Mortuary worker stole from corpse mouths
Published: 2013 October 31 07:28:50 (4832 Views)
A former apprentice embalmer, Pete Lara was charged with stealing from bodies at Halley-Olsen-Murphy Funeral Home.
Cremationist Pete Lara was hit with two dozen charges alleging he swiped gold dental work from corpses at a California funeral home.
A California mortuary worker is accused of stealing gold dental crowns from many corpses under his care and then hawking the valuable caps for cash, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Peter Jacob Lara was an apprentice embalmer at Halley-Olsen-Murphy Funeral Home in Lancaster during the twisted theft spree that spanned more than a year, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office said.
He allegedly swiped around 125 gold crowns from strangers' dead bodies and sold them at pawn shops and gold exchanges for some $50 a pop, a law enforcement source told the Daily News.
Lara, 39, was due for arraignment Wednesday afternoon on more than two dozen charges including removal or possession of dental gold from human remains, grand theft by embezzlement and meth possession, prosecutors said.
In addition to the gold crowns, he allegedly took other items including personal mementos, a cremation urn box and medallions used to decorate urn boxes worth more than $1,000, authorities said.
The alleged crimes took place between June 25, 2012 and this month.
The District Attorney asked that his bail be set at $510,000.
If convicted as charged, Lara faces a maximum sentence of 19 years in state prison.
Lara's profile was scrubbed from the Halley-Olsen-Murphy Funeral Home website as of Wednesday, but a former version of the site included his photo and said he became a certified cremationist in 2006.
In 2009, Lara graduated from Mesa Community College with his associate's degree in mortuary science and was working toward becoming a licensed embalmer, the website said.
- NYDN
Cremationist Pete Lara was hit with two dozen charges alleging he swiped gold dental work from corpses at a California funeral home.
A California mortuary worker is accused of stealing gold dental crowns from many corpses under his care and then hawking the valuable caps for cash, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Peter Jacob Lara was an apprentice embalmer at Halley-Olsen-Murphy Funeral Home in Lancaster during the twisted theft spree that spanned more than a year, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office said.
He allegedly swiped around 125 gold crowns from strangers' dead bodies and sold them at pawn shops and gold exchanges for some $50 a pop, a law enforcement source told the Daily News.
Lara, 39, was due for arraignment Wednesday afternoon on more than two dozen charges including removal or possession of dental gold from human remains, grand theft by embezzlement and meth possession, prosecutors said.
In addition to the gold crowns, he allegedly took other items including personal mementos, a cremation urn box and medallions used to decorate urn boxes worth more than $1,000, authorities said.
The alleged crimes took place between June 25, 2012 and this month.
The District Attorney asked that his bail be set at $510,000.
If convicted as charged, Lara faces a maximum sentence of 19 years in state prison.
Lara's profile was scrubbed from the Halley-Olsen-Murphy Funeral Home website as of Wednesday, but a former version of the site included his photo and said he became a certified cremationist in 2006.
In 2009, Lara graduated from Mesa Community College with his associate's degree in mortuary science and was working toward becoming a licensed embalmer, the website said.
- NYDN
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