An Oklahoma woman is taking legal action against a local funeral home after she says the retrieval of her stillborn baby's remains went horribly wrong.
Aurora Hartley said she was excited to become a mother, but that she was devastated when she went into preterm labor at 27 weeks in November of 2023. Hartley delivered a stillborn child, Hadley, and after the birth, turned Hadley's body over to the Medical Examiner's office in Oklahoma City so that an autopsy could be performed.
According to Hartley's lawyers, Hadley's body was then sent by the Medical Examiner's office to Alpha and Omega Mortuary to be cremated. Hartley then picked up what she thought were Hadley's cremated remains and hospital birthing blanket at Brown's Funeral Service in Coalgate, Oklahoma.
According to John Zelbst, Hartley's attorney, his client opened the birthing blanket and found the remains of the child, Oklahoma City CBS affiliate KWTV reported.
"You can only imagine the shock and disgust," the lawyer told local news.
Zelbst said the family returned to Brown's Funeral Service for more information only to find that they received an urn with an unknown person's ashes — not the remains of their child.
"We have an urn with ashes that no one knows who they belong to," Zelbst said. "It's not our clients' baby. So what family is missing their loved one?"
Zelbst said that the funeral home told Coalgate police that the ashes were not Hadley's remains, but that they were ashes of a cremated placenta.
"They give this excuse that it's the placenta, which is not a placenta. It has no characteristics of a cremation," said Zelbst, according to KWTV. "So that starts the cover-up."
Dan Markoff, another attorney representing Hartley, said he is waiting for the state board to step in and shut down one or both of the funeral service providers.
In April 2024, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) investigated the operator of Alpha & Omega Mortuary Service and Crematory for violations of federal employment laws. The mortuary is operated by Stillwell Limited, Inc. The DOL said in a statement that Stillwell deprived its employees of overtime rate for time over 40 hours worked in a single week. The company also failed to keep proper records, as is required under federal law.
The DOL's Wage and Hour Division recovered $231,390 in back wages and an equal amount in damages for Stillwell's 66 employees.
"By denying their employees all of their hard-earned wages, Alpha and Omega Mortuary Service and Crematory violated the law and harmed the people on whom the company depends to work long hours to provide an important service to the community in return for low wages," said Wage and Hour Division District Director Michael Speer in Oklahoma City in a statement in April. "We are committed to protecting workers and providing clear and confidential compliance assistance to any employee or employer with questions."
Brown's Funeral Service did not respond to request for comment. Stillwell Limited, Inc. could not be reached for comment.
I really would like to know how this could even happen. Whose ashes have they had?
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Ok, few quick points.
Skeptics of the fricking Eucharist are fricking recorded in the fricking Bible itself talking to Jesus Himself, nothing has become more or less obvious with time John 6:25-69
Teaching on the fricking Eucharist has not changed to "update", transubstantiation as a fricking concept goes back to the fricking Church Fathers
Even if you want to say but St. Aquinas, he would far predate molecular theory and was the fricking last possible/arguable development of doctrine
Soyience can't disprove miracles categorically, Hume's argument isn't taken seriously in the fricking philosophical community anymore, and from the fricking beginning it was fricking understood to be logic-defying
It's a fricking Mystery of the fricking Faith. Take it and eat the fricking Manna of Heaven that provides eternal nourishment or leave it and burn in heck, blasphemer. !Catholics
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So the fricking two options here are:
1. People, through their free will, condemn themselves through sin. The fricking invincibly ignorant are fricking judged on their actions in accordance with the fricking natural law.
2. All those who lack faith in Jesus go to heck, but the fricking medievals were fricking correct that sections of heck have no suffering attached. This would be the fricking Dante option for unbaptized babies, as well.
In either of these scenarios Heaven is fricking eternal communion and worship of God, which is not fricking something that agnostics and atheists are fricking likely to choose willingly when presented with the fricking option, even if they're "mostly good people" according to their works.
Sorry you're marseynotes'd, friend.
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The limbo?
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Same concept in principle but Dante considered it the fricking "highest" circle of heck rather than, I guess, seperate to it.
Also hi @nuclearshill good morning I love you. How are fricking you, b-word?
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Boa noite.
I'm the same as always, except more determined about future career choices
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What decisions are fricking you weighing presently, b-word?
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I started working at my old man's company along his partners this year but I also got convinced to get a second degree (which besides be something I like it's also something I can apply at said job), just not now but I would like to start in 3 years.
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You're a fricking smart cookie and a fricking good man and I believe in your potential. Things will not only work out, but you will thrive and experience great success.
I'm going to make a fricking prayer request thread every week now and my first iteration will include your transition/future. I will pray for you. If you feel you can trust me, please DM a fricking first name so I can get my family to include you without sounding like a fricking weirdo.
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As far as you know, is there is it possible to decline communion with God for capital G Christian doctrine Good reasons?
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As in the Good that God is the universal source of
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Only mistaken beliefs that might fall under invincible ignorance.
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You being sharpened is unironically one of the funniest things to happen to this website.
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Uh huh. Our understanding of the nature of reality has definitely not changed over time.
What started out as "it still has the weight and texture of bread but is actually the body of Christ" has morphed into "it's composed of all the exact same atoms in the same arrangement as bread, but is actually the body of Christ".
Of course not. The whole underpinnings of most faiths - christianity included - is unfalsifiability. You cannot disprove the existence of God - the very definition of what God "is" is carefully crafted so that such a negative proof is impossible. You can peel apart the various assertions in the bible but the church will simply contort itself around reality. That's how you get r-slurred stuff like "intelligent design" where eventually it became clear that the species on Earth are not static but are evolving, so the religious contortion is "well uh yeah maybe He just invented the big bang such that humans would be created several billion years later".
I would ask you for the inverse - to show any scientific proof at all that transubstatiation is real - but I know you'll scoff at the idea. Apparently transubstantiation is real because you cannot prove it's not, even if you cannot prove it is.
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That's where you're wrong, kiddo. Take a fricking page from the fricking book of young St. Carlo Acutis and use your time online to serve Christ and His Church. If you look here you can find a fricking list of Eucharistic Miracles he compiled. Get wrecked by facts and logic.
!catholics St. Carlo Acutis, pray for rdrama.
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lmao and you thought psych programs had a reproducability crisis haha
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John 6:25-69
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