Julie Russell of Abaco is alleging that she received a container of dirt instead of the cremated remains of her son from a Grand Bahama funeral director.
Russell’s son died on a boat in 2021 after leaving Abaco with others onboard. “The American people take him in the boat to carry them out to sea. They vanished two days after he died. I went to the police station, asked for an investigator, the investigator told me straight in my face, ‘ain nothing comin’ out of this’. So I asked him how could a person came back in the boat dead and yall ga let them tourist go out the country the same two days after. Anyway the autopsy came back blow force to the head,” she recounted.
Russell subsequently hired a funeral director from Grand Bahama, whom she paid approximately $8,000 to collect her son’s remains from the morgue for cremation. According to Russell the unnamed funeral director did not show up for weeks and was hard to contact.
The mother says after requesting that her son’s body be returned to Abaco, she was sent a package containing suspected dirt instead of her son’s ashes. “I know from day one, how you take long to come for his body something was wrong,” Russell said.
The mother says she wants to know what happened to her son’s body.
