What we know about 'devastating' Hull funeral home investigation
Police last month removed 35 bodies and the suspected ashes from a number of others from Legacy Independent Funeral Directors Ltd in Hull.
An MP has called for a single resting place for ashes recovered from the Hull funeral directors at the centre of a major police investigation.
Hull West and Hessle MP Emma Hardy has promised her "full support" to create a "special place" for the ashes, the BBC reported on Wednesday.
Legacy Independent Funeral Directors has been under police investigation since officers recovered 35 bodies, as well as human ashes, which experts have been unable to identify, at its site in Hessle Road in the city earlier this year.
Here, Yahoo News UK sets out what we know – and don’t know – about the inquiry.
What we know
Humberside Police first received reports of “concern for care of the deceased” on 6 March. Neighbours later reported police outside branches in Anlaby Road and Hessle Road, both in Hull, at around 3am on 7 March.
Three branches were cordoned off as officers conducted their investigation. Humberside Police later confirmed 35 bodies had been removed from the Hessle Road branch.
Officers said on 15 March they believed they had contacted “all families” of the 35 bodies found in the parlour. Formal identification is continuing at Hull’s city mortuary.
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A 46-year-old man and a 23-year-old woman were arrested on 10 March on suspicion of prevention of a lawful and decent burial, fraud by false representation and fraud by abuse of position. They were released and remain on police bail.
The National Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors (SAIF) said Legacy “is not and has never been” a member of its group, adding that it was "deeply distressed" about the claims.
Concerned families from Hull and the wider East Yorkshire region have taken to social media to express their concerns over what may have happened to their relatives’ bodies after they were entrusted to Legacy Independent Funeral Directors for funerals.
Assistant Chief Constable McLoughlin told reporters earlier this month that more than 2,000 calls had been received on the investigation’s dedicated phone line. “Of those, a significant number were understandably concerned about the identification of the ashes of their loved ones."
What we don’t know
Police have been unable to identify any of the human ashes recovered from the parlour, which Assistant Chief Constable Thom McLoughlin acknowledged would be "devastating news for families and loved ones".
In an update earlier this month, he said: “Unfortunately, given the high temperature required to carry out a cremation, the DNA will have broken down and degraded to such a level that we would not be able to recover a meaningful DNA profile."
And while we know two people have been arrested and released on bail, we don’t know who they are or their connection to the funeral home – if any.
We also don't know who contacted the police in the first place, or how many people reported their concerns. There is no information as to how any suspicions were first aroused. The Mirror reported sources as saying the parlour was targeted by police following an undercover sting, but these reports are unconfirmed.
There are still questions surrounding those who have existing plans with the company, and what will now happen to those people.
We have also not heard from Legacy Independent Funeral Directors, which has not commented on the investigation. The BBC reported last month that Hull City Council issued a winding-up petition against it over a claim of "significant" unpaid council debt.
Meanwhile, it is also unclear who apparently vandalised the properties of Legacy Independent Funeral Directors last month, and who boarded it up as a result. With the sign taken down at a different premises, it is not known what the staff at the business are currently doing.
What have the families affected said?
On 16 April, the BBC's File on 4 reported how a daughter, having nursed her terminally ill mother, was unable to say goodbye to her body because Legacy said it had started to decompose. She was later unable to collect the ashes as she was told they had been "misplaced".
Billie-Jo Suffill, 33, lost her father, Andy Suffill, in 2022 and told The Sun that she fears she was “kissing an empty coffin” – and that she has “never received” his ashes. She said: “I bet my dad was not even in the coffin – it was an empty coffin. I was kissing an empty coffin. When I think about it now it is disgusting.”
Peter Welburn used Legacy Independent Funeral Directors to cremate his wife when she died in December last year. He told the BBC: "I just can't sleep at all and the family's devastated. I've got her ashes at home but is that her? I'm just sat there staring at her [urn] and wondering if she's in there or if she's somewhere else."
Emma Osborne said she had been informed her stepfather Danny Middleton may be one of the bodies removed from the funeral parlour. However, she told The Telegraph that relatives received what they were told were his ashes a month ago.
She added: “As far as we know he has got his ID band on him, that's all we know, he has not been identified properly. They [the funeral directors] have given my stepbrother ashes a month ago, they have given him ashes saying that it was my stepdad.”
