“It sounds like something out of a nightmare.”
That is how Noelle Friel, a reporter for WDIV-TV in Detroit, describes a mysterious body swap as a local funeral home accidentally cremated a woman’s body and then presented her family with the body of a different woman for an open-casket viewing.
Kimberlly Moore was a mother to five children and grandmother to 28 grandchildren who died on Sept. 3 after a battle with endometrial cancer.
Her daughter, Bianca Robinson, went to the Hutchison Funeral Home before Friday evening’s viewing to apply her mother’s makeup.
When she asked to see the body, she was stunned to notice a mark missing from her toe.
“When he unzipped the bag, I looked at the toe, and I was like, it’s not a mole on her toe, and I turned around, and I looked at him. I said this is not my mama, sir. He said I’m so sorry,” Robinson said.
That’s when she was told her mom had been accidentally cremated.
“He said your mom must’ve been cremated when she first got here. Because it was two ladies that came here when your mom came in, and we must’ve cremated her. I said, ‘How do you make a mistake like that?” Robinson said.
Byron Moore, the son of Kimberlly Moore, was incredulous, saying: “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.”
“We’re trying to understand how could you be so careless to do such a horrible thing?”
The family of a woman who died after a battle with endometrial cancer says her body was mistakenly cremated before her scheduled viewing, leaving them demanding answers from Hutchison Funeral Home.
A public relations spokesperson for the funeral home couldn’t answer specific… pic.twitter.com/Fk3mmmMabO
— Local 4 WDIV Detroit (@Local4News) September 19, 2026
Mario Morrow, a spokesman for the funeral home, did not answer specifics about the case, but indicated an internal investigation would be take place.
“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.
Robinson is demanding answers, as the identity of the other woman in her mom’s attire is still a mystery.
Funeral home says they are “sorry” for accidentally cremating a woman and presenting someone else with her wig on at an open-casket viewing.
A Detroit family says they showed up at the funeral home only to find someone else in the casket wearing their mother’s clothes.
Yikes. pic.twitter.com/5o2bSe1hnW
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 19, 2026
“We don’t have answers. We don’t have a viewing. What do we have? We don’t even have her ashes? Somebody please tell us something. We need some help. This is crazy,” she said.
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