Last July, this family, which had a family vault, realized that their mother’s body was buried in a tarpaulin underground, without a coffin. Faced with this discovery, a complaint against X was filed and an investigation opened.
A family mourning that turns into a nightmare and questions. In Lourches (North), upon the death of one of their brothers, a family, owner of a family vault in the communal cemetery, realized that their mother’s coffin had disappeared, report our colleagues from La Voices from the North.
Under the earth and the concrete slab, only the body of the latter, who died in 1983, surrounded by a tarpaulin, was found last July.
“It’s shocking”
One of the deceased’s daughters confided in our colleagues about this discovery. “It’s shocking,” insists Dalila.
Because it was during the death of Alain, her older brother, that she noticed the disappearance of the coffin. Buried on July 22 and with the agreement of the family, the funeral directors had to break the concrete slab. After digging in the ground, only a tarpaulin, placed on the ground and containing a body, was found.
At the time, Dalila was only 12 years old. But she remembers the burial of her mother Lucie. “It must have been August 26, 1983,” she specifies. Except that due to a problem, the body of his late mother is placed in a “waiting tank”.
But subsequently, it was his father himself who carried out the “concrete formwork above the coffin” on which a granite plaque was placed years later.
A complaint filed and an investigation opened
The father of the family, also dead, cannot be questioned about this edifying discovery.
“He would never have removed the body from the coffin to leave it in a tarpaulin,” the family told La Voix du Nord.
Especially since in France, a body cannot be buried without a coffin. A situation that raises many questions for Dalila, including one in particular. “Is that really my mom’s body in this body bag?”
On July 25, she filed a complaint against X. Faced with the latter, the Valenciennes public prosecutor’s office opened an investigation. Alain, the brother, was buried elsewhere, in the town of Escaudain.
For her part, Dalila requested a new concession from the funeral directors, responsible for her mother’s burial, and from the town hall of Lourches. She hopes to get it back free of charge, to respect her brother’s last wish: “to be buried next to his mother”.
Martin Regley Journalist
