LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — A former employee at McDermott’s Funeral Home has broken his silence about what he says were disturbing practices at the now-shuttered facility, including claims he was forced to switch a veteran’s ashes with those of an indigent person.
The worker left before the funeral home shut down and spoke exclusively to FOX5. He said he was threatened with termination if he refused to participate in what he knew were improper practices.
“Within the first three weeks of working there, I was told to switch up remains. I didn’t want to do it at the time frame, but I was unemployed for a long time,” the former employee said. “I was even threatened with being fired if I didn’t do it.”
Veteran’s ashes allegedly switched
The worker described an incident involving a veteran who had a funeral scheduled at the veteran’s cemetery at noon. He said his boss rushed the cremation process and ordered him to switch the remains.
“He gets in there at 10:30, tosses the body in the machine, and I’m telling myself there’s no way this is going to be ready in time,” the worker said. “He had me take the ashes for scatter, put them in a box for the guy that had to go to the veterans cemetery, and the scatter ashes got buried at the veteran cemetery.”
He said scatter ashes are ashes set aside without family to claim them. The worker said the veteran’s actual ashes ended up in the Mount Charleston area instead of the Boulder City cemetery.
“I knew it was morally wrong. I knew it and I still feel it to this day, knowing what I had to do to keep a job,” he said.
Bodies not treated with dignity
The former employee also alleged that bodies were not handled properly at the funeral home.
“Sometimes drops you on the floor, stuff like that, you name it, it’s happened. He doesn’t give a damn; you are dead, that’s the way he sees it. They’re not going to complain, file a grievance,” the worker said.
When asked if treating bodies with dignity was a priority, he said, “It did from time to time, but not always. It wasn’t an everyday thing for him to treat them with respect.”
State inspection reveals violations
State inspection reports revealed severe problems at McDermott’s. One body had been at the facility for 252 days.
Inspectors noted they found bodies with soiled sheets and bodily fluids smeared on walls. There was also a body in an open cremation box without a lid.
In a July 2024 inspection, the inspector noted blood and bodily fluids in three different coolers.
The violations were so severe that the state revoked McDermott’s license and shut down the funeral home summer of 2025.
Equipment failures and tracking problems
The worker said the coolers used to store bodies frequently broke down.
“Some of the parts for the cooler would take 2-3 weeks to come in,” he said. “There was one time there where it did break down, we were over capacity. All those bodies stayed in that cooler in that heat— in 115-degree heat.”
The worker said McDermott’s used a coin system to track bodies, attaching coins to ankles with zip ties throughout the cremation process. But the worker said mistakes happened repeatedly.
“I’ve seen remains get switched up so many times by just careless mistakes or just ignorance because they didn’t give a damn. Multiple urns set out at once, getting filled by multiple ashes, get sent to the wrong families,” he said.
Owner blamed county for delays
When the board asked owner Christopher Grant about the delays in cremation, he blamed Clark County cases that he said could take “weeks, months, or a year.”
But Clark County told FOX5 the delays were “a result of the action of McDermott” — not the county’s process. The Southern Nevada Health District said their office will sign off on a cremation permit within a day, not months as Grant claimed.
Grant had 50 to 100 bodies in his care, documents said.
Authorities removed 146 bodies from the funeral home and transferred them to Davis Funeral Homes.
The worker said he tried contacting the families of the two remains he was forced to switch, but they would not respond to him. The Nevada Funeral Board said they have no reason to believe remains were switched, but their inspection reports note there was one missing binder that had a log of cremations, poor handwritten notes with case numbers, and missing documents that should have been in files.
FOX5 has reached out to Grant numerous times for comment, however, he did not want to go on the record.
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