LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — McDermott’s Funeral and Cremation Services is now closed after officials removed several bodies.
According to the Nevada Funeral & Cemetery Services Board, the permit was revoked because of cremations not done in a timely manner
“They were coming in and out for two days,” said Michael Trotta, owner of Vinyldude.com.
Trotta’s business is next door to the funeral home, and he was present to not only see authorities going in and out, but also smell all of it.
“For the last 3-5 months it’s been smelling really bad in here,” Trotta said.
Trotta told FOX5 the smell was the worse in his workshop in the back of his store.
He described how there was just a piece of wood, that was a barrier from his shop to the funeral home.
“None of my customers or friends knew what that smell was,” Trotta said.
A lengthy report from the board said in a inspection from February 2024, there were eight bodies that were at the funeral home for an “extended time.”
During another inspection that summer, they also noted several bodies still were not cremated.
The report said one body was there 252 days after the person died, another example a body of a baby that was there for 54 days.
Inspectors also noted several bodies stacked on shelves with soiled sheets, with some bodily fluids smeared on the walls.
There was also a body in a cremation box open, without a lid, according to the inspection report.
On Thursday, FOX5 went back to the funeral home to get answers from the owner, who is named Christopher Grant in the reports.
FOX5 had asked him why it took so long for the bodies to get cremated, and asked him to explain how a body could be in the funeral home’s possession for more than 200 days.
He did not answer.
FOX5 asked him again for his side of the story, but tells us “I did that before it all got twisted.”
Grant then shut the garage door of the crematorium on us.
However, in a written response to the funeral board, Grant had said “some of the bodies were Clark County Cases that could take weeks, months, or a year.”
He also noted at the time of the inspections there were 50-100 bodies in their care.
Meanwhile, his neighbor Trotta told FOX5 it seemed as though the crematorium rarely seemed to be working.
“Maybe once every week maybe he did it at night, it wasn’t that often it wasn’t something he did daily obviously,” Trotta said.
FOX5 has reached out to the Nevada Funeral Board to find out exactly how many bodies were taken away and where they were transported to.
We are still waiting to hear back.
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