A Brooklyn family is incensed after a local funeral home botched their deceased relative’s body for the funeral.
The mother of 37-year-old Regina Christophe, Chantal Jean, and Christophe’s ex-lover filed a lawsuit with the Brooklyn Supreme Court against the John J. McManus and Sons Funeral Home after the business delivered Christophe’s rotting, maggot-infested body on July 9– the day the family was to hold a memorial service for her.
Christophe’s body was compared to a “mud monster,” according to The New York Post. The family’s outrage is heightened because the registered nurse died peacefully in her sleep, a relative revealed.
The family’s attorney, Kurt Robertson, said, “The evidence strongly suggests she had not been embalmed, that she had been decomposing over the two weeks she had been at the funeral home.”
“Apart from all, it was just the incredible stench of the decomposing body that permeated the funeral home,” he continued. “It doesn’t look like a person at all. It looks like a mud monster.”
Robertson also claimed that Christophe’s burial dress was dirty.
Upon seeing her daughter’s body, Jean refused to allow her grandchildren, a 16-year-old and a 6-year-old, to say their goodbyes to their beloved mother. She expressed that she didn’t want that to be “the last image they see.”
The grieving mother is still traumatized by what she saw.
“She has been depressed. She has had to seek counseling. She’s had some pretty dark thoughts, to put it mildly,” Robertson said. “She’s been in a very dark place as a result of that.”
Representatives from the McManus Funeral Home reportedly never contacted the family about the atrocity and still hadn’t after they filed the suit.
The manager, Anthony Tenga, claimed he was “devastated” by the outcome. He also claimed the body was picked up four days after Christophe passed away and that he had warned the family about the 37-year-old woman’s physical condition.
“I was devastated by this whole thing. By what she looked like. It was a real disappointment to me professionally and personally. I thought I gave them fair warning.”
Jean painted a ghastly picture.
“Her skin was all off. It wasn’t even connected to face anymore,” she told News 12.
