Libertyville, Illinois
A former funeral home director in Illinois is accused of a deeply disturbing crime. She’s been charged with giving bereaved families the wrong cremated remains, has plead guilty in an attempted cover-up of the fraud and is expected to spend months behind bars.
Cute little Marcee Dane, 32, of Libertyville pleaded guilty to desecration of human remains, a violation of the Cemetery Protection Act and a Class 3 felony, a release from the Lake County State’s Attorney’s office said. Dane was a funeral director at Burnett-Dane Funeral Home in Libertyville.
According to prosecutors, Marcee Dane tried to cover up a mix-up involving a family’s ashes by first lying to the family, then getting another person’s remains and sending the family those remains to cover the mistake.
Dane even went so far as to exhume cremains and remove an identification tag in case either family discovered the error and chose to exhume the cremains, authorities said.
The mix-up began in May 2010 when the Burnett-Dane Funeral home inadvertently switched the cremated remains of two unrelated people, whose families had used the funeral home.
Burnett-Dane buried the cremains of one person in the other’s family plot in a cemetery in Des Plaines, the release said. The funeral home then compounded the mistake by giving the cremains — which should have been buried in the cemetery — to the other family. That family spread what they believed to be their loved one’s cremains over a Wisconsin lake.
But before the family spread the ashes, they became suspicious that they might have had the wrong cremains and contacted Dane by phone, the release said. Dane assured them they had the right cremains, which led to their eventual spreading.
Meanwhile, Dane attempted to cover up the mix-up by obtaining the cremains of someone from a crematory in Lake Bluff.
She mailed that person’s cremains to the family in Wisconsin, telling them the ashes were their loved one’s correct ashes. Dane then unearthed the cremains from the Des Plaines cemetery and removed the ID tag, the release said.
Marcee Dane was a funeral director at Burnett Dane Funeral Home in Libertyville, where the scandal occurred.
In addition to jail time, Dane must also pay a fine of $10,000 to be applied toward Crime Stoppers of Lake and Cook counties, give-up her funeral director’s license, stay away from the family business. She should probably stay away from shovels too.
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