DETROIT, MI — The five children of Kimberlly Kaye Moore, 61, arrived at Hutchinson Funeral Home on East 7 Mile Road on Friday, Sept. 19, expecting to view their mother’s body one last time before her Saturday funeral, only to find a stranger lying in the casket dressed in their mother’s clothing and wig.
Detroit police are now investigating the incident, which the Moore family says involved the accidental cremation of their mother and the placement of an unidentified woman’s body — prepared with Moore’s dress, wig, and makeup — at what was meant to be her final viewing. Hutchinson Funeral Home has acknowledged that something went wrong, apologized to the family, and launched an internal review. The funeral home has not publicly confirmed that Moore was cremated. That account comes from what family members say staff told them at the scene. The mix-up has left Moore’s children without a viewing, without a burial service, and, as of the most recent reports, without their mother’s ashes.
Moore, a mother of five and grandmother of 28, died Sept. 3 after a battle with endometrial cancer. Her family had made careful arrangements: she would be viewed and have a funeral service on Saturday before being cremated, so that relatives could see her one final time. On Friday afternoon, before the evening viewing, Moore’s daughter Bianca Robinson went to the funeral home to apply her mother’s nails and lashes. A mortuary worker at Hutchinson met Robinson and, according to Robinson, asked her whether the body in front of them was her mother — a question she said the staff should have been able to answer on their own. “And I’m looking like, ‘you should know,'” Robinson recalled. The worker unzipped a body bag. Robinson looked down at the woman’s foot, searching for a distinctive mole her mother had on her toe. The mole was not there. Robinson turned to face the mortuary worker and said, “This is not my momma, sir.” The worker, she said, replied: “I’m so sorry.”
What followed was a chaotic sequence of conflicting explanations that Robinson and other relatives said compounded their grief. When the family demanded to know where Moore’s body was, staff initially told one relative that Moore was upstairs, then told another that the funeral home did not have her at all. Eventually, according to Robinson, an employee provided a more direct answer. “He said, ‘Your mom must have been cremated when she first got here because it was two ladies that was here that came in when your mom came,'” Robinson said, recounting the conversation. “‘We must’ve cremated her.'” Robinson said she immediately asked the worker: “How do you make a mistake like that?” Relative Christopher Moore said funeral home staff pointed to a specific procedural failure as the likely cause. Staff told him, he said, that they believed a toe tag — the identification label attached to a body — had gotten wet and fallen off, causing Moore’s remains to be confused with another woman’s. The two women were reportedly brought to the funeral home around the same time.
The body that had been prepared for the Moore family’s viewing had been fully dressed and made up. Family members said the unidentified woman in the casket was wearing Moore’s dress, Moore’s wig, and makeup applied as if for Moore’s service. “It’s a lady in there with our mother’s dress on and her hair on and her makeup on, everything, and it’s not our mother,” Moore’s son Byron Moore told 7 News Detroit. Another family member described the scene: “This woman got on my momma’s dress, wig, everything. They put the body up, so we came earlier. They tried to show us another lady. They opened the casket. It’s not her.” The unidentified woman in the casket has not been publicly named. The Moore family said they were trying to locate her relatives, who may not yet know how their own loved one was handled. It remains unclear what arrangements that second family may have already received or been told.
As more relatives arrived at Hutchinson Funeral Home on Friday, tensions escalated outside and inside the building. Detroit police responded to the scene to keep the peace. The funeral home locked its doors. Family members gathered on the sidewalk and protested, accusing staff of attempting to cover up the mistake by presenting the unidentified woman as Moore. Joseph Hutchison Jr., the funeral home’s vice president of operations, declined to answer specific questions from 7 News Detroit and referred reporters to a public relations spokesman. After initially declining to comment at all, the funeral home retained a public relations firm and issued a written statement. “We are heartbroken and deeply sorry for what Ms. Moore’s family has experienced,” the statement read. “We are aware of the family’s concerns and we will continue to communicate with them honestly and respectfully.” The statement added that the funeral home had “launched our own internal review to determine exactly what happened and we will deal with it accordingly,” and asked the public to respect the family’s privacy while the review continues.
Funeral home spokesman Mario Morrow spoke to reporters separately and said the business is committed to accountability. “We’re going to get to the bottom of it, and if the funeral home is found at fault, we’re going to make the family whole. It’s just a bad situation,” Morrow said. He acknowledged the fundamental problem without confirming specific details of what happened to Moore’s remains. “We know that there was an issue. We know there’s a problem, and we want to make it whole,” Morrow said. “We want to make the family feel comfortable with their loved one and make sure that we have some conclusion to this.” Detroit police confirmed they are investigating the incident but have not announced charges or identified any individuals as suspects. The funeral home’s internal review is running parallel to the police investigation. No regulatory action by Michigan state licensing authorities has been publicly announced as of the most recent reporting.
For Robinson and her siblings, the losses have stacked on top of one another. They lost their mother to cancer on Sept. 3. They lost the viewing they had planned. And as of the time of the most recent reports, they had not received Moore’s ashes, leaving them with no remains and no completed service. “We don’t have a viewing. What do we have? We don’t even have her ashes!” Robinson said. “Somebody please tell us something. We need some help. This is crazy.” The Moore children said they were still deciding how to move forward with a service for their mother. The family also said they were working to identify and contact the relatives of the woman whose body was prepared in Moore’s place, recognizing that a second family may be caught up in the same mix-up without knowing it. That second family’s circumstances — what they were told, what remains they may have received — have not been publicly confirmed.
As of the most recent reporting, Detroit police are actively investigating the incident and Hutchinson Funeral Home’s internal review is ongoing. The funeral home has said it will share more information when it can. Moore’s family is awaiting answers on what happened to her remains and is still working to arrange a proper farewell for a woman who was a mother to five and a grandmother to 28.
