Funeral director gets jail in remains switch cover-up

A director of a Libertyville funeral home was sentenced to 30 days in jail Thursday after she admitted constructing a bizarre cover-up of a mix-up of human remains that led her to dig up a grave.

Marcee Dane, 32, a director of the Burnett-Dane Funeral Home, was also placed on 30 months of probation after pleading guilty to felony desecration of human remains.

Dane admitted attempting to conceal the fact that two sets of cremated remains brought to her family's business had been labeled with the same name and given to the wrong families.

The remains of one of those people, Robert Tambourine of Northbrook, were scattered by the other victim's family and can never be recovered.

“The children, siblings and extended family of Robert Tambourine have been greatly saddened by the mishandling of his last remains,” the family said in a statement released by their attorney.

“The negligent and criminal activities that have been brought to light are very troublesome,” the statement continued. “As the family addresses the emotional wounds that have been brought upon them, they desire their privacy.”

Waukegan attorney Donald Morrison, who represented Dane in the case that was charged and pleaded in a single court hearing Thursday, said the action was an “isolated incident” for a business that has operated in the county for nearly 100 years.

“Marcee Dane is a caring, young funeral director whose actions were not motivated by greed or malice,” Morrison said. “Rather, her actions were directed by her desire to shield these families from further grief and further disruption of the mourning process.”

The second family affected by the crime, the relatives of John Fagerstrom, said they were devastated.

“We put our trust in Burnett-Dane that they would handle John's ashes with respect and dignity, but to our dismay and horror we found just the opposite,” the family said in a statement. “Once a mix-up was discovered between John's ashes and the ashes of another family's loved one, the funeral home lied to us and took part in a cover-up.”

Assistant State's Attorney Christen Bishop said the story began with the April 30 death of Tambourine, 82, and the May 9 death of Fagerstrom, 49, of Libertyville.

Relatives of both men went to the Burnett-Dane to make funeral arrangements, Bishop said, and both men were cremated at Lakewood Crematorium in Lake Bluff.

Tambourine's body arrived first at the crematorium accompanied by paperwork, including his death certificate.

Bishop said crematorium officials created labels and a metal tag, all of which bore a cremation ID number specific to Tambourine. Tambourine's ashes were placed in a plastic bag secured by the metal tag and placed in a box with one of the labels attached. The ashes were returned to Burnett-Dane, Bishop said.

Fagerstrom's body was sent to the crematorium about a week later. But the paperwork accompanying his body had a copy of Tambourine's death certificate attached to the top, Bishop said, and employees did not check the death certificate against the other paperwork to catch the error.

Fagerstrom was cremated and a set of labels and a metal tag with the name of Robert Tambourine was created, although they bore a different cremation ID number than the one assigned to Tambourine's remains.

The box containing those ashes was also returned to Burnett-Dane, Bishop said, and the funeral home staff realized they had two boxes labeled as containing the remains of Robert Tambourine and contacted the crematorium.

The crematorium created new labels and an ID tag bearing the name of John Fagerstrom and sent them to Burnett-Dane, Bishop said, but no effort to determine which box of remains needed to be re-identified was initially made at the funeral home.

On May 15, Fagerstrom's relatives went to the funeral home to pick up his remains. Bishop said Marcee Dane retrieved the remains and replaced a Tambourine label on the outside of the box with one marked Fagerstrom.

On June 20, the Fagerstrom family first opened the box as they prepared to scatter the ashes at the family home. They noticed the outside of the box said Fagerstrom and showed one cremation ID number, but paperwork inside the box was labeled Tambourine and had a different ID number.

Bishop said the family contacted Marcee Dane that day and she assured them they had the remains of John Fagerstrom.

The family scattered the ashes June 21, Bishop said, and on June 22, Marcee Dane called them and said she now believed there had been a mix-up and the remains of John Fagerstrom were in an urn at Burnett-Dane labeled Tambourine.

Bishop said that when Marcee Dane was told the ashes had been scattered, she panicked and went to Lakewood to get some unclaimed ashes and new paperwork bearing the name Fagerstrom.

Dane did not get a new metal tag from Lakewood, Bishop said, so she went to a hardware store and purchased a different kind of tag and had it engraved with Fagerstrom's name and the ID number put on the newly created paperwork.

When those remains were given to the Fagerstrom family, Bishop said, the family became suspicious because the metal tag was different from the one they had previously seen.

His relatives contacted the state's attorney's office and the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation, which oversees funeral home operations, and both agencies opened investigations.

While these events were unfolding, Bishop said, the Tambourine family picked up the remains of their relative, which actually were the remains of John Fagerstrom, from Burnett-Dane.

Those remains were placed in an urn and buried in the gravesite of a Tambourine relative in All Saints Cemetery in Des Plaines, Bishop said.

When investigators contacted Burnett-Dane about the concerns the Fagerstrom family had raised, Bishop said, Marcee Dane extended the cover-up.

She went to the cemetery, located the Tambourine gravesite at the office and staged a picnic at the gravesite to divert attention from the real purpose of her visit.

Bishop said Dane used a shovel to dig up the grave and popped open the bottom of the urn with a screwdriver. She removed the metal ID tag identifying the remains as Fagerstrom, took half of the ashes from the plastic bag, then returned the rest to the urn and reburied it.

Dane kept the portion of Fagerstrom's remains she had removed from the urn until she and her attorney decided to cooperate with investigators and admit what she had done.

The sentenced imposed by Associate Judge Christopher Stride requires Dane to spend 150 days on electronic home monitoring once her jail sentence is complete.

Dane must also make $5,000 contributions to the Cook County and Lake County Crime Stoppers organizations and must surrender her funeral director's license while she is on probation.