LAKE CHARLES, La. (KPLC) – It was a quiet, overcast morning at Consolata Cemetery where employees of the Calcasieu Parish Coroner’s Office and the owner of a local funeral home prepared to bring 107 people to their final resting places rest.

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

“A lot of times people find someone in their attic or ashes that were left there when they bought a house, and they bring them to us. A hospital turned its back on us. We accumulate them over time for different reasons,” said Megan LeBoeuf, chief investigator for the Coroner’s Office.

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

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

Among the boxes of ashes, or ashes, was a small 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, believes they all came from families.

“These people that we buried today have a family or had a family somewhere. Whatever the circumstances of their death, we simply believe they deserve a Christian burial. It’s our way of saying, ‘We’re going to give you a Christian burial, regardless of your station in life,'” Johnson said.

Johnson donates the cremation services, so the coroner’s office does not cover the cost. The coroner’s office used to bury unclaimed bodies, but that became too expensive.

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