State drops investigation of Big Island mortuaries
By Christie Wilson
Neighbor Island Editor
State investigators have been unable to corroborate claims that the operators of two Big Island mortuaries removed bodies from caskets and buried them in plastic bags.
Deputy Attorney General Rick Damerville said yesterday the state does not have evidence to support the allegations and is no longer pursuing an investigation of the missing caskets, instead focusing solely on the 39 theft charges filed in October against Robert Diego, his wife, Momi, and their daughter, Bobbie Jean, and their companies, Diego Mortuary Inc. and Memorial Mortuary Plan Inc.
The Diegos are accused of selling funeral plans without a license and not maintaining a trust account to protect the money. They pleaded not guilty to the charges during arraignment Tuesday in Hilo Circuit Court. Judge Riki May Amano set their trial for March 31. The Diegos remain free on $2,000 bail each.
The mortuary owners and their attorney, Brenda Carreira, did not return phone calls yesterday seeking comment, but they earlier denied all the accusations involving illegal funeral plan sales and improper burials.
The Diegos were initially arrested for theft in March but were released without being charged. A month earlier, investigators with the attorney general's office obtained a search warrant to seize company records. A court affidavit filed in support of the search warrant said two Big Island families told investigators that when they disinterred relatives for reburial at a different cemetery, they found the bodies lying on bare dirt in bags, even though they had purchased funeral plans, caskets and concrete vaults from the Diegos.
In both cases, the initial burial took place in the 1980s at Mauna Kea Memorial Park in Papa'ikou, which has no connection to the Diegos. Robert Diego has said the actual burials were conducted by previous owners of the cemetery, which has a checkered history.
Dilapidated conditions at Mauna Kea Memorial Park were the subject of news accounts in the 1980s, when a former County Council member threatened to sue the state and a former owner for negligence because hundreds of thousands of dollars that were supposed to have been held in trust for upkeep of the cemetery was missing.
A subsequent owner, Mark Fellman, was indicted in 1986 for allegedly stealing $300,000 from the cemetery's trust fund. He disappeared and the indictment was never served.
News accounts at the time said Fellman had offered bargain burials using plastic coffins. That could explain why probes and metal detectors used by the Army's Central Identification Laboratory failed to detect the presence of metal caskets at several gravesites during the course of the recent investigation of the Diegos. The state attorney general's office requested the Army lab's help to avoid having to dig up the graves.
Damerville would not elaborate on why the state was unable to corroborate allegations made in the affidavit. He said the state has no plans to exhume any graves.
The state investigation into the mortuaries was launched in July 2001 on the basis of allegations made by Robert Diego's former girlfriend, Lucille Mossman. Aside from improper burials and selling funeral plans without a license, Mossman claimed that Diego conducted embalmings even though he was not licensed to do so.
Diego is an apprentice embalmer, which allows him only to clean bodies, dress them and do cosmetic work. He has said he does not conduct embalmings and uses a contract embalmer or has had the work done at other mortuaries.
A total of 38 counts of second-degree theft and a single count of first-degree theft were filed against the Diegos and the two businesses for the alleged illegal sale of funeral plans between Jan. 1, 1989, and Feb. 28 of this year. The first-degree charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $25,000 fine or double the theft amount, whichever is greater. The second-degree charge carries a maximum five-year term and a $10,000 fine or double the theft amount.
The Diegos also are the subject of a 16-count civil complaint involving the sale of funeral plans that was filed in October by the state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs.
Reach Christie Wilson at cwilson@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 244-4880.
