Spielman Mortuary

The remains were found late Friday afternoon by state investigators just hours after they received an anonymous letter explaining how to find the bodies carefully hidden inside the false ceiling, Detroit police said.The bodies had been hidden inside the former Cantrell Funeral Home. The funeral home was closed by state authorities in April after they found numerous violations of state law.After the infants’ bodies were uncovered, Michigan State Police used a cadaver-trained police dog to search the entire building, but no additional bodies were found, said Detroit police Lt. Brian Bowser.April 26: Detroit funeral home shut down where mold-covered bodies found“We do have names for some of the remains and we’re going to try to contact the families,” said Bowser.He said he was unable to say how long the remains had been stored there or how old they were. But he said he was upset “by the callousness” of whoever placed the remains of infants, some of them apparently stillborn, inside a cardboard box hidden in the drop-down ceiling of a stairwell. Police want to speak to the former funeral home’s longtime owner, Raymond Cantrell, Bowser said.“Obviously, it was either an employee or someone who had knowledge” of the business and the building who hid the bodies, for unknown reasons, he added.The successor business of the shuttered funeral home in Detroit operates in Eastpointe, Michigan, as Cantrell Funeral Services. That firm’s answering service said none of the owners or managers were available to comment Friday night. The firm’s website praises the former Detroit’s funeral home’s longtime owner, Raymond Cantrell. The website says:“Our father, Raymond E. Cantrell, founder of Cantrell Funeral Home in Detroit, has provided excellent service for over 50 years. As the next generation of funeral directors, our goal is to continue in his footprints of quality, family-oriented and customer focused funeral service.”A spokesman for the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs confirmed Friday that state inspec...

St. Paul on Friday, courtesy of a dead man named Rocco who promised to pay back his cabbie friend “on the other side.”The cabbie is Michael Powell. His primary passenger was precious cargo: a blue velvet sack, perched atop a holy Bible, belted in the front passenger seat. Contents therein: the last remains of Rocco.Though they knew each other only about seven months, the two developed a profound friendship that began as a standard cabbie-fare relationship and evolved into a caregiver-patient one — with a postmortem promise.Rocco (the family requested his last name not be used), lived alone — and largely isolated — in his St. Paul apartment. His neuropathy rendered him without the use of his legs, and he struggled with alcoholism, a relative said.“He was just a regular fare from dispatch,” Powell said Friday as he collected Rocco’s ashes from Spielman Mortuary in St. Paul.Powell has a daughter who uses a wheelchair, and he immediately treated Rocco differently from other fares. The meter would not start running until Rocco was safely strapped in and his wheelchair stowed — tasks Powell took charge of. Powell became Rocco’s designated driver and grocery shopper.“I told him, ‘When you don’t feel like going out, just give me the list and I’ll go get the stuff,’ ” Powell said. ” ‘We’ll just do a flat rate.’ That’s how the friendship came to be.”The pair found themselves bonding over music and old western movies. Routines developed. Four or five days a week, Creedence Clearwater Revival blared as two middle-aged men pounded out beats on the cab roof while on their usual rounds: Super America to get smokes for Rocco, Morelli’s market on Payne Avenue, and Indian Mounds Park, a favorite.Powell carries Rocco’s ashes out of Spielman Mortuary in St. Paul Friday. (Dave Orrick / Pioneer Press)“It’s a sacred place for me,” Powell said Thursday as he drove Rocco’s ashes and personal effects past the park, one of several rounds he made Friday. Powell is Ojibwe, a member of the Bad River Band ...

The Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs said that, in response to a complaint from the public, inspectors from its Corporations, Securities & Commercial Licensing bureau discovered “deplorable, unsanitary conditions” and remains in advanced stage of decomposition at Cantrell Funeral Home on Detroit’s east side.The embalming room was described as unsanitary and unclean, with peeling and chipping paint, and embalmed bodies were found April 10 to be improperly stored in an unrefrigerated garage since November and December, the regulatory affairs department said in its announcement Wednesday, which cited several more violations.The department summarily suspended the funeral home’s mortuary science establishment license because of multiple violations of the state’s occupational code and the Prepaid Funeral and Cemetery Sales Act, and for being an “imminent threat to the public health and safety.”The agency also summarily suspended the funeral home’s prepaid funeral and cemetery sales registration and the individual mortuary science license for Jameca LaJoyce Boone, the establishment’s designated manager.Attempts to reach Boone by phone at the funeral home were unsuccessful.“Michigan residents trust funeral home directors, owners, and their establishments to follow the law, especially when dealing with the death of a loved one,” said Julia Dale, director of the Corporations, Securities & Commercial Licensing bureau, in a news release. “We will continue to aggressively hold every funeral home in Michigan to the highest standards of public health and safety when providing final arrangements.According to the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, absent any statutory exception, it is a criminal misdemeanor under the Michigan Penal Code to fail to or refuse to properly supervise the disposition of a body after agreeing to provide the services of a funeral director within 60 days of receiving the body.The investigation is ongoing, the agency said, and could result in additional charges.The closure of the...