“A nightmare I can’t wake up from”
     -Jennifer Hill on the mistreatment of her mother Pam Hill by Arkansas Funeral Care 

  In 1962, the Better Business Bureau sponsored a 16 mm film entitled “Too Good to Be True” moderated by Bud Collyer (of TV’s To Tell the Truth). In 1965, Sal Nuccio wrote an article for the New York Times entitled “If Price Seems Too Good to Be True, It May Not Be.”

  Too bad these 50 year old consumer warnings were not available in Little Rock, AR during these last years. Many grieving families would have been saved from their experiences with the now shuttered Arkansas Funeral Care.

  Arkansas funeral director Mike Jones had worked for several Arkansas funeral homes, but after five months with Arkansas Funeral Care, he put what he saw on his cell phone video. He was fired that day, for supposedly stealing a belt, which he denies. The video has been shared with many including KATV’s “Seven-On-Your-Side.”

  The video reportedly shows two decedents in one “bag,” twenty others stored at room temperature and twenty-eight in the facility’s refrigerated “cooler,” which is over its capacity.

  On January 23, 2015, the Arkansas State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors held a special hearing for the complaints turned into charges against Arkansas Funeral Care and its licensee and founder LeRoy Wood.

  Board inspector Leslie Stokes inspected Arkansas Funeral Care’s facility, January 13-16, 2015 for their annual inspection and based on complaints from Mike Jones and Darriel Ezell, owner of Clinton Funeral Service in Clinton. In a letter to the state board, he stated that he “saw a body lying on a wooden table in the garage bay in view of anyone driving around their building.”

  Inspector Stokes “observed unsanitary conditions, including blood on a prep room wall and bodily fluids on the floor.” Stokes also stated that all entrances to the preparation room and holding facility were unlocked and the general public could have had access to these areas. The “cooler” in the holding facility was filled beyond capacity with “bodies.” Stokes reported two bodies “stacked on top of each other on a cot on the floor of the cooler.” Seven bodies were outside the cooler, un-embalmed, “two were placed side by side on a wooden board.”

  “Another body,” Stokes reported, “was strapped on a cot, in an obvious state of decomposition, half covered with a bed sheet that was saturated in bodily fluids that had seeped from the body.” Other observations were that the floor of the crematory was “coming apart in chunks’” and was mixed with cremated remains. LeRoy Woods admitted that the retort graphing chart “was not in proper working condition and had one needle of the graph that was operating.”

  Members of the families that contracted with Arkansas Funeral Care had an opportunity to speak. Patricia Parchment asked for assurance that it was her son’s remains in the urn the family were presented. No such assurance could be offered. She relayed that it was to be an open casket funeral. They had viewed him at the funeral home and all appeared well. At the church “his sides were sunken in and his nose was black.”

  The family of Pam Hill relayed that they paid Arkansas Funeral Care $700 for her cremation the day the state shut down the facility. Hill’s body was taken to the Pulaski County Medical Examiner’s Office and the family was advised to contact another funeral home to complete the cremation, which they did for another $900.

  Sherry Kitchenson talked about having to wait to view her brother-in-law. When she did they described his poor condition and body fluids seeping from his ear into the casket. “Mr. Snow (of the funeral home) dabbed at it with a piece of Kleenex.”

  Victoria Ray spoke about how she went to Arkansas Funeral Care to “fix her mother’s hair.” When a decedent was produced, Mrs. Ray told them that that was not her mother; Mr. Snow pulled back the sheet to check the tag. He left and returned and informed Mrs. Ray that her mother had not even been removed from the hospital yet.

  The settlement, which had been agreed to before the hearing was the surrender of all licenses, funeral home and crematory, the refund of money for services not rendered, the control of any prepaid contracts to the supervision of the State Department on Insurance, assistance with death certificates and any pending paperwork. A monetary fine of $5,500 was assessed.

  The outcry from the public during the hearing put the board into executive session and they returned with increasing the fine to $10,000.

  The inevitable lawsuits have begun. Chris and Justin Rowell stated in their complaint that their mother’s remains were kept out of refrigeration for nine days until transported to the medical examiner’s office. The family had contracted to have her cremated. Arkansas Funeral Care told them it would be the following week as they were too busy; then they received the call from the state.  Cheryl Cross-Smith and Linda Bennett in their suit claim that Bennett’s son Kenny was not refrigerated and they were contacted by Arkansas Funeral Care and were told that an open casket would not be possible. Mrs. Bennett was told that her son “looked like a monster and he is completely green”; also “that if you view the body, you will have nightmares.” Mrs. Smith, Kenny’s wife, insisted on seeing his body. She described his appearance as “horrific” and that “deteriorated flesh was falling off his face and hands, bodily fluids excreting from his orifices, the body lying in embalming fluid and his clothing and the lining of the casket saturated with embalming fluid.”

  How did this firm achieve its volume of business? LeRoy Wood was personable and spoke the right words as he visited with pastors of every church in the greater area. The promise of low prices and exceptional service also swayed hospice organizations and other concerns. Area funeral directors watched their meteoric rise knowing that “if it sounds too good to be true, than it probably is.” It is tragic that this lesson is at the emotional and financial expenses of many Arkansas families.

  “I pray to God that this doesn’t happen to any other families. That somehow, somewhere the law can be changed where people in our shoes, that don’t have a lot of money and get left in a situation like this don’t have to go through the stuff that we went through with it.”
     -Danny Ray, son of the late Sherry Ann Ray, an Arkansas Funeral Care client