Dorchester funeral director gets 3-to-5 for dumping bodies in a storage locker, defrauding families

Joseph O'Donnnell, who kept doing funerals after losing his license, pleaded guilty today to 79 counts of being a horrible person.

In exchange for pleading guilty to charges that include stealing more than $150,000 in prepaid-funeral money, forgery and improper disposal of a body, O'Donnell received a sentence of 3 to 5 years in prison, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

Had the case proceeded to trial, [Assistant DA Greer] Spatz would have presented evidence and testimony to prove that O'Donnell bilked clients out of thousands of dollars while operating the Neponset Avenue funeral home founded by his grandfather. O’Donnell was first licensed as a funeral director in 1980 but in 2008 failed to renew his license as required by law. Between February of 2009 and November 2011, he oversaw the funeral, burial, or cremation of at least 201 individuals.

During that time he also entered into pre-need contracts with clients - many of whom were elderly and disabled – who planned and provided payment for their final expenses. Rather than placing those prepayments into a trust to be used upon the individual’s death, O’Donnell deposited the funds into his funeral home’s general account. When the funeral home was foreclosed on in 2013, O’Donnell had 31 pre-need contracts with clients who were still living but whose funds – totaling nearly $150,000 – were gone, prosecutors said.

O'Donnell also forged medical-examiner signatures on various documents, including death certificates, the DA's office says, adding:

During the course of their investigation into O’Donnell’s illegal practices, investigators obtained a warrant to search a Weymouth storage unit, where they discovered the decomposing remains of 12 people that had been transported to the facility from the Dorchester funeral home. Through the course of an exhaustive investigation, Suffolk prosecutors and Boston Police were able to identify all 12 individuals and locate family for 11 of them. Of those 11 families, eight had received cremated remains that O’Donnell represented were those of their loved ones, but which investigators determined were someone else’s.