Story Archive

Your Money or Your Dead

If someone you loved dies in Adams County, Ill., and you can’t pay for a funeral, coroner James Keller has a solution: he gets the families to sign their loved ones over to him. Keller established the policy when the state stopped paying for funerals for the indigent, but he didn’t eliminate the policy when state payments resumed. Once a body is signed over, it gets cremated — and while Keller denies this part, multiple friends and relatives of the dead said he threatened to bury the ashes and never tell them where unless they somehow came up with $1,000 to pay him. If there’s a bank account or insurance policy they need a death certificate to access, Keller will arrange to squeeze money out of that before issuing the certificate. Keller, himself a funeral director, says the money is used to pay the incineration service and the funeral home, but one of the families involved mourned their loss at a church service with an empty container. (AC/AP) ...It was labeled, “James Keller’s heart.”