Remains of more than 100 unclaimed people laid to rest in Louisiana mausoleum

LAKE CHARLES, La. (KPLC/Gray News) - The remains of over 100 people have been laid to rest in a Louisiana mausoleum.

It was a quiet and overcast morning at Consolata Cemetery where employees of the Calcasieu Parish Coroner’s Office and a local funeral home owner prepared to bring 107 people to their final resting place.

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

“A lot of times, people will find someone in their attic or cremains that were left there when they were buying a home, and they bring it to us. We had a hospital turn an urn to us. We just accumulate them over time for different reasons,” Megan LeBoeuf, the coroner’s office Investigator, said.

In this group, all have been identified except one Jane Doe. LeBoeuf considers it an honor to give them a final resting place.

“Even seeing them over the years that I’ve worked at the coroner’s office, just in a closet, it kind of makes you sad. Everybody deserves to have a proper burial at some point,” LeBouef said.

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

Zeb Johnson, a former coroner’s office investigator and funeral home owner, thinks that they all came from families.

“These people that we buried today, they have a family or had a family somewhere. Whatever their circumstances were in death we just 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 standing was in life,’” Johnson said.

Johnson donates the cremation services, so the coroner’s office doesn’t incur the cost. The coroner’s office used to bury the unclaimed bodies, but it became too costly.