On the morning of June 20th, 2011, I received word from Rhode Island that my sister, Nancy James, had

passed away. I was told that she was being brought to Bell Funeral Home on Broad Street in Providence. When I got to work at my business, Family Auto Sales and Service, I called Bell Funeral Home. They told me Nancy was going to be cremated. My brothers and I asked them to do whatever necessary so that we could view our sister. I was informed that there was some sort of a problem with the insurance. I said to the secretary, Do what you need to, money is no object. She thanked me and said she would let the Funeral Director know of our conversation and the Funeral Director would call me back. After several calls to the funeral home to tell them we wanted to view our sister, the secretary kept telling me the Funeral Director was out picking up another client, or in another service. My brother called reiterating everything I had said. We were told we could view the body on Thursday at 3 pm. After the long ride to Rhode Island, we picked up our brother Donald at his home in Johnston. On the way, I and my brother discussed how this was going to be the last time we see our little sister, even though she is older than all of us. This woman was not only the family strong woman, but as I found out in the days that followed, she had helped hundreds and hundreds of people, sick, homeless and dying, no matter what their illness was. As the staff will be able to tell you, hundreds showed up for her memorial service, but only three of us, my brothers and myself know the absolute horror we had seen. When we got to the Funeral Home, we were ushered into a small office to sign some papers and to ask what we owed at this point. We were told we owed nothing but the $100 charge for the extremely short obituary that they wrote. The funeral home indicated that the state would be paying the $1200 for the cremation. They told us they had only received the insurance paperwork that morning. They had not believed her daughter or my brother s statement that Nancy had carried final burial insurance. To continue with what we saw, after what I thought was a very rude and pushy encounter with some people, we were ushered into a garage. We were told by the Funeral Director that we would see some decomposition and smell decomposition. I remember walking into the garage, where I guess they store their limousines, to a cardboard box that appeared to be some type of coffin, kind of disheveled and leaning heavily to one side. At that point, the woman said that there would be some bloating. I looked at my brothers and we all looked very CONFUSED, to say the least. Why is this woman here? In a garage? With a stench that was absolutely incredible. The female mortician went to the head of the box to try to open it, she couldn t. She asked me to lift the head of the box while she tried to lift open the foot of the box. What I was about to see would change my life and that of my brothers for the rest of our lives. I will look down upon those people who did this. What I am about to say is the lowest kind of low. Back to the horror. I grabbed the head end of the box and tried to lift it open, it was difficult for it to move. When I was lifting the box I heard a snapping and tearing noise. What I saw was a very big black mass where my sister s head was. I t looked like her face had swollen and then melted. I saw her eyes; they had swollen to the point of about the size of an orange each and black as coal. In the corner of her eyes, there appeared to be bugs. They moved. Her snow white hair was a black mass of what appeared

to be an ooze of blood and body fluids. This black was only evident above her breasts to her head. The body fluids in the box seemed to be only around her head area. The snapping and tearing I heard was from her hair being stuck to the sides and bottom of the box. You could see how somehow her head was flat up against the box as if someone had put her in the box and tipped the box on its head, no embalming as I had instructed them to do by telephone. It appeared that she had been thrown into the box; her right arm was tucked in behind her back. There was a mark on her chest where her hand had originally laid, because you could see the original mark, but as she bloated you could see that her left hand was moving as she decomposed forcing her hand into a straight up and down position, with fingers outstretched as if to be reaching and saying, Help me. Her skin was white from her breasts down through the rest of her body. Upon my brothers and I seeing this, my brother Donny physically passed out and Kenny cried out, Oh My God! and tended to my brother, Donny. The mortician had come over to the head of the box and placed the cover back down. I was backing out toward the door. Just as I got to the door, I spun around and left the funeral home with the Funeral Director hot on my heals. I stood in the parking lot and the mortician mentioned something about calling the crematorium immediately and she would be cremated that afternoon. The mortician knew, I m sure, from the look on my face and the tears rolling down my cheeks and the responses of my brothers when the exited as well. She knew, that we knew, that she had been stuck in that corner with nothing because Nancy had no real family in Rhode Island except her young adopted daughter to speak for her and the fact that she was going to be cremated because they did not believe that there was any money there, to just put her in a box, not thinking of her as a human who deserved dignity, an honorable business to help her through her last hours on earth and the family belief that funeral homes are a place where they respect your dead and afford them dignity. This was an absolute horror with no thought of my sister, Nancy James or the family because they thought they were dealing with a person of low income herself. I respectfully beg and I mean BEG anyone in the state of Rhode Island that is of a power to keep this from happening again to anyone else. I would gladly give everything I own to make sure this does not happen again. This was an absolute horror that cannot, must not be tolerated anywhere in any state. This is just the beginning as the family has decided, after speaking with other relatives in Maine that we want to get this horror into the public eye through the media. I respectfully wait for your response before any action is taken by the family, but rest assured, after speaking with a reporter from our local newspaper, that we believe this story is a great human interest horror story that will probably be seen and heard once this finally hits the You tube service, and it is bound to cause a huge outcry. The funeral home could not even afford her a piece of newspaper to cover her naked bloated stinky and rotting body. She was one of the finest women I have ever known.

Thank you for your time I hope this letters serves some sort of purpose, that it may somehow make the people of Rhode Island know of this horror. Thanks

Thomas R. Sparks Speaking for the family of Nancy James