After being sued earlier this month by a woman who said he left her mother’s body to decompose on a table for nearly six weeks, a Centre County funeral director is now facing a criminal charge.
Garrett A. Singer, the 33-year-old owner of Singer-Kader-Neff Funeral Home in Howard, was charged by county prosecutors this week with one misdemeanor count of abuse of a corpse.
State police at Rockview were contacted on Dec. 12 by a deputy coroner from Huntingdon County who said that when he transported remains to the funeral home, he observed the preparation room smelled bad and a body on a table appeared to have been sitting out for an extended period of time.
A professional conduct investigator from the Pennsylvania Department of State, which oversees professional licensure in the commonwealth, and state police troopers went to the funeral home on Dec. 18 and found the body of Joan Donley “not refrigerated and in a state of decomposition,” according to an affidavit of probable cause.
Singer, who has owned the former Kader-Neff Funeral Home since 2023, told investigators that Donley died on Nov. 11 and that he should have notified the State Board of Funeral Directors after holding her body for more than 10 days, according to the affidavit. He was unsure if she had ever been placed in a cooler, did not have any coolers on the property and said he would pay a cremation service for refrigeration, police wrote.
Regulations require that once a funeral home is contacted, the body must be embalmed, refrigerated, cremated, buried or donated to science within 24 hours, according to the affidavit. It cannot keep a body for more than 10 days without receiving special permission from the Funeral Home Board.
Donley’s daughter, Sherry Cramer, told investigators that her mother died at home in Pennsylvania Furnace under hospice care on Nov. 11 and she contacted Singer-Kader-Neff for cremation services. Singer, she said, arrived the same day to retrieve Donley’s body.
After two weeks, Cramer attempted to contact Singer because she had not yet received a death certificate or her mother’s ashes, she told police. Following multiple attempts, Cramer finally reached Singer on Dec. 4. He told her that the death certificate was still being processed and that her mother’s body was still at the funeral home, according to the affidavit.
On Dec. 18, Singer told Cramer that Donley’s remains were now with the Centre County Coroner’s Office.
“Cramer was very upset with Singer because she had the expectation that Singer would have properly handled her mother’s body with care and respect, but instead, received information that Donley was left in a room and not cared for in over a month,” police wrote.
In a lawsuit filed against earlier this month, Cramer said that her mother’s body was “discovered in an advanced state of decomposition,” and could only be identified through dental records and a hip replacement ID number.
Cramer is suing Singer for three counts of negligence, interference with a corpse and breach of contract.
In the criminal case, Singer was charged via summons on Thursday. His preliminary hearing is scheduled for May 7.
