Investigator Finds New Crusade in Tracking Funeral Home Fraud

If dead men truly tell no tales, then Walter Goode’s new venture will be out of business very quickly.

But he believes the dead do have tales to tell. And some of them involve fraud.

A longtime private investigator and public agitator, Goode and two associates are creating an investigative partnership to lobby for tighter national controls on funeral homes that he says sometimes “prey on the public.”

“We want to provide consumers with information so they can better protect themselves, and know what to ask for when the family’s at need,” said Goode, 56, of Garden Grove. “And, if they feel they’ve been victimized, what they might be able to do about it.”

Goode has his own tales to tell. Some of them involve the dead, and some involve the near-dead--such as the cocaine addiction that nearly destroyed his life three years ago and led to 21 months in prison.

“It’s not anything I’m particularly proud of,” Goode said. “I’ve been clean and sober for almost three years.”

That’s after traveling some severe peaks and valleys.

In 1990, Goode was awarded $250,000 for services in connection with a class-action lawsuit against Harbor Lawn Memorial Park Inc. About 400 plaintiffs shared a $14-million settlement reached in 1987 over allegations that the Costa Mesa firm desecrated remains it was supposed to cremate.

Goode was recently divorced, in a deep depression and flush with cash when, he said, “a young lady introduced me to cocaine.”

“To make a long story short, I started using it and it was instant addiction,” Goode said.

Over the next 2 1/2 years, he said, he went through the $250,000 award and personal property including cars, boats and a horse ranch.

“I ended up on the street,” he said. “I was sleeping behind Dumpsters, in open fields. I can remember walking around nights, cold, at 2 o’clock in the morning with no jacket, nothing.”

He was eventually arrested twice in Santa Ana, once for buying $13 worth of crack and once for selling $20 worth of crack to an undercover police officer, he said. Sentenced initially to a treatment program, he never showed up and was resentenced to state prison, from which he was released two months ago.

One of his new partners is Betty Taylor Yang of Las Vegas, a former professor of criminology at Cal State Fullerton who met Goode when she prepared his pre-sentence report.

Yang said she was drawn to the venture by her own experience with the death several years ago of her sister, a severe diabetic. She said few of her sister’s instructions on her cremation were carried out, and the family, wracked by grief, was incapable at the time of redressing the problems.

“The thought that keeps coming to mind is she had such a hard life, with all her health problems, that the one thing we should be able to do is bury her in peace,” Yang said.

Goode went through a similar situation, he said. His son, Jeremy Goode, 24, was killed 2 1/2 years ago outside Seattle. The killing remains unsolved.

When Goode received his son’s cremated remains, he said, they were in a copper container he suspected was too small to hold his son’s full remains. A forensic analysis found 30-year-old dental work, and he is unsure whether he has the wrong remains, or if his son’s remains were mingled with those from other cremated bodies.

“I’m entirely ambivalent about whether I want to bury those ashes with me when I go,” Goode said. “I am very distressed. I feel violated and angry. So I’ve started a national crusade.”

He also filed a lawsuit against the cemetery and funeral homes involved, alleging fraud and breach of contract. The case is scheduled to go to trial in Los Angeles County in May, he said. A representative for the Washington funeral home declined comment and referred questions to a Glendale lawyer, who did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Goode said he hopes his new venture will draw information from both inside and outside the funeral businesses.

“We’re looking for whistle-blowers,” he said. “We want to find, on a national basis, as much as we can anybody who’s dealing in an unethical manner.”

His new life as a funeral abuse consultant is yet another turn in a high-profile career.

Goode played a pivotal role in the infamous 1985 showdown between personal-injury legal heavyweights Melvin Belli and R. Browne Greene. Belli, in part using information from Goode, Greene’s one-time investigator, sued Greene for legal malpractice on allegations that he failed to inform clients of a $2-million personal-injury settlement offer. Though Greene’s then-clients eventually lost their lawsuit, Greene was acquitted in the malpractice case.

Goode also helped organize Citizens United for Flight Safety after the 1986 mid-air collision of an AeroMexico DC-9 airliner and light plane over Cerritos killed 15 people on the ground in addition to 67 people aboard the two planes.

And, following his own driving-under-the-influence arrest in 1987, Goode took on police practices arguing that he was pulled over because Placentia police unfairly targeted bar patrons for “selective prosecution.” Goode later pleaded no contest.

Goode acknowledges he might have credibility problems in his new venture, given his substance abuse and prison history.

“It might be a good thing,” Goode said. “It makes me controversial, and controversial brings attention.”

His past, Goode said, has less to do with the project than who he is now.

“I’m not excusing myself,” Goode said. “What I did was wrong. I paid my debt, paid my price, and now I’m back. Now I’m here to get a job done.”