A Brooklyn funeral home is under fire for improperly preserving a woman’s body to the point where there were maggots on her during the funeral.
The family of Regina Christophe was already dealt a devastating blow when she passed away in her sleep on June 24th from natural causes. The family hired McManus Funeral Home, and they retrieved her body from the medical examiner on June 28th. When her mother, Chantel Jean, first tried to see her daughter, the funeral home told her no because Christophe was not dressed. When Jean asked again, they gave her another excuse, this time stating that the woman’s body had not yet been embalmed.
Jean was not permitted to see her daughter until the day of the funeral service on July 9th and was met with a nightmarish scene.
Christophe’s body was partially wrapped in a plastic bag, and the clothing she was dressed in was soiled. Even more disturbing, the woman’s corpse had not been embalmed, and her face was completely “melted” with maggots coming from her eye. Her family says her body had been left to decompose in the funeral home since arriving there.
“Apart from all, it was just the incredible stench of the decomposing body that permeated the funeral home,” said attorney Kurt Robertson, who is representing Christophe’s family.
After witnessing her daughter’s rotting remains in the casket, Jean quickly stopped her 16-year-old and 6-year-old children from viewing their mother in that condition.
McManus’s manager Anthony Tenga said he was “devastated” by how Christophe’s remains looked but claims he informed the family of her condition the day before the wake and the day of the memorial. Tenga blamed the deterioration of the body on several factors, including the amount of time the body spent in the heat before being brought to the medical examiner.
However, Jean believes that the funeral home was negligent from the start and never bothered embalming her daughter, whom she says looked like a “monster” during the unbearable service.
“An animal deserves a better funeral than what my daughter received,” Jean said in an interview with News 12.
Christophe’s family is suing McManus Funeral Home for unspecified damages.
