CLEVELAND, Ohio — The cremated remains of five people were found this week during demolition of an abandoned East Side funeral home where the unclaimed ashes of 43 people were found eight years ago.
Workers for A&D Contracting told police they found the ashes in tagged plastic bags on Monday morning, in the former M.L. Baldwin Funeral Chapel on Crawford Road at Wade Park Avenue.
The workers said the ashes were on a shelf that was empty when they left the site on Friday. Neighbors said the bags were left on the shelf by curiosity-seekers who discovered them while picking through the building on Sunday.
“They’re the ones who brought it to our attention,” said one neighbor, Larry Jones. He said he was watching the area on Sunday because a basement room was exposed and left as an open pit after demolition of the two-story brick building started last week.
“Children can wander back here. They could fall in,” he said. “I got a lot of questions for the city about that. I know I live in the ghetto, but treat me like a human being. Treat me with respect.
“And treat them with respect,” he said, gesturing toward the area where the remains had been left.
Police removed the bags from the site on Monday afternoon. Their disposition could not be determined on Tuesday. The coroner’s office was not involved, a spokesman said.
The previous discovery of cremated human remains came when the city’s building department was inspecting the condemned property for asbestos in June 2002.
The Cleveland Funeral Home Association took responsibility for those remains and interred them in Riverside Cemetery.
Pernel Jones, owner of Pernel Jones & Sons Funeral Home, served on the board of that group and the Ohio Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors. He and others in the industry speculated that those ashes most likely accumulated from the 1950s to the 1980. The mortuary went under the Ball name, then was called Ball-McFall Funeral Home & Crematory during those years.
The business operated as the Baldwin chapel from 1990 to ’97. It is believed to have originally opened as the Deutsch Funeral Home.
An investigation by the State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors eight years ago could not determine responsibility for the ashes and noted that no laws covered their disposition at the time.
Even now, it is not uncommon for funeral homes to store cremated remains that have not been claimed, a spokesman for the board said, but funeral directors now are allowed to bury unclaimed ashes after 90 days.
Ron O’Leary, Cleveland’s deputy director of building and housing, said asbestos and the building’s large size made tearing down the funeral home an expensive job, but a stepped-up demolition program made it a priority.
