Ruffin said his mother wanted her body donated to science.
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A planned Chicago funeral didn’t take place Saturday because the person to be remembered had already been buried.
Monique Williams, Rutledge’s daughter, said she first realized there was a problem when she noticed the fingernails of the body were different than her mother’s as she paid her final respects. “That don’t look nothing like Mom!'” Williams says.
Williams said she arrived at Leak and Sons with other members of her family Friday evening to approve the body before her mother’s visitation. “I’ve got to do a full body assessment at this point to make sure that that really is her”, said Monique Williams.
Rutledge’s nails were always kept short. My mother has gray hair. “I said, Oh, no'”. “We’ve asked them for forgiveness and we’ve said to them that we want to reconcile”. So none of the women were her mom?
Ella Mae Rutledge’s funeral Saturday became a memorial service when her body couldn’t be found, Williams said. However, because there was no body to bury at the funeral, Williams and her family were forced to hold a memorial service instead.
“They 100 percent identified the person that they buried, on yesterday, as their mother”.
Mrs Williams said the ordeal had left her skeptical of the funeral home. “He and my mother bought a prepaid policy a long time ago, but after this, he told me, ‘No way in hell let my body go there when I die'”.
Spencer Leak Sr., owner of Leaks and Sons Funeral Home in Chatham on the city’s South Side, said an employee mistakenly tagged Rutledge and the other body. “We plan to have the situation rectified in the coming days”.
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“You all need to have a few kind of fail-proof system. It’s nothing you can say that is going to correct this problem”, Williams said. Williams said she tended to her mother every other day at a nursing home where her mother spent the last two years of her life.
