Brainwhack

NM family sues funeral home over brain in bag (10:21 a.m.)
By The Associated Press
Posted: 01/06/2010 10:16:23 AM MST in the Las Cruces Sun-News

ALBUQUERQUE – Members of a New Mexico family are suing an Espanola funeral home after their grandmother’s brain was sent home in a bag of personal effects given to them after her death.

The discovery was made the day after interment, when relatives “smelled a foul odor coming from the bag” they received from DeVargas Funeral Home and Crematory of the Espanola Valley, according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of four family members in state District Court in Albuquerque. The Albuquerque Journal reported on the lawsuit in a copyright story published Wednesday.

Funeral home owner Johnny DeVargas says the fault does not lie with his business and that another entity in Utah – where the woman died in a September car crash – was responsible for what had happened.