Bodies from troubled Las Vegas funeral home identified, coroner’s office says
Nearly 150 bodies recovered from a troubled Las Vegas funeral home operation earlier this month have been identified, according to the Clark County coroner’s office.
Through a statement provided Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the coroner’s office said a total of 146 bodies recovered from the McDermott’s Funeral Home and Cremation Service have been identified and are being housed at Davis Funeral Home.
“The team at Davis is working through each case with care, compassion and urgency,” the spokeswoman said in the statement. “As you can imagine, the scale of this situation is overwhelming. We appreciate everyone’s patience and understanding as the staff navigates this difficult process.”
Earlier this month, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported McDermott’s had been shut down after a state regulatory board found the business had failed to cremate bodies for extended periods of time and failed to file death records in a timely manner.
In early August, the Nevada Funeral and Cemetery Services Board revoked McDermott’s license after alleging it had not cremated or properly disposed of eight bodies “within a reasonable period of time,” failed to file death records within the required number of days and, in one case, did not initiate a death record.
One body was kept at the funeral home for over 10 months before being cremated, records show.
In a phone interview on Aug. 11, McDermott’s owner Chris Grant said the cremation process for the eight bodies took so long because he was waiting for approvals from Clark County Social Service, which steps in when family members do not come forward, when they abandon the body or when they cannot pay for services.
Multiple business owners in the area of McDermott’s Funeral Home, at 2121 Western Ave., which is just west of the Strip, noticed bad smells coming from the funeral home’s buildings in the weeks leading up to its closure.
Daran Denny, who owns a tattoo shop that sits just a few steps from the funeral home, told the Review-Journal earlier this month that the odor, at times, smelled like “straight up death.”
Contact Bryan Horwath at bhorwath@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BryanHorwath on X.
