Former funeral home owner who mishandled remains gets 2 years, $10,000 fine

FORT WORTH, Texas A Tarrant County jury sentenced former funeral home owner Dondre Johnson to two years in state jail and a $10,000 fine Thursday.

Jurors had taken less than an hour Wednesday to convict Johnson, 41, of two counts of felony theft, $1,500 to $20,000. Johnson, of Arlington, was also eligible for probation.

Johnson will likely have to serve most of his state jail sentence, as time reductions are rarely granted to those sentenced to state jail, a court official said. It took about 90 minutes for the jury to reach a decision on the length of sentence.

“We continue to pray for the families and for my family,” said Johnson’s identical twin brother, Derrick Johnson. “I want to apologize to the families on behalf of my brother, who chose not to testify on his own behalf. This is not the end of the twins. There will be glory after this.”

Johnson and his wife, Rachel Hardy-Johnson, 35, are accused of accepting payments to cremate and bury several bodies but failing to deliver those services. During trial, family members testified that Johnson gave them the wrong ashes after promising to cremate their loved ones.

After a search of the Johnson Family Mortuary in July last year, authorities recovered the decaying bodies of the relatives of the family members who testified, weeks after they had received boxes of ashes that Johnson identified as the remains.

Rachel Hardy-Johnson is in federal prison on unrelated food stamps charges.

Crematorium workers testified during the trial that cremations typically cost around $200 for an adult but bereaved relatives testified that Johnson Family Mortuary representatives charged them between $1,000 and $1,500.

One crematorium employee testified on Thursday that after opening the body bag of a deceased woman from Johnson Family Mortuary, they found an infant’s casket concealed between her legs.

Christopher Ramsey, employed by Texas Mortician Services, testified that the woman’s body had been stored in their cooler for about eight months. The baby was “pretty much decomposed,” Ramsey said.

Sid Mody, Tarrant County prosecutor, mentioned the incident in his closing arguments on Thursday, characterizing the behavior as greed-driven. Witnesses earlier had testified that cremating small children typically cost $65-$85. Mody urged the jury to sentence Johnson to two years in state jail.

Alexander Kim, Johnson’s defense attorney, said this was a tragic case for everyone involved and argued for probation for his client. Probation would be the best way to ensure that he will never be involved with the movement of bodies or another funeral, Kim said.

Johnson’s 18-year-old daughter testified Thursday that her father had six children, three of whom were living with him in his home.

“As many lives as Dondre has damaged, he’s got four minor children,” Kim said. “If you sentence him to state jail, that’s it. But if you sentence him to probation you have given him the opportunity to make things right. He will be under supervision of this judge to make sure he’s doing things right. If you sentence him to state jail, he does his time and then he is released.”

During his closing arguments in the guilt phase of the theft trial, Mody told the jury that the state was lucky to be able to bring the case against Johnson before a jury.

Had Jim Labenz, who had recently acquired the building that housed the Johnson Family Mortuary, not come around to collect rent and smelled the foul odor of decaying bodies, authorities may have never been alerted to the situation, Mody said.

Johnson, who was arrested on a Dallas County warrant at a pretrial hearing earlier this month, also faces a failure to pay child support charge and is awaiting trial on seven misdemeanor charges of abuse of a corpse.

Rachel Hardy-Johnson began serving a 21-month federal prison sentence for food stamp benefit fraud in August. She was also ordered to pay $76,494 in restitution in that case, which is unrelated to charges stemming from her operation of the Johnson Family Mortuary.

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