Woman Sues Funeral Home Claiming Father’s Remains Were Never Buried and Sat in Basement for 31 Years
A woman from New Jersey is suing a funeral home after discovering that her father’s ashes had been sitting in the business’s basement for three decades instead of being buried.
Debbie Uraga, 69, had believed that her father, George Jonas, a military veteran, was buried in the family plot at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Middletown since his death in 1993. For 31 years, she and her family had been visiting an empty gravesite, placing flags and honoring him on special occasions.
In June 2024, Uraga received a call from a man involved in retrieving unclaimed veterans’ remains for proper burials. He informed her that he had found her father’s remains in a box in the basement of John F. Pfleger Funeral Home.
“It hurts a lot,” Uraga told News 12. “I thought he was there, and it’s just unbelievable. My father should be in the cemetery with the rest of his family.”
Uraga and her family have filed a lawsuit against Mount Olivet Cemetery and John F. Pfleger Funeral Home. The funeral home owner stated that Jonas’ cremation and services were handled with care and that numerous attempts had been made to contact Uraga about her father’s remains.
“All attempts by our funeral home to seek final disposition instructions from the Jonas family’s next of kin remained unanswered until we attempted to provide an honorable burial of this man’s cremated remains in our state’s veteran cemetery,” a funeral home representative said in a statement to WCBS.
Uraga refuted these claims, stating, “That’s false. Nobody ever contacted me.”
She now has her father’s remains and the cremation certificate bearing her name and address. Uraga hopes that her father can finally be laid to rest properly after 31 years.
“Finally, after 31 years, maybe he could rest,” she told News 12. “You know, like they say, ‘Rest in peace.’ But how is he resting in peace if he is in the basement?”