Cemetery Accused of Mishandling Ashes : Cremation: State officials investigate allegations by former Forest Lawn employee. Park management denies the charges.

State cemetery officials are investigating whether Forest Lawn Memorial-Park has mishandled cremated remains at its Glendale facility in a case involving the discovery of human ashes on a freeway, the alleged burning of incriminating records in a crematorium and a self-described whistle-blower who says he was threatened to keep quiet.

Forest Lawn--the famed resting place of Hollywood celebrities and one of the largest funeral operations in California--has routinely discarded human ashes in garbage bags, has washed bone fragments down a floor drain and has misidentified cremated remains, a former crematorium employee has alleged in a sworn deposition.

“If the body was not fully cremated, we would leave it in the machine for the next case,” said Shawn E. Allison, 26, who quit in August after reporting the alleged practices to Forest Lawn executives. “That was an occurrence of every day.”

Forest Lawn has denied the allegations and last month filed a multimillion-dollar defamation suit against Allison and a lawyer involved in the case. General Manager John Llewellyn said the accusations have damaged the company, its employees and the thousands of families who have made use of Forest Lawn services.

“A good reputation takes years to cultivate but only seconds to destroy,” Llewellyn said.

Allison’s lawyer denounced the lawsuit as a heavy-handed attempt to intimidate the unemployed San Gabriel man into backing off his claims.

“It is a lot of power for a corporation to bring to bear on a former employee who doesn’t even own a house,” said attorney John H. Upton.

Fearful of publicity, Forest Lawn recently sought a court order sealing Allison’s testimony and prohibiting him and others from speaking about the allegations. The request was denied in Glendale Superior Court as an infringement on free speech.

“Obviously in this case, something is really wrong,” said Judge Joseph R. Kalin at a hearing last month, referring to contradictory accounts of Forest Lawn’s practices. “I guess 12 people are going to have to decide that.”

John W. Gill, executive officer of the State Cemetery Board, said the agency is investigating “all procedures” at the Glendale crematorium, which last year handled 1,642 cremations for Forest Lawn’s five cemeteries in Los Angeles and Orange counties, according to state records.

Gill said the board launched its investigation after receiving a complaint about a box of human ashes found scattered on the Glendale Freeway. The family of Susan Lescoe, a Las Vegas woman who died last October, have charged in a lawsuit that the ashes are hers. Forest Lawn insists Lescoe’s cremated remains are--and have always been--in a niche at the cemetery’s Freedom Mausoleum in Glendale.

Lescoe was cremated in Las Vegas and her remains were delivered by her family to Forest Lawn in a cardboard box marked with Lescoe’s name. Forest Lawn officials say the ashes were transferred to a sealed urn at the Forest Lawn crematorium and later placed in the marble-covered niche.

The cardboard box and a torn bag of human ashes, however, were later discovered on the freeway near the cemetery by two Caltrans workers. Forest Lawn has been unable to explain how the box and ashes got on the freeway, but company officials insist the ashes are not Lescoe’s. To support the claim, they point to a sworn deposition by a crematorium worker at the Las Vegas mortuary who testified the ashes “did not appear to be what ours looked like.”

State Cemetery Board investigators recently broadened their probe to include all operations of the crematorium--including training and supervision--after the agency learned of Allison’s allegations of widespread problems, Gill said. Allison has testified as a witness in the Lescoe lawsuit.

“We have problems with cremations all the time, but I have never had one like this before,” Gill said.

Developed 85 years ago by founder Hubert Eaton as “a great park, devoid of misshapen monuments and other signs of earthly death,” Forest Lawn has gained nationwide fame for its tranquil rolling hills and vast collection of classic art reproductions--from Michelangelo’s “David” to Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper.”

More than a million people visit the Glendale park each year, and 60,000 people have been married in Forest Lawn churches. Famous people buried in the cemeteries include Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Bette Davis and Nat King Cole.

“Since 1906, Forest Lawn has worked hard to provide the finest funeral and mortuary service and care available in Southern California,” Llewellyn said.

But Allison’s behind-the-scenes account contrasts sharply with that well-known public image. Following the advice of his lawyer, Allison refused requests for an interview, but The Times obtained a transcript of his lengthy deposition in the Lescoe case.

In that testimony, Allison, whose job included loading and unloading bodies in the furnaces, described a crematorium where employees:

* Dumped into trash bags ashes that did not fit into urns purchased by relatives or friends. The bags were either thrown in trash cans or dropped in a grave, he said. Forest Lawn policy requires that extra ashes be returned to relatives of the deceased.

“Nearly all the people that we cremated went into these bags because there was always spillage from the machine,” Allison said. “They would wait until the bag was halfway filled or when they felt (it was) necessary to take the bag into the park and place the bag in a grave.”

* Washed remains that fell from furnaces down a floor drain in the crematorium. Allison described finding “bone fragments inside the drain that were sticking out above the drain” and said he was instructed to flush them out with a fire hose.

* Mixed partially cremated bodies with those awaiting cremation, and on at least one occasion, cremated a body soaked in kerosene. He did not say why the body was doused.

* Kept incomplete paperwork on cremated bodies and mismatched identifying tags with the cremated remains. “Certificates, burial permits were wrong,” he said. “They were filled out wrong. . . . They did not match the bodies.”

* Destroyed records and logs detailing daily operations in the crematorium, including those relating to the Lescoe case, by burning them in a crematorium furnace.

E. Timothy Applegate, senior vice president and general counsel for Forest Lawn, acknowledged in an interview that some records were destroyed in the furnace--against company policy--but he said the Lescoe records were not among them. He said the company routinely destroys duplicates of old records, usually by shredding them.

“I think in this case it was just convenience,” Applegate said. “These were just some records kept in connection with the crematorium operation.”

Applegate refused to discuss any of the other allegations, except to denounce them as false. He said Forest Lawn does not want to “participate in the re-publication” of the statements.

“We are not trying to cover something up, we are trying to prevent false and libelous statements being made about our operation,” Applegate said.

Allison, who worked in the crematorium for one year, claimed in his 126-page deposition that he reported the problems to Applegate’s department, which handles legal matters for Forest Lawn. Allison said he was interviewed in early July by Dayle Bailey, who works for Applegate and was conducting an internal investigation of the Lescoe lawsuit. Calls from The Times to Bailey were referred to Applegate.

During that meeting, Allison said, he lied about crematorium operations, assuring Bailey that “everything was fine.” Allison said other crematorium employees pressured him not to reveal the problems.

But several days later, Allison said in his deposition that he requested another meeting with Bailey, during which he spoke openly. Allison said he also asked for a job transfer because one of his supervisors had been threatening him and was carrying a gun to work.

“I told Mr. Bailey that I had lied,” Allison said. “I told him that I felt that my life was in danger. I told him that I was scared.”

Several weeks later, Allison filed a complaint with Glendale police, alleging that the supervisor threatened to “break his legs and head” if he talked about crematorium operations.

On one occasion, Allison alleged in his police report, the supervisor removed a small handgun from a briefcase and said: “I’m not going to get fired over this.”

The supervisor could not be reached for comment, but he denied the allegations to detectives, police said. A spokeswoman said the district attorney’s office declined to file charges because of insufficient evidence.

Allison, who began working at Forest Lawn in March, 1990, as a night dispatcher, had received favorable job evaluations on that job and later as a funeral assistant in the crematorium, according to copies of his reviews. The most recent appraisal, his 90-day evaluation in the crematorium, described his performance as satisfactory and identified him as “a very self-motivated employee.”

Last March, however, Allison received a disciplinary warning for having allowed his brother into the crematorium in December against company regulations. The warning, issued by the supervisor named in the police complaint, threatened suspension without pay or termination if Allison allowed someone in the crematorium again.

Allison’s attorney said he believes the discipline--coming three months after the brother’s visit--was meant to intimidate his client. Forest Lawn attorneys, for their part, say Allison’s conduct raises serious questions about his credibility as a witness.

In court hearings and documents, Forest Lawn has pointed to other incidents that the company contends call Allison’s character into question.

In September, 1990--one month after he began working in the crematorium--Allison’s 65-year-old mother died of a heart attack and was cremated at Forest Lawn. A lawyer for Forest Lawn said in a recent court hearing that it was implausible that Allison would have had his mother cremated at a mortuary that was experiencing the problems Allison has alleged.

Allison’s attorney, Upton, said his client simply could not afford to take his mother anywhere else. As an employee, Upton said, Allison was able to finance the $2,438 cremation through the company.

Forest Lawn lawyers have also questioned Allison about a bitter dispute with his brother over the fate of their mother’s possessions.

Allison’s brother filed a claim in Pasadena Municipal Court last February, alleging that Allison ran off with their mother’s car, furniture and some jewelry after she died. Allison, in turn, has accused his brother of removing money from her bank account and taking furniture from her apartment. A judge dismissed the case, saying it belonged in probate court.

Forest Lawn officials have also criticized Mark J. Meyers, an attorney representing the relatives of Susan Lescoe, for waiting two months to tell Forest Lawn that the cardboard box and ashes had been found on the Glendale Freeway.

Meyers said he did not want to tip off Forest Lawn until he had prepared his case because he feared a cover-up, but Forest Lawn officials said Meyers appeared to be more concerned about filing a lawsuit than easing the grief of the Lescoe family.

“If the true concerns were the feelings of the (relatives), why didn’t they come immediately and find out what happened?” asked Applegate, the Forest Lawn senior vice president.

Allison, meanwhile, is preparing to file a workers compensation claim and a wrongful termination suit against Forest Lawn. Although Allison quit his job, his attorney said he had no choice because of the conditions in the crematorium.

“Let’s face it,” Upton said. “It is a highly unusual work environment.”