EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Authorities in Juarez, Mexico, early on Monday pulled another 42 bodies from a building in the southern edge of the city.
That brings to 383 the number of cadavers found since early Friday morning in a property in the Polo Gamboa subdivision that purportedly operated as a crematorium.
The bodies found stacked on top of each are being placed on a refrigerated trailer parked outside the nondescript building; a preliminary examination shows most of the bodies had been embalmed, police at the scene told Border Report news partner ProVideo.
Chihuahua Attorney General Cesar Jauregui said the remains will be examined to ensure no foul play is involved. So far, violations involve unmet sanitary regulations and improper disposal of cadavers, he said.
“They constantly received bodies for cremation […] They misrepresented hundreds of times to funeral companies they would be cremating those bodies,” Jauregui told reporters on Monday.
The attorney general said the facility looked more “like a residence” than a funeral home or an incinerator. He said he’s working with funeral homes to locate families who may have received the “ashes” of their deceased loved ones.
Investigators believe some of the bodies may have been in the building for months or years and that the crematorium itself previously may have been shut down for health code violations after the COVID-19 pandemic. Jauregui’s office declined to confirm that until the investigation concludes.
Jauregui said prosecutors are in the process of filing charges against the owner of the crematorium, Jose Luis Arellano Cuaron, and an employee named Facundo M.R. for improper disposal of cadavers. More charges could be filed as the investigation continues, he said.
Marcelo Ruiz, president of Juarez’s Funeral Union, said the finding of unrefrigerated bodies is not only a health concern but will be hard on relatives who thought their deceased were cremated.
“We will meet with families who mourned, who prayed their rosary and said goodbye to their loved ones according to their customs and now may find out” that the cadaver is in a warehouse, said Marcelo Ruiz, president of Juarez’s Funeral Union.
(ProVideo contributed to this report in Juarez and in Chihuahua, Mexico.)
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