Widow Tells of Shock at Learning of 7-Week Delay in Husband’s Burial

An 80-year-old widow told jurors Wednesday how she discovered, to her horror, that her husband’s grave had been disturbed and then learned that his remains had been buried seven weeks after the funeral in what the funeral home termed a “paper-shuffling” error.

“I saw what I thought was my husband’s grave,” Ruth G. Wiese testified. “It was dug up.”

At first, an employee at Pacific View Memorial Park & Mortuary in Corona del Mar did not believe that the gravesite had been disturbed, Wiese testified.

But he called Wiese later and told her that the burial had taken place May 31, 1984, almost two months after services on April 12.

Papers Shuffled

“He said they had blue papers, yellow papers and white papers and somewhere along the line, they were shuffled,” Wiese testified Wednesday before Orange County Superior Court Judge Richard N. Parsow Jr.

A mother of three, grandmother of seven and great-grandmother of four, Wiese testified two weeks after trial began of her lawsuit against Pacific View. She is seeking unspecified damages for breach of her $2,050 contract with the mortuary, crematory and cemetery and for the distress she suffered when she learned of the alleged mishandling of her husband’s remains.

Earlier witnesses who examined the exhumed cremated remains that the cemetery identified as those of her husband, Arthur, found one artificial tooth present that was not from the deceased and testified that 15 of 16 fillings of precious and semi-precious metal were missing.

Worried About Remains

Wiese described herself as “sick, disturbed, and distraught” after she heard about the burial delay. She said she was afraid and worried constantly about the true state of her husband’s remains.

“I worried about what happened to him during those weeks,” Wiese testified. “I wondered if they really ever brought back the body from the hospital.”

Pacific View attorney Marshall T. Hunt contended in opening arguments that Wiese never specified a date for the cremation. He said short delays are not unusual. He acknowledged that a seven-week delay was too long but suggested that Wiese had not been seriously damaged by the incident.

Last week, mortuary manager Charles L. Stucker testified that short delays in cremations are not unusual.

When asked by Federico C. Sayre, Wiese’s lawyer, if the seven-week delay was a mistake, Stucker disagreed.

“I wouldn’t call it a mistake because he (the late Mr. Wiese) wasn’t placed in the wrong grave or anything. It was an oversight,” Stucker testified.

Wiese’s testimony, to conclude today, will complete Sayre’s case. The trial is expected to last another two weeks.