RI Woman Finds Wrong Body in Her Mother's Casket

By ERIKA NIEDOWSKI Associated Press 


A family grieving over the loss of their matriarch was dealt an unthinkable blow when opening the casket just before the funeral revealed the wrong body.

Lisa Kondvar, of Warwick, Rhode Island, was horrified when she opened Margaret Pokka’s casket and found the body of another dead woman last month. She is still looking for her mother’s remains.

Ms Porkka, 82, passed away during a family vacation to St. Maarten. Another woman passed away around the same time, officials believe the two bodies were accidentally switched before being sent home.

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Vanished: The body of Margaret Porkka, 82, disappeared after she passed away during a family vacation to St Maarten over the Thanksgiving holiday

‘I looked up and I was like, 'Good God, are you kidding me?' I was stunned,’ said Ms Kondvar.

'We were devastated because we thought it was going to be mom and then it wasn't,' sister Joanne Chaney told WLEX.

She went to the funeral director’s office hoping for answers, but was directed to the funeral home in St. Maarten.

That funeral home had already proved problematic, Ms Kondvar told the Providence Journal. It had refused to send the body back to the U.S. until the family wired $7,000.

Ms Kondvar told the paper that her sister had also removed all her mother’s jewelry before the body was given to the funeral home.

The body in the casket had a red pouch with a necklace in it.

‘We didn’t know what to think when we opened this red satchel and there was this beautiful necklace with the letter “E” in script form,’ she recalled.

Also in the pouch was a ring and a hospital bracelet for angina, a heart condition.

Mortified: Daughter Lisa Kondvar made the grim discovery during her mother's wake

A mistake: Ms Porkka's body is thought to have been mistakenly swapped with that of a Canadian woman who died on the island within hours of her death

‘My mother’s name is Margaret and she didn’t have angina,’ Ms Kondvar continued.

Some digging revealed a Canadian woman died within a few hours of Mr Porkka, and that her body had been cremated in Ottawa.

The family has hired a private detective, is working with State Department officials and is trying to hire an international attorney, added Ms Kondvar.

The family agonizingly proceeded with the funeral before turning the body over to the Bergen County medical examiner’s office.

Her 82-year-old father Peter isn’t taking his wife’s going missing well.

‘He's very angry and very bitter,’ said Ms Kondvar.

If the family is able to locate the ashes and somehow prove they are Ms Porkka’s, they want the ashes.

Having the ashes will at least provide some level of closure after not ever being told what Ms Porkka’s cause of death was and having her death certificate list her as a man.

Ms Porkka is survived by her husband of over 60 years and six children.