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A Mattapan funeral director has been indicted on charges of keeping decomposed human remains in a storage facility, prosecutors said Wednesday.
A Suffolk County grand jury returned the 278-count indictment against 56-year-old Joseph O’Donnell of Mattapan.
Joseph allegedly used a storage container in Weymouth to hold a dozen decomposing bodies. He had another storage container, in Somerville, where investigators found close to 50 cremated remains, some decades old, that may have been unclaimed when the funeral home he ran on Neponset Street closed in 2013.
Though his licensed lapsed in 2008, the district attorney alleges that he performed more than 200 funerals without a license, until 2013 when his funeral home closed due to foreclosure.
He has also been charged with dozens of counts of embezzlement and larceny related to pre-payments he took for funerals or cremations, and then used the money for his own purposes.
One of the bodies found in the Weymouth storage container are unidentified remains of an adult female. Investigators are still working to identify her.
O’Donnell was taken into state custody.
Agencies/Canadajournal
