Ashes Not Those of Vegas Woman, Official Rules

In the latest twist to an ongoing dispute, a state official ruled Monday that ashes discovered on the Glendale Freeway last year are not those of a Las Vegas woman whose family alleges that her remains were never properly interred at Forest Lawn Memorial-Park.

“After reviewing a whole bunch of documentation, depositions and photographs, I could not find anything to tie the cremated remains on the freeway back to Susan Lescoe,” said John W. Gill, executive officer of the state Cemetery Board.

Mrs. Lescoe’s family has alleged in a lawsuit that Forest Lawn never interred her remains in her marble-covered niche at the Glendale cemetery. Instead, the family charges, the remains were spilled on the Glendale Freeway median, where they were discovered by Caltrans workers on Oct. 30, 1990.

Forest Lawn has denied the charges, insisting that Mrs. Lescoe’s ashes are secure in the cemetery’s Freedom Mausoleum, but has been unable to explain how a box of ashes bearing her name ended up on the freeway median.

“It has always been our feeling--we have had no question in our mind--that the remains (in the niche) are those of Mrs. Lescoe,” Forest Lawn spokesman Ted Brandt said Monday.

In making his determination, Gill said he relied heavily on a sworn deposition by Lawrence A. Neubauer, the mortician who cremated Mrs. Lescoe’s body in Las Vegas.

Neubauer testified that the cremated remains found on the freeway “did not look like our consistency of remains,” according to a transcript. He also said the plastic packaging found with the ashes on the freeway was different than packaging used at Palm Mortuary.

Mark J. Meyers, an attorney for Mrs. Lescoe’s family, however, described Gill’s ruling as “ludicrous” and said it would have no effect on the family’s lawsuit. He complained that neither Forest Lawn nor Gill has been able to explain why Mrs. Lescoe’s identifying metal tag is missing from the cremated remains contained in her niche.

“That is the critical piece of evidence to me,” Meyers said, “and the state (cemetery) board has just ignored that.”

In a separate matter, state cemetery officials are still investigating allegations by a former Forest Lawn employee that the cemetery routinely mishandled remains at its Glendale crematory.