Saturday, 17 September 2011

A Strange Crime Or Respect?

Robert Young and Mark Rubinson, have been charged with 'identity theft, criminal impersonation and abuse of a corpse' by police in Denver Colorado for allegedly driving around the town visiting various of his favourite haunts with the body of a close friend after discovering him dead in his apartment.

Robert Young and Mark Rubinson

They bought drinks, took dinner and removed $400 (£253) from Jeffrey Jarrett's bank account to pay for all of this .... they even visited a strip club (Shotgun Willie's, in Glendale) before eventually reporting his death the following morning.

Now I realise that technically its a crime, but if it was my corpse I would not object to taking one last night out (although maybe the lapdance club was taking it too far ..... one stiff too many so to speak), before I was buried.

A 'Wake' can take many forms

Many years ago, in the early 1970's in South Manchester I attended a 'wake' at a house where the coffin was half opened and stood up in the corner of the next room, while we all had a drink with the embalmed deceased (who had a glass in his hand) .... it was only mildly odd, and while a deviation from the more traditional wake described on the link above, it was considered a decent way to send him off.

Now I don't know if it was legal (although I wasn't aware of any offence at the time), but it was still a fairly common practise to hold some variation of 'the wake' in the Irish community, especially amongst older Irish men who had no family having worked for decades on building sites and who were living in England when they died. I seem to recall that there was a priest drinking with us, so it wasn't socially unacceptable even if it was dying out so to speak.

So maybe that's why I don't really see this as a crime, but in fact a little bit of respect ..... in fact isn't this story rather like that 1989 'road movie' comedy Weekend at Bernie’s?

Weekend at Bernie’s

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