Ex-funeral director faces charges
Police charged a former McKeesport funeral director with multiple counts of abuse of a corpse after he admitted stashing boxes containing the remains of 19 babies in the garage at his old home.
Robert Winston, 61, told authorities that financial troubles led him to store the remains rather than cremate them, police said. All of the babies were born alive, but lived only briefly, generally for only a few hours, prosecutors said.
"They're all births that took a breath or were still alive when they were born," said county homicide Lt. Christopher Kearns.
The remains came from women treated at Magee-Womens Hospital from late 2000 through May 2002, according to court documents. Magee contracted with Winston to dispose of the remains, paying him $45 for each cremation.
Winston told police he fell on "financial hard times" and took the hospital's money without turning over the remains for cremation, which is why he is also charged with theft by deception, according to court documents.
"The only thing I can say is that he has cooperated (with police), he has no criminal record, and hopefully he will be vindicated when this is all over with," said James Ecker, Winston's attorney. "There's a serious question here as to the legalities involved."
Ecker said one legal question could be whether the remains Winston is charged with abusing were legally "corpses."
Hospital spokeswoman Jane Duffield said Magee officials are "comfortable that we did everything appropriate" with the remains, but declined further comment.
Winston's ex-wife, Renee Brooks, called police in August about the possibility that fetal remains had been stored in the garage. Police found the remains in bags and plastic containers. Many of the fetuses had been commingled.
The coroner's office has finished identifying all the remains in cases where that was possible, said Chief Deputy Coroner Joseph Dominick. More than 85 people have contacted the coroner's office about whether the remains were those of their children; those people will be notified of the identities and will have the option of making funeral arrangements for them, Dominick said.
The coroner's office is not contacting the parents of the other identified remains out of respect for their privacy, Dominick said.
"I think it's just insensitive to contact families who may not want to know," Dominick said.
Magee paid Winston about $8,900 for removing the remains of 179 fetuses of over 16 weeks' gestation that were found in his garage, and the remains of the 19 infants for which he faces criminal charges.
The remains of another 154 fetuses of 16 gestational weeks or less, and another 253 biohazard containers containing unspecified fetal autopsy remains were found in the garage, police said.
The boxes were labeled with various numbers, dates and gestational ages and some of those boxes were unopened, according to the complaint.
The garage also contained a box with 105 unsigned cremation permits from Magee that should have accompanied the remains to a crematorium, court documents state.
Winston had signed a series of two-year contracts with Magee from 1994 to 2004 that paid him for each fetal cremation and $1 per pound of medical waste generated, officials said.
Over the 10 years of the contract, Winston collected fetal remains from the hospital an average of three times a week and cremated the remains once a month, court records state.
The contract stated that Winston's former funeral home, the Newman-Winston Memorial Chapel on Jenny Lind Street in McKeesport, agreed to "treat the remains in a respectful and dignified manner.''
Winston fell behind in disposing of the remains sometime in late 2000 because of financial and personal problems, including divorce, county Deputy District Attorney Mark Tranquilli said.
Instead of paying a subcontractor to cremate the remains, Winston pocketed the money, according to court documents.
In March 2004, the Pennsylvania Department of State suspended Winston's license for three years for working for an unlicensed funeral home and for not notifying the state about selling prearranged funeral plans.
"I think this guy was basically involved in a downward spiral. He had lost his license; he was involved in a divorce," Tranquilli said. "He has cooperated. I don't think this is a situation where he is trying to deny responsibility for what he did."
Winston is free on bond pending a Nov. 7 preliminary hearing.
