Parents criticize state absolution of funeral home that stuffed Valdosta teen’s body with newspapers

An attorney for the parents of a Valdosta teenager found dead inside a rolled up gym mat last January said state regulators missed the point when they concluded the funeral home that handled Kendrick Johnson’s body broke no laws when workers stuffed it with newspapers.

“It’s not that his organs were replaced with paper,” Johnson family co-counsel Chevene King told reporters Monday. “It’s that his organs were missing.”

Kenneth and Jacquelyn Johnson, who were in Atlanta on Monday to commemorate the life of Martin Luther King Jr., filed a complaint with the Georgia Board of Funeral Service last year after Kendrick’s body was exhumed for a second autopsy. It was then they discovered that some of their son’s internal organs were gone, with newspapers in their place.

The Johnsons alleged Harrington Funeral Home mishandled the body, accusing the mortuary of helping obscure the teen’s cause of death. The family doesn’t accept the official finding that Kendrick died accidentally, saying they believe he was murdered.

In a letter sent to the Johnsons last week, the Georgia Board of Funeral Service, a division of the secretary of state’s office, said the funeral home was guilty only of violating industry practice by using newspaper.

What happened to those internal organs remains a mystery. The GBI has said it returned them to the body following its autopsy, but the funeral home claimed the organs were missing when it received the body.

“The organs were possible evidence of what happened to Kendrick,” King said Monday. The family has asked Gov. Nathan Deal to order an inquest of the coroner’s findings, but a spokesman for the governor said last month they are awaiting the completion of a federal probe into the case before making any such requests.