Relatives said Fort Worth mortuary owner lied to them

Weeks after her mother’s funeral last year, Michelle Jones finally got a box from Dondre Johnson that was supposed to contain her mother’s ashes, Jones testified Monday.

In July, Jones heard news reports that eight bodies, seven badly decomposed, had been removed from the Johnson Family Mortuary. And then, employees of the Tarrant County medical examiner’s office called, asking for help determining if one of the bodies in the garage of the mortuary was her mother, Karen Pearl Jones.

“It took a moment because they had the birth date wrong in their paperwork,” Michelle Jones testified. “But I assured the medical examiner’s office that there was no other Karen Pearl Jones in that mortuary.”

Johnson, 41, who helped run Johnson Family Mortuary, is on trial on two counts of felony theft from $1,500 to $20,000.

Johnson and his wife, Rachel Hardy-Johnson, 35, are accused of accepting payments from families to cremate and bury several bodies but failing to deliver those services.

Rachel Hardy-Johnson is in federal prison on unrelated food stamp charges.

Nakia Davis testified that her father, Larry Davis, died in a house fire on Jan. 3, 2014. The family wanted Larry Davis’ remains cremated but wanted a portion of his remains to place in lockets for his grandchildren and children.

Dondre Johnson conducted a service for Larry Davis, a Vietnam veteran who served in the Air Force, at Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery on Jan. 13, his daughter said. Johnson handed over what he told her were some of her father’s ashes, a watch and a death certificate.

Later she was notified that her father’s body was among those found at the mortuary, Nakia Davis told the jury.

“I understand that he lied to me,” Nakia Davis said. “The services were extremely caring, and up until that time I trusted him.”

Lax business practices

Other people in the funeral business were aware of Johnson Family Mortuary’s lax approach to business long before the corpses were found, according to testimony.

“Certain funeral homes you know not to do business with them,” said Richard Dalton, owner of Community Mortuary Services. “You can see in the future what’s going to happen — that they would end up in the dust.”

“Was Johnson Family Mortuary one of those?” Johnson’s attorney, Alexander Kim asked.

“I would say so,” Dalton replied.

Dalton testified that he started doing business in his current facility with Johnson Family Mortuary in 2011 but had done business with them before.

Dalton and an employee of at least one other local crematorium testified that it was their practice to get payment upfront from Johnson Family Mortuary.

Advance payment was required when “you don’t feel like you’re going to get paid,” Dalton said.

“I’ve known them for a long time, and they have run up bills at our other businesses. So we did not extend credit to them.”

Dalton said his business also stopped accepting bodies for cremation if the necessary paperwork was not with the body when it was dropped off.

In 2013, the body of a boy of about 5 had to stay in Dalton’s cooler for weeks before he was cremated because his paperwork was not turned in, Dalton said.

That was the last body Dalton said his business accepted from the Johnson Family Mortuary without the accompanying paperwork.

“We didn’t want to keep their bodies in our cooler for a long period of time,” Dalton said.

It typically took the Johnson mortuary three weeks or more to deliver paperwork, Dalton said. With other funeral homes, drop-off and pickup normally occurred within one to two days, Dalton said.

“Usually after a couple of weeks, I’d have to start calling, and eventually we would get the paperwork,” Dalton said.

A state official testified that the mortuary took longer than average to file death certificates. Victor Farenelli, who compiles vital statistics for the Texas Department of State Health Services, said whoever was responsible for paperwork there didn’t seem to be doing a good job.

If convicted of the theft charge, Johnson faces a maximum of two years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Johnson, who was arrested on a Dallas County warrant at a pre-trial hearing Monday, also is charged with failure to pay child support.

He has been charged with with seven misdemeanor counts of abuse of a corpse.

Investigators said that all but one of the eight bodies — six adults and two stillborn infants — were in a state of advanced decomposition. None of the bodies showed trauma or foul play, according to the Tarrant County medical examiner’s office.

Rachel Hardy-Johnson began serving a 21-month federal prison sentence for food stamp benefit fraud in August. She was also also ordered to pay $76,494 in restitution in that case, which is unrelated to the others.

Tarrant County prosecutors Harry E. White and Sid Mody rested the state’s case Monday. The defense is scheduled to begin presenting its case Tuesday in state District Judge Elizabeth Beach’s court.

This story was originally published September 21, 2015 at 12:52 PM with the headline "Relatives said Fort Worth mortuary owner lied to them."