In the mortuary

Funeral director cut off sex offender’s penis

The director of a funeral home in Texas filed charges against the employee.(Bild: sudok1 - stock.adobe.com)

An employee of a funeral home in Texas has to stand trial for abusing a corpse. Amber Laudermilk was actually supposed to embalm Charles Rodriguez for his funeral. Until she learned that the deceased had been a convicted rapist.

Laudermilk then allegedly cut off the 58-year-old's genitals in the presence of a shocked colleague and stuffed them in his mouth.

Act was preceded by phone call from daughter
According to the indictment filed by the Harris County District Attorney's Office, Janice West, the director of Memorial Mortuary & Crematory, filed charges against her employee: "She, Laudermilk, testified that she spoke to Rodriguez's daughter on the phone after he was admitted. She told her who to send the ashes to and also that her father was a convicted sex offender."

"You didn't see anything"
 After the conversation, Laudermilk is said to have gone to the mortuary, where crematorium director Brandi Moralis was preparing the body for cremation. She later testified in an affidavit that Laudermilk had grabbed a scalpel: "She then stabbed the deceased twice in the genital area and cut off his penis. She then put it in the corpse's mouth. She said to me: 'You didn't see anything'."

Shortly afterwards, West came into the room. She later testified that Laudermilk had quickly pulled a cloth over the dead man's shame and covered his mouth with her hand: "When I asked Amber what was going on, she just said that 'something was going on' with Rodriguez." Whereupon she saw the severed limb in the dead man's mouth.

Laudermilk was arrested but released on $5,000 bail until the trial began. The judge ordered that the 34-year-old's license be suspended until the verdict and that the defendant stay away from funeral homes.