Mortuary’s license revoked for cutting corpse

From MSNBC.com:

COLUMBIA, S.C. - The South Carolina funeral board has revoked the licenses of a funeral home and its director for cutting the legs off a 6-foot-7 man so his corpse would fit in a casket.

State licensing spokesman Jim Knight says the Board of Funeral Service voted Monday to revoke the funeral director license of Michael Cave and the license of Cave Funeral Services of Allendale.

Knight says the board also fined Cave the maximum $500 and ordered him to pay $1,500 for the investigation.

The body of James Hines was exhumed earlier this year because of rumors that circulated after he died in 2004. His widow said investigators told her his legs had been cut off between the ankle and calf to fit the coffin.

Look folks, morticians are busy people. Corpses in. Corpses out. They can't accommodate the body measurements of every dead Tom, Dick, and Harry that gets dumped at their feet. Six-foot seven inch caskets don't just grow on trees. So sometimes the body has to accommodate them. Apparently these dolts in South Carolina just don't get it. I mean, who's the last dead person you knew of who needed his legs anyway?

-Max