TRIGGER WARNING: This post contains information about stillbirth and infant loss, which may be triggering to some.
I can’t wrap my head around even the thought of losing my son. Losing a child of any age is heartbreaking, but there is a very specific type of harrowing grief mothers of stillborn babies experience. Many take whatever solace they can, and one very popular way is to have a proper funeral for the little lost soul.
Jasmine Beverley held a funeral service for a little boy she prematurely delivered named Sunny Beverley-Conlin in the city of Hull in England in June 2022. Now, the BBC has reported that police claim the body of her little one was discovered at Legacy Independent Funeral Directors funeral home, which has since closed, in a statement issued via Facebook.
The discovery was brought to light during the ongoing trials of funeral director Robert Bush, who recently pleaded guilty and not guilty to several charges against him regarding an investigation launched in 2024 over concerns about how he was handling deceased individuals. He pleaded guilty to 35 counts of fraud by false representation, which included giving Beverly the wrong ashes.
“I am trying to forgive him,” Beverley told the BBC, “but I am finding it hard, there must be some reason why he did this.”
Following what she described as a “beautiful” ceremony, she was handed an urn of the ashes that she discovered in March 2024 belonged to someone else. She and husband Ben Conlin returned them to police. The mom further claimed she polished the urn daily and said, “whoever was in there, was loved like they were my own baby.”
Bush admitted to doing the same thing to three other women mourning their own unborn children and pleaded guilty to one count of “fraud by false representation in relation to either families provided with ashes of their loved ones, with ashes identified as their loved one later found at the premise, or families not receiving any ashes at all between August 2017 and March 2024,” and four counts of “fraud by false representation in relation to ashes provided to families following loss in pregnancy, with one of the unborn being recovered from the premises,” People reported.
Of the 35 bodies and ashes of at least 163 people that were recovered at the funeral home during the invesitgation, Beverly’s son was the only stillborn baby found on the premises.
People reported that the family has since held a second funeral for their little boy, who was laid to rest next to his great-grandparents.
