LAKE CHARLES, La. (KPLC) – It was a calm, cloudy morning at Consolata Cemetery, where employees from the Calcasieu Parish Coroner’s Office and the owner of a local funeral home prepared to carry 107 people to their place of rest. final rest.

There was prayer and blessing, and the cremated remains were carefully placed in a crypt in the Consolata mausoleum.

“A lot of times, people find someone in their attic or the remains that were left there when they bought a house and bring them to us. A hospital gave us an urn. We just accumulate them over time for different reasons,” said Megan LeBoeuf, chief investigator for the coroner’s office.

In this group, everyone has been identified except for one Jane Doe. LeBoeuf considers it an honor to offer them a final resting place.

“Even seeing them in a closet over the years that I’ve worked in the coroner’s office makes me a little sad. “Everyone deserves to have a proper burial at some point,” LeBouef said.

Among the boxes of cremated remains, or cremains, was a small urn. The coroner’s office said it could contain the ashes of a baby or simply be a keepsake.

Zeb Johnson, a former coroner’s office investigator and funeral home owner, believes they all come from families.

“These people we buried today have a family or had a family somewhere. Whatever the circumstances of their death, we feel that they deserve a Christian burial. This is our way of saying ‘We’re going to give you a Christian burial regardless of what your position in life was,’” Johnson said.

Johnson donates the cremation services, so the coroner’s office does not incur the cost. The coroner’s office used to bury unclaimed bodies, but it proved too expensive.

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