia Williams went to the funeral home expecting to see her grandmother, Dollie Williams, in her casket.

“When I walked in and approached the body in the casket, I had informed the gentleman that wasn’t my grandmother,” she explained. “And I asked him, I say, did you get the wrong body from the hospital? And he assured me that was my grandmother.”

Confused and puzzled as to who was lying in the casket in her grandmother’s clothing, she said the employee insisted the person was Dollie.

“Every question I asked him; he literally had the answer for everything,” Lakishia explained. “I asked him why was she so dark? He stated that they use some type of skin tint that brings out the natural glow.”

The funeral continued on Aug. 31 with the mystery woman in the casket, who is later buried.

Five days later on Sept. 5, another family encountered the same issue with the funeral home when Lula Campbell-Durgin was expecting to see her mother, Cora Mae Campbell, in the casket.

“I pulled my phone out and went to—oh, I got many, many pictures of my mom,” Campbell-Durgin relayed. “‘This is my mother! This is my mom.’ He got my phone. He looked at the phone, and he looked at the woman; he looked at the phone. Looked at the woman. And I say, ‘OK?’ He said, ‘Well, it’s your mother.'”

Campbell’s funeral service was on Sept. 6, but Campbell-Durgin knew that the person presented was not her mother.

Back to the Williams family, that’s when they say they received a phone call from the funeral home saying they made a mistake.

Upset and hurt by the news, they took to Facebook to express what happened and included a picture of Campbell’s body asking who the woman was.

The Campbell family said they saw the post gained a lot of traction, and that’s when it clicked for Campbell’s granddaughter April Henry that a different family got their loved one who was buried in place of someone else on Aug. 31.

“It’s like a nightmare that keeps replaying over your head over and over again,” Henry said.

The Williams family showed WKRG News 5 a video of who they said was the funeral home digging up their grandmother’s grave on Sept. 6.

The Campbell family said they eventually received Cora to be buried, but they say she appeared in an already decaying state.

“This is our granny that we had to see like that,” Henry said as she teared up.

WKRG News 5 was presented with three different images of different women to compare.

The families believe that the Williams family received the body of Cora Mae Campbell, and the Campbell family received a woman who has not been identified.

The Williams family said Dollie Williams was never buried, and they held a second funeral service and burial for her on Sept. 16.

We went to the funeral home asking for answers for the two families, and an employee denied all the accusations and stated everything the families stated was “false.”

With both the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office and the Alabama Board of Funeral Services now investigating, these families are just hoping for some closure.

“They should never have a license!” Henry said. “Or to be able to do this to anybody else. No other family should ever have to go through what we’re going through.”

The Mobile County Sheriff’s Office said this investigation is ongoing, and they’re looking for any additional information. If you have any information, give them a call at 251-574-8633.

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