Document 9C

TV Reports, with Color Photos -- Part 2

These reports, and the material in other Documents, provide the findings and comments of reporters who had time to look carefully into the industry -- and may well indicate what reporters will find happening unnoticed in most communities. These reports give information about many subjects that should be looked into in EVERY community.

To RETURN to OPENING DOCUMENT's List of Exposes

This [QUICK^FIND] List will help you find reports rapidly.
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TV REPORTS, PART 2:

10. "FUNERAL REPORT" by NBC-TV "CLOSER LOOK with Faith Daniels" (Photos), September 19, 1991.

(Our IFIC assisted the producers and appeared on the program.)
11. "WHEN MOURNING COMES" Investigation, Denver (Photos), KUSA-TV, Evening News, (five nights),
May 4-8, 1990. ( Our IFIC did a PRICE SURVEY of all Denver mortuaries for the station to offer to the public.
More than 2,000 persons write in for copies.)
12. "FUNERAL ADVOCATE/PRIEST" Report by NBC-TV "TODAY" show, January 3, 1991. (The program offers our
IFIC printed ADVICE and CASKET WHOLESALE PRICE LIST to viewers. More than 5,000 persons write in
for copies.)
13. "FUNERAL REPORT" by CNBC-TV Network's "STEALS and DEALS" (Photos), February 1990. (The program
offers our IFIC PRINTED MATERIALS to viewers. More than 2,000 write in for copies.)
14. "FUNERAL RIPOFFS" Investigation, Phoenix, KPNX-TV, Evening News (three night series), February 21-23, 1990.
( Our IFIC did a PRICE SURVEY of all Phoenix area mortuaries and provided printed ADVICE to viewers. More than
1,500 write for copies.)
14a. "FUNERAL RIPOFFS" Investigation, Hartford, WFSB-TV (four nights), March 15-18, 1989. (The program offers
our IFIC PRINTED MATERIALS to viewers. More than 1,000 write in for copies.)

15. "FUNERAL REPORT" by ABC-TV "HOME" show (Photos), (two-mornings), February 16-17, 1989. (The program
offers our first IFIC CASKET WHOLESALE PRICE LIST and printed Advice to viewers. More than 2,000 write for copies.)
. The FIRST TIME in U.S. history that the "TOP SECRET" WHOLESALE PRICES and MARKUPS are made available
nationally to the media and public.

16. "FUNERALS", an AARP Video News Release, September 1988. Explains the funeral industry and encourages people to
write to the FTC about abuses they have noticed. (Our IFIC assisted the producers and appeared on the program.)

==================================== =========================================
The FOLLOWING REPORTS are in the previous document: DOCUMENT 9B -- TV REPORTS, PART 1
(To see previous Document 9B -- TV Reports, PART 1.)

1. (England) "PAY NOW ... DIE LATER" Investigation, BBC-TV "Public Eye" program, " February 27, 1996. (Our IFIC

assisted the producers.)
2. "THE HIGH COST OF DYING" Investigation, Houston (Photos), (two-part series) -- KPRC-TV, Channel 2,
Evening News, February 3, 1996. ( Our IFIC did a PRICE SURVEY of all Houston mortuaries for the station to offer to
its viewers.)
3. "R.I.P. OFF" Investigation by ABC-TV "20/20" (Photos) -- ABC-TV Network News Program, November 3, 1995.
(Our IFIC assisted the producers.)
4. "FUNERAL REPORT", KNXV-TV, Phoenix, (Channel 15, ABC), Evening News, November 3, 1995.
( Our IFIC did a PRICE SURVEY of all Phoenix area mortuaries. It was offered to viewers of the program.)
5. "AFFORDABLE FUNERALS" Report by CBS-TV "THIS MORNING", October 1995. Regarding Affordable Funeral
Service mortuary.
6. "AFFORDABLE FUNERALS" Report by CNN-TV "HEADLINE NEWS" (Photos), January 14-15, 1995. Regarding
Affordable Funeral Service mortuary.
6a. (England) "OVER MY DEAD BODY" Report on British television, 1994. About British chains taking over a large number of
England's mortuaries, a $400 million industry, and SCI of Houston recently moving into England. Includes commentary about
the English situation with Jessica Mitford, author of The American Way of Death, the famous expose of the U.S. funeral industry.
7. "FUNERAL INVESTIGATION" Report, Detroit, by WJBK-TV (Ch.2, CBS), Evening News (five night series),
November 1993. (Our IFIC assisted the producers and appeared on the program.)
8. "FUNERAL INVESTIGATION" Report, Minneapolis (Photo), KARE-TV (NBC), Evening News (five nights),
November 1993. (Our IFIC assisted the producers and appeared on the program.)
9. "FUNERAL RIPOFFS -- GRIEF AND GREED", by NBC-TV "DATELINE-NBC" (Photos), (two parts),
February 2, 1993. (Our IFIC assisted the producers and appeared on the program.)

TV INVESTIGATIVE REPORTS, Part 2

"FUNERAL REPORT" by NBC-TV "CLOSER LOOK with Faith Daniels," September 19, 1991.

(Our IFIC assisted the producers.)

The program interviews a woman whose son's body was mistreated; the president of the National Funeral Directors Association; and a representative of the Interfaith Funeral Information Committee, Phoenix.
• The program tells of more than a dozen families in Tennessee who found that their relatives were buried without caskets and/or without clothes, or buried with garbage.

1 . 2
Photo 1. Men digging into the graves. . . Photo 2. Relatives' grief at seeing the abused bodies.

• Another family is suing a mortuary for losing their father's ashes and perhaps misleading them even now, because they thought that they had buried the ashes until a box of ashes with his name on it was found on the freeway. Now they say they'll never know if their dad is buried in the cemetery or not.
• A worker says that bosses told the workers that parts of bodies which weren't completely cremated were to be left in the furnace and cremated with the next body.

• In California, thousands of families are suing more than 100 mortuaries and a crematory which may have cremated more than 16,000 bodies in piles of up to 30 or more at a time. The mortuaries wrapped the bodies in corrugated cardboard and stacked them several deep in trucks for the trip to the crematory. There, workers broke the jaws of bodies to remove gold, and then cremated the bodies in large piles in several large furnaces.

Photo 1. Bodies stacked several deep in a crematory truck (feet can be seen exposed at the ends of some of the cardboard tubes).

Photo 2. One of the furnaces in which up to 30 bodies were cremated together.

• The program interviews a woman who says that a mortuary didn't collect all of her son's body parts from a truck's cab after an accident. The woman found the body parts in the truck when she visited the wrecking yard..
  The program asks the president of the NFDA to comment about it. He says that such actions are rare.

• Rev. Henry Wasielewski, of the IFIC, Phoenix, comments that these instances are gruesome -- but that WORSE is the RIPOFF OF NEARLY EVERY U.S. FAMILY by OUTRAGEOUS MARKUPS because high markups seriously harm THOUSANDS of families every day because such markups are used by NEARLY EVERY U.S. MORTUARY.

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"WHEN MOURNING COMES" Investigation by KUSA-TV, Denver, Evening News, (five night series), May 4-8, 1990.

( Our IFIC did a PRICE SURVEY of all of Denver's mortuaries. The program offers the survey and IFIC advice to its viewers. More than 2,000 persons write in for copies.)
• The reporter tells of finding body parts in mortuary dumpsters, along with blood soaked cloths, hypodermic needles, partially-filled embalming fluid bottles -- all hazardous items which could seriously harm children who might get into a dumpster, truck drivers who empty the dumpsters, and persons who work at the dump.
  The SCI mortuary manager denies that the material comes from his dumpster, and says that all their hazardous waste goes into red bags and is disposed via a different company. The consumer reporter follows the truck to the dump and finds more items, including red hazardous waste bags hidden inside regular bags.

1 . 2
Photo 1. A red, hazardous waste bag inside a mortuary.
Photo 2. Consumer reporter at the dump finding hazardous waste from the mortuary.

3 . 4
Photo 3. Red bag found hidden inside a regular garbage bag.
Photo 4. A mortuary student finds an embalming fluid bottle and other hazardous waste in a mortuary's dumpster.

(Additional summary will be added shortly.)

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"FUNERAL ADVOCATE/PRIEST" Report by NBC-TV "TODAY" show, January 3, 1991.
(The program offers our IFIC's printed ADVICE and CASKET WHOLESALE PRICE LIST to its viewers. More than 5,000 write in for copies.)
(Summary and photos will be added.)

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"STEALS AND DEALS Funeral Report" by CNBC-TV Network's "STEALS and DEALS" program, February 1990. (photos)

(The program offers our IFIC's printed ADVICE and CASKET WHOLESALE PRICE LIST for $2. More than 1,000 write in for copies.)
• The program interviews a woman who was cheated; several morticians; a representative of our Phoenix IFIC; and a consumer lawyer.
.

Photo. TV chart shows $295 wholesale caskets.
For these some mortuaries charge $390;
others charge up to $2,100 or more -- for a profit of $1900 or more.

1 . 2
Photo 1. The FTC building in Washington, DC. The FTC instituted its "Funeral Rule" regulations
in order to help end the nationwide abuses found in its 1972-75 investigation of the funeral industry.
Photo 2. Mr. Rauf Abdullah, one of the FTC's principal "Funeral Rule" lawyers.

3
Photo 3. TV chart indicates two of the main consumer "rights"
given to families by the 1984 FTC regulations.

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"FUNERAL RIPOFFS" Investigation Report by KPNX-TV, Phoenix, Evening News (three night series), February 21-23, 1990.
(Offers our IFIC's Phoenix-area MORTUARY PRICE SURVEY, CASKET WHOLESALE PRICE LIST and other IFIC materials for $3. More than 1,000 write in for copies.)
(Summary and photos will be added here.)

WFSB-TV, Hartford, Evening News (four night series ), March 15-18, 1989.
(The program offers our IFIC's printed ADVICE and CASKET WHOLESALE PRICE LIST to its viewers. More than 1,000 write in for copies.)
(Summary and photos will be added here.)

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ABC-TV "HOME" show (two-mornings), February 16-17, 1989.
This is the FIRST TIME in U.S. history that the "TOP SECRET" CASKET WHOLESALE PRICES and MARKUPS are made available to the media and public.

. .
At breaks in the program, there is an animation of a cemetery in which a grave stone marked
with a dollar sign pops up, accompanied by the clanging sound of an old-type cash register.

The program reports on a California cremation scandal in which a crematory and more than 100 mortuaries were charged with the cremation of more than 16,000 bodies in piles of up to 30 bodies of a time.
Tennessee families tell of the bodies of relatives buried without their caskets and clothes, and some buried with garbage in a local cemetery.

.
Photo 1. Families look at the abused remains of a body disinterred in Tennessee.
Photo 2. Two persons whose father's body had been abused visit his new grave.

The program interviews Rev. Henry Wasielewski, of the Interfaith Funeral Information Committee (IFIC), Phoenix.
(He, together with a Jewish rabbi, other clergypersons, social workers, accountants, lawyers, and representatives of senior citizen groups, founded the organization in 1982. The organization is the only one in the U.S. which regularly compiles and publishes a comparative price list of all its area's mortuaries, assists with surveys of other area's prices, compiles information on the funeral industry, and maintains a 24-hour "hotline," which had received more than 30,000 calls by early 1996.)
He says that the ripoff by families by the high markups and prices of caskets and services is worse than the gruesome stories because it happens to THOUSANDS of families EVERY DAY by MOST U.S. MORTUARIES.

.

The IFIC, on national television, the ABC-TV "HOME" show, reveals for the FIRST TIME in U.S. history the "TOP SECRET" CASKET WHOLESALE PRICES and EXORBITANT MARKUPS used by many of the nation's morticians. He shows photos of several caskets with their wholesale prices and the low and high prices charged by morticians.
Until today, the funeral industry has been able to keep the wholesale prices secret from the U.S. media and public since the beginning of the century. The program then offers the IFIC's new wholesale price list to viewers.

Photo 1. The program shows a photograph of the Southwestern Casket Company's "Alpine" hardwood casket. It wholesales for $342 to morticians. Some charge $445 (a 30% profit/markup over wholesale) for it. Others charge up to $3,100 (a markup of 800% over wholesale; nine times wholesale) -- a profit of more than $2,700. (In 1996, a Houston area mortician said on television that morticians markup caskets as high as ten times wholesale. See previous Document 9B for the Houston TV report.)

Photo 2. The Batesville Casket Company's S-48 "Roman Bronze" 20-guage steel casket wholesales for $351. Some morticians sell it for $490 (40% over wholesale) -- for a profit of $139. Others charge $2,400 (583% profit/markup over wholesale) -- for a profit of more than $2,000.

Photo 3. Indiana Casket Company's "Imperial" 20-gauge steel casket, with cameo pictures in small frames on the corners and on the sides, wholesales for $388 to morticians. Some charge $525 for it (35% markup). Others charge as high as $2,700 -- for a profit of $2,300 (nearly 600% markup; seven times wholesale).

Fr. Wasielewski states that CHURCHES could cause their local mortuaries to LOWER THEIR PRICES TO DECENT LEVELS in a few weeks, especially if neighboring churches worked together -- if they decided to protect their families by surveying the prices of their local mortuaries, publishing the prices, and urging their people to avoid unfairly-priced firms. Mortuaries would have to lower their prices to fair levels if they wanted any business.

.
A Florida couple says that a salesman promised a full refund on a pre-pay plan if they couldn't use it.
However, when they tried to get a refund, the plan refused to give them the full price of the casket, but kept 30%, $900.
(More information will be added.)

"FUNERALS," AARP Video News Release, September 1988. Explains the funeral industry and encourages people
to write to the FTC about abuses they have noticed. (Our IFIC assisted the producers.)
(Summary and photos will be added here.)

[Quick^Find] to return to List of TV Reports.

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