Two funeral homes allegedly gave grieving parents their deceased son’s brain in a box, which began to smell, leaked into their car and got on the father’s hands when he moved it, according to an updated lawsuit filed this week.
The father, Lawrence Butler, said the discovery was overwhelming at a news conference on Thursday, leaving a horrific memory that mars the other memories of a “good young man”, their son, Timothy Garlington.
“It was, and it is still, in my heart that I got in my car and I smelled death,” he said, emotion breaking his voice. Garlington’s mother, Abbey Butler, stood nearby, wiping away tears.
Why would you want the brain?!
I am a mortician. I have received the deceased’s brain in an unlabeled box before. The context was a suicide by gunshot to the head while sitting in his car. The cops called to let us know they were “clearing the scene” and found “additional brain matter”. It ended up being about a quarter of his brain, and a large chunk of skull. I placed the brain in his chest cavity with the rest of his organs (post autopsy, the organs come in a bag that’s sewn into the cavity after the embalming). I used the skull fragments rebuilding his head.
If the package had arrived after he was sewn up, it would have been a lot trickier to deal with. I would probably have placed the box in the casket right before it was closed for the final time, so it could be buried with him. If it arrived after the burial…damn. I guess I would ask their permission to cremate it free of charge, and either return the ashes to them, or scatter them by the grave? That would suck.
There is no scenario where I would ever ever ever hand something like that to the family. I don’t even give them back bloodstained clothing. I’ll let them know it’s soiled, and if they want it back, I wash it well first. Our whole job is to try and help people who are grieving, and to protect them from unnecessary trauma.
Whoever gave this family that box needs to get out of the field, and go do something that doesn’t deal with people.
This glimpse into what you do was fascinating. I would absolutely subscribe to learn more.
Thanks for being you.
Perhaps you’d enjoy the tv show Six Fewt Under. It’s a family drama set in a family that happen to own a funeral home. It deals with death and loss and trauma and personal growth and happiness.
Why are there 2 funeral homes involved with one dead person?
After Garlington’s death in 2023, the Butlers had his remains shipped from one funeral home in Georgia, where their son died, to another where the family lived, in Pennsylvania, where they picked up his belongings, including a white cardboard box that contained an unlabeled red box.
Before I was born, my grandfather dropped dead of a heart attack
Common enough story, except
They were visiting family in Poland, we’re American
And this was the 1980s
So the problem was how to get a corpse back to the US.
Embalming was not common in Poland at the time, not sure what the current situation is there, but in this case it was kind of needed. Shipping something the size of a casket across the atlantic on short notice is kind of a lot to figure out for normal people in the best of times, but especially tricky for a bereaved family, in a foreign country, where they barely speak the language, and a whole host of Cold war political bullshit, and this was no small feat.
So they managed to find one of the few local funeral homes who were able to embalm him
And stuffed him into the cheapest wooden coffin they could acquire to ship him back.
And of course, there were some customs hold-ups that delayed things to make sure they weren’t smuggling anything back with him I suppose.
I believe the whole process took a few weeks.
Luckily American money went a long way in Poland at the time. My family is not wealthy, but they were basically treated like celebrities there, flash a little American cash and you were bumped to the front of the line and got preferential treatment for everything, and from the US perspective, everything was dirt cheap.
A couple stories to illustrate that- one day they’re out in Warsaw with their relative Wojtek, and they’re looking for a place to eat. My grandfather spied a nice-looking restaurant. They go to the door and Wojtek is told that they wouldn’t be able to seat them. My grandfather gets a bit angry and points out that the restaurant was almost empty. When they found out they had Americans with them they were welcomed in with open arms.
My grandfather ordered a steak, Wojtek got a bit of sticker shock seeing the menu and ordered a hot dog. When my grandfather found out that’s what he ordered, he called the waiter back over and told them that Wojtek would also have a steak. He said it was too late and they’d already started the hot dog, so my grandfather said to wrap them up and they’d take them to go, and ordered the steak. A steak dinner there for the whole group, probably around 4-6 people, cost peanuts for an American at the time, but the Polish relatives they were staying with had been saving up things like sugar rations for weeks or months in preparation for hosting my family, and steak was definitely not on their regular menu.
There’s also the story of when Wojtek visited the US (coincidentally at the exact same time as the USSR fell apart, but that’s another long story) and literally broke down in tears at the sight of an American grocery store. I know the grocery store they would have went to, it was not a big or particularly impressive store, today it is a kind of small-ish CVS.
Another time while in Poland (they visited several times back in the day) my grandmother went to get her hair done while she was there. She worked as a hair dresser for most of her life, so while she was waiting in line she was watching them cut hair, and pointed out one lady and said that she wanted her to do her hair. She was told that’s not how things worked there and that shed get whoever was available when it was her turn. Until she flashed some American cash and they bumped her up to the front of the line so she could have her hair cut by the hair dresser she wanted.
Anyway, circling back to my dead grandfather, they eventually got his body back to the US, stuffed him into a nicer casket, had a funeral, and there he is to the ground to this day.
But the story doesn’t quite end there. What became of the casket they shipped him back in?
It sat in the funeral homes attic for a couple decades. It was cheap, but it wasn’t a bad casket, just not what’s in-demand for the American funeral industry, and believe it or not, there’s not a lot of demand (or supply for that matter) for second-hand caskets.
Then one day, some guy, who actually happens to be a second cousin or something of mine, decides he wants an actual coffin to use as a Halloween decoration. So he calls around to the local funeral homes to see what they can do for him.
He calls up this place, and they basically say “we have just the thing for you” and so that’s where that is now.
That’s insane, why the hell did they do… any of that?
What the actual fuck
Sounds like someone separated his brain from his body to either sell to medical science, a university, or the army, and instead fucked it up.
Maybe legally, probably not. Its common in the US, and deeply fucked up.
