Crime & Law
Investigation Underway After Dozens of Decomposing Bodies Allegedly Found in Chicago Funeral Home
(WTTW News)
Chicago officials are investigating after dozens of decomposing bodies were discovered Thursday inside a funeral home on the city’s Southeast Side.
Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza — who is running for mayor in next year’s election — said in a statement Friday more than 50 bodies had been found in the South Chicago Chapel funeral home, calling the discovery “heartbreaking and an abomination.”
“These are people — someone’s mother, father, sister, brother, child or friend, and they deserve better,” she said.
WTTW News is not naming the funeral home operators because they have not yet been charged with a crime.
A Chicago Police Department spokesperson said 4th District officers responded to the funeral home — located in the 2900 block of E. 95th St. — at around 2 p.m. Thursday to assist the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation with a license investigation.
On scene, they discovered human remains, the spokesperson said. The Chicago Fire Department was then called to the scene and declared a hazardous material (HAZMAT) incident.
The CPD spokesperson said Area 2 Detectives are conducting an ongoing investigation and that no additional updates were available as of Friday morning.
Mendoza said that although at-need funeral homes like this one are not under her jurisdiction, her office is familiar with its operators and their “egregious past practices” when they previously ran a crematorium.
She said her office last year permanently shut down the operator’s other business, the Heights Crematory in Chicago Heights, after the discovery of several improperly stored bodies and hundreds of cremated remains that had never been returned to their families.
“Many of the bodies were stacked on top of each other, not refrigerated and partially exposed,” Mendoza said in a statement. “Cremations were delayed and record keeping was abysmal. … To hear these same operators are doing the same thing again at South Chicago Chapel Funeral Home is infuriating.”
According to Mendoza, the situation in Chicago Heights led her office to push for new legislation allowing the comptroller’s office to summarily suspend a crematory license immediately without a prior hearing in extreme cases. That legislation, which also increases the maximum penalty to $10,000 per violation, is set to take effect January 1, 2027.
“Losing someone is unimaginable,” Mendoza said, “but to lose someone and then live in fear that their remains are treated with anything less than the utmost respect and dignity is unconscionable and beyond any scope of human decency.”
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
