Funeral home seeks to end morgue contract with Whatcom County amid probe into body storage
The Whatcom County Medical Examiner’s Office will no longer be using a local funeral home that was providing space for the county’s temporary morgue after the state and county began investigating claims that bodies of the deceased in the care of the Medical Examiner’s Office were stored without refrigeration at one of the funeral home’s facilities in May.
John Moles, fourth-generation owner and funeral director for Moles Farewell Tributes & Crematory Center, said they requested last week that the medical examiner’s office move staff and equipment off of Moles property, according to a statement sent through a public relations representative on Wednesday, June 12.
“At the request of Moles Farewell Tributes & Crematory Center, the Whatcom County Medical Examiner’s Office is no longer using the Bellingham property of Moles Farewell Tributes for conducting autopsies and storing decedents,” Moles’ statement said.
“We agreed last year to temporarily provide the county use of our preparation room for autopsies, plus office space and a space to place a storage cooler for decedents,” Moles’ statement said. “However, we won’t tolerate substandard operations and the county’s refusal to immediately make clear that Moles Farewell Tributes wasn’t responsible for the negligent care of the decedents.”
Whatcom County has since entered into a new contract with Simple Cremation, a public crematory that aims to help make the service more efficient for locals who choose to cremate a deceased family member. The county entered into a contract with Simple Cremation on Friday, June 7, according to Jed Holmes, public affairs and strategy manager for the Whatcom County Executive’s Office.
“Information emerged last week indicating that bodies may have gone unrefrigerated after the Medical Examiner conducted autopsies at Moles’ Bayview facility. Our information appears to be incomplete, and there are discrepancies in the information we have received from our two contractors, Hunt Forensics and Moles. With the advice and counsel of the Whatcom County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, an independent inquiry is being conducted in order to get a more complete picture of what transpired,” Holmes said in a prepared statement sent to The Herald on Wednesday.
As of June 6, the medical examiner’s office stopped conducting autopsies using Moles’ Bayview Chapel location in Bellingham and conducted them at Peace Health St. Joseph’s hospital and Simple Cremation, where the county has a storage and use agreement, Holmes said in his statement.
“All of the Medical Examiner’s equipment and County-owned property have been removed from Moles’ facilities. The County is acquiring a reefer truck that will be stationed at a secure County-owned property by the end of this week in the case that more storage capacity is needed,” Holmes’ statement said.
Holmes said all bodies under the jurisdiction of the medical examiner were removed over several days from Moles’ facilities and stored at the new Simple Cremation location.
Dr. Allison Hunt became Whatcom County’s medical examiner in January 2022 following the retirement of Dr. Gary Goldfogel, who previously held the position for more than 30 years. Deborah Hollis is Hunt’s operations manager and chief investigator. Whatcom County contracts with Dr. Hunt’s business — Hunt Forensics PLLC — to provide medical examiner services for the county. The county is currently in the process of transitioning the medical examiner’s office into a county office, making Hunt and her staff county employees.
Holmes said the change in location has not impacted the county’s medical examiner services.
Holmes said Whatcom County has not formally received a phone call or message from Moles requesting that the Whatcom County Medical Examiner’s Office no longer use Moles’ Bayview Chapel location in Bellingham. The county has also not received notice of an official cancellation of the lease it has with Moles.
In a phone call Wednesday, Holmes told The Bellingham Herald that he’s “not aware of any communication to Whatcom County regarding the removal of Whatcom County Medical Examiner property from the Moles facility.”
The Herald has asked the law firm representing Dr. Hunt’s business whether it has received such a request from Moles.
When asked whether the county began exploring additional options for temporary morgue space before Moles requested the medical examiner’s office no longer use the Bayview Chapel space, Holmes said “when it became apparent that there was a potential conflict between our two contractors, we moved quickly to secure space to continue to provide these critical medical examiner services.”
John Moles, the funeral director, declined through a spokesperson to elaborate on what went into his decision to no longer continue providing space for the county medical examiner’s office.
Lease agreement
Whatcom County had entered into a lease agreement with Lengesot LLC — also known as Moles — on Aug. 1, 2023 to provide temporary space at its Bayview Chapel location in Bellingham for the Whatcom County Medical Examiner’s Office to conduct autopsies, store bodies and perform other duties required by the examiner’s office while the county’s morgue and medical examiner’s offices on State Street in downtown Bellingham are being renovated.
The lease was originally slated to end in March but was extended by the Whatcom County Council at its May 21 evening meeting due to construction delays with the State Street project. The lease was expected to last through the end of the year, according to county documents.
Whatcom County Executive Satpal Sidhu has since directed the county’s Facilities Division to prioritize completion of the renovation of the county morgue at the State Street location, Holmes said in his prepared statement Wednesday.
As part of the lease agreement, Moles was expected to provide space in its garage at its Bayview Chapel location for a cooler that could store up to three bodies. If additional storage space was needed, Moles was expected to transport the bodies to its Greenacres Memorial location east of Ferndale.
The lease agreement stated that Whatcom County will pay Moles $250 per autopsy performed by the county medical examiner’s office at Moles’ Bayview Chapel location. The county also agreed to pay $50 for Moles to transport bodies to its Greenacres location for purposes of “overflow cases,” according to the lease agreement.
“To accommodate overflow, transportation will be provided by the Landlord when mutually determined necessary through coordination with the Medical Examiner’s Operations Manager. Transportation to the Green Acres facility will occur when capacity at the leased facility is limited,” the lease agreement stated.
The county has paid Moles $36,803 for autopsies and transports from Aug. 1, 2023 through February 2024, The Herald previously reported.
Investigations launched
In May the Washington State Department of Licensing and Whatcom County started inquiries into Moles and the Whatcom County Medical Examiner’s Office after becoming aware of allegations that multiple bodies under the care of the medical examiner’s office went unrefrigerated in mid-May while at the county’s temporary morgue, resulting in severe decomposition, The Bellingham Herald previously reported.
The state licensing department received a phone call from a local funeral director on May 16 alleging that a dead body they picked up from the temporary county morgue had not been refrigerated while in the care of the county medical examiner’s office. The funeral director alleged that when they received the body May 16, roughly six days after the person died, they found “the decedent severely decomposed and covered in flies,” according to Christine Anthony, a funeral and cemetery inspector, investigator and trust examiner with the state licensing department.
When the state licensing department became aware of the temporary lease agreement between the county, medical examiner’s office and Moles, and that a funeral home was involved, it launched an investigation May 17, The Herald previously reported.
The state licensing department’s Funeral and Cemetery Board licenses funeral directors, embalmers and cemetery operators within the state. It also investigates violations of state regulations related to the funeral and cemetery industries, according to the Washington State Governor’s website.
The state licensing department’s Funeral and Cemetery Board’s investigation is looking into possible violations by Moles of state regulations that govern the refrigeration or embalming of human remains. The licensing department does not have regulatory authority over the medical examiner’s office, but does over Moles, Anthony said.
There’s no expected timeline for when the state licensing department’s investigation will be completed, but it could take several months, Anthony previously told The Herald.
The county launched a fact-finding inquiry into the matter at the beginning of June, The Herald previously reported.
“Whatcom County is in the process of hiring the investigator, and for the sake of fairness to all parties involved we will not comment on the details of the incident until the inquiry is completed,” Holmes, the county spokesperson, said in his June 12 statement.
As of June 12, that investigator has not yet been hired, Holmes said.
Care of decedents
In a statement released June 6, John Moles, the funeral home director, refuted the notion that it was at fault for the improperly stored human remains.
Moles’ statement said the funeral home was acting as a landlord and couldn’t move the bodies without a request from the Medical Examiner’s Office, which Moles contends had a legal responsibility for the bodies.
“We offered to transport their decedents to our refrigerated space at Greenacres Memorial Park near Ferndale only upon the request of the Medical Examiner’s Office and when we had staff available or were already heading there. We didn’t receive a request on Friday, May 10,” Moles’ June 6 statement said. “On May 10, we told the Medical Examiner’s Office that it needed to make arrangements for the decedents under its care. They told us that funeral homes were coming to pick up the decedents later that day. When we returned to work Monday, May 13, we discovered that no one had picked up the decedents.”
“It was the sole responsibility of the Medical Examiner’s Office to make arrangements for the proper handling of those decedents. It’s understandable why families are distraught over this situation, and we are heartbroken over this mismanagement and negligence by the Medical Examiner’s Office,” the statement said.
Four days later, on Monday, June 10, the Whatcom County Medical Examiner’s Office had removed its equipment and vacated the temporary space at Moles’ Bellingham location.
“Our condolences go to the families whose loved ones didn’t receive a high level of professional care while the Medical Examiner’s Office was responsible for them,” Moles’ June 12 statement says.
Moles Farewell Tributes & Crematory Center has been owned by the Moles family for four generations and has provided funeral care in Whatcom County for more than 100 years, according to its website.
Editor’s note (6:35 p.m. June 12): This article was revised to include comment from Whatcom County.
This story was originally published June 12, 2024 at 2:50 PM.
