A federal investigation continues into who dumped more than 300 piles of human remains in the desert south of Las Vegas, as a Nevada funeral home stepped up this week to recover them.
The probe follows the discovery of cremated remains by a person who “stumbled on the piles on July 28 in a desert area outside of Searchlight. Searchlight is a rural community about an hour south of the Las Vegas valley off U.S. 95.”
In August, a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) official confirmed the piles were human “cremains” and that the department was actively investigating.
According to Las Vegas CBS affiliate 8News Now, which broke the story:
There is no law in Nevada barring a person from scattering ashes on public land. State law requires funeral operators to preserve the “dignity” of any remains in their care. BLM policy allows for a person to scatter cremated remains; however, the policy limits “commercial distribution of cremated remains.” A mass dumping site, like this one, likely violates the law.
This week, workers from Palm Mortuaries and Cemeteries removed approximately 315 piles, believed to be the product of a commercial funeral home business, sources told the news station.
“I think most of us just felt like, ‘What a shame,’” Celena DiLullo, the president of the retrieving funeral home, told the outlet.
Investigators and workers found no identifiable information with the remains. Some remnants of zip ties, which crematories use to close bags of ashes, were discovered. Pieces of a broken urn also littered part of one site.
DiLullo said out of respect for the dead the remains will be placed into a crypt at one of its cemeteries. With no identifiable information, it would be nearly impossible for possible loved ones to identify them.
“I don’t know if it was the wishes of these people to be out, so that’s kind of what goes through my mind,” DiLullo said. “If this is not how they would want to be remembered, we would just want to have a place for them to be.”
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times best seller House of Secrets and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
