Former Fort Worth mortuary owner pleads guilty, apologizes to families

A former owner of Johnson Family Mortuary who was arrested two years ago after Tarrant County officials found decaying bodies inside his funeral home pleaded guilty Friday to nine counts of abuse of a corpse.

Dondre Johnson, 41, was sentenced to two years in state jail Sept. 24 after a theft conviction stemming from charges that he took money from families for cremation and burial services and then failed to deliver those services. During that trial, family members testified that Johnson gave them the wrong ashes after promising to cremate their loved ones.

The misdemeanor guilty pleas Friday in Tarrant County Criminal Court No. 2 will add jail sentences of up to a year to Johnson, but they will be served concurrently with the theft sentence, said lawyer Alexander Kim, who represented Johnson.

“The important thing to remember here is that after he pleaded guilty, he apologized to family members who were hurt by this and asked for their forgiveness,” Kim said. “It was Dondre’s idea to apologize. He wanted to apologize after the felony trial, but I advised him not to because of the pending litigation.”

Johnson helped his wife, Rachel Hardy-Johnson, run the Johnson Family Mortuary until July 15, 2014, when police and officials with the Tarrant County medical examiner’s office were alerted that something was amiss.

An investigation resulted in the removal of eight bodies in various stages of decomposition. One witness at the theft trial said the decomposition was so bad in one case that it looked like the flesh had melted.

Hardy-Johnson is in federal prison on unrelated food stamps charges. Abuse-of-corpse charges against Hardy-Johnson are pending.

This report includes material from the Star-Telegram archives.

This story was originally published May 27, 2016 at 8:32 PM with the headline "Former Fort Worth mortuary owner pleads guilty, apologizes to families."