AL AL - Ensley, Mummified couple in burnt, abandoned funeral home, Pap & Molly from 1930s, 2004

[tifflee]

I came across this AL.com article titled "7 strange Jane and John Doe cases in Alabama: Can you help solve them?" published May 10, 2016. This post summarizes the third profiled case.

Shortridge Funeral Home in Ensley, Alabama caught fire in 2004. By then, it had been closed for a year. Two bodies were found in the ashes and it turned out they were the unclaimed, mummified remains of an unidentified couple that the funeral home stored for decades in case they were ever claimed.

The Birmingham News is quoted as reporting that residents thought the couple were Pap and Molly who supposedly stabbed each other to death in the 1930s during a drunken fight. One resident described "the male mummy had a mustache and a cloth around his hips and a little bit of hair. Norman said she also heard the couple's names were Richard Cloud and Molly Fleming but this has never been proven."

The unidentified couple are buried in Lakeview Cemetery in Edgewater, AL. The article says: "The Jefferson County Coroner's office retained some genetic samples for possible identification in the future. Contact the Coroner's Office with information by calling 205-930-3603."

 

[Tssiemer]

Soooo.... bodies are just hanging out in funeral homes waiting to be claimed????

 

[meanmaryjean]

That's not weird, strange or scary at all. Nope, not at all.

 

[carbuff]

Soooo.... bodies are just hanging out in funeral homes waiting to be claimed????

The short answer is yes.

Also in medical examiner's offices and sometimes medical storage.

When I was in high school, the rumor was that one of the town's doctors, who was the father of one of my classmates, had a body in the basement. My classmate said it wasn't true, it was only a skeleton...

 

[Hazelnutty]

Creepy!

 

[Bit of hope]

This is an interesting story. I think it's only respectful they kept the remains in case anybody would claim them. (positively thinking) And off course "the money thing" was involved. Is there anything like a state burial/cremation in the USA? I think so.... So why did they wait? And if the had possible names....what were the results on investigating this? No useful information. This couple died in the 30's and found in 2004 after a fire.....I think they hesitated (and kept them) because there were possible matches, but they couldn't get things right?

 

[Bit of hope]

Is there a race, age or whatever known?

 

[Bit of hope]

Nothing to be found about the two. Must have been a life in misery.

The Great Depression hit Birmingham harder than any other city, and hit Ensley harder than the rest of Birmingham. John Beecher wrote a poem entitled "Ensley, Alabama, 1932"

I post the poem here in memory of "Mollie and Pap", who will probably never be identified.

The mills are down.
The hundred stacks
are shorn of their drifting fume.
The idle tracks
rust . . .
Smeared red with the dust
of millions of tons of smelted ore
the furnaces loom--
towering, desolate tubes--
smokeless and stark in the sun . . .
Powerhouse cubes
turbines hummed in,
platesteel mains the airblast thrummed in
are quiet, and the sudden roar
of blown-off steam . . .
At night
the needle gleam
where the ladle poured at the pig machine,
the deep smoulder of an iron run
and the spreading light
of molten slag over the sleeping town
are seen
no more
now mills and men are down.

 

[tifflee]

I'm also surprised they were found so long after instead of being cremated and buried. Given the era they passed away in, I would have thought it'd be an unmarked grave or a simple "unknown" marker. In a way, the owner of the funeral home made it so that there is a chance they could be identified someday, perhaps through genealogical DNA testing.

In the meantime, I think this would be an interesting project for a hobbyist interested in genealogy. The names themselves could have several variations given they are from a child's recollection - like Richard McCloud, Molly Flemming, Margaret/Mary Fleming since Molly can sometimes be a nickname for those names, etc. Or, they could be red herrings.

I did a quick search and didn't see this couple listed in NamUs or DoeNetwork, but I was searching by Ensley, AL. Since the coroner's office retained genetic samples, maybe one of these days the samples will make their way to getting tested and this couple entered into NamUs.

 

[Confusion]

Maybe Richard Cloud was also called Pap, and Molly Fleming was called Molly, then both possibilities could be right. MOO

 

[carbuff]

Found a small article from when the bodies were interred.

Mummies found in mortuary laid to rest

Records show that a Richard Cloud died in Jefferson County in 1926.

Although there were several Mary Flemings living here around that time, there is no record of a Molly Fleming, the News reported.

 

[madamx]

This is such an odd case. Where did they live? And who found them? They must of had family? So odd and the funeral home just had them and then left them when they closed?

 

[Sue Doe Nimm]

So odd and the funeral home just had them and then left them when they closed?

It truly is an odd case. I had to smile a little at them being buried in the same coffin. The story said that they got so mad at each other that they killed one another, and now they’re stuck in a box together for eternity.