Fun with Fingerprints & 11 Costco Deals | 4M #194

Welcome to the hundred-and-ninety-fourth edition of Morticians’ Monday Morning Mashup, 4M #194, where we’ll serve up bite-sized, easily-digestible nuggets of the deathcare news you need to crush conversations in the week ahead. Bon appetit!

This week’s dumb criminal

Remember a few months ago when the 4M mentioned that thieves had resorted to stealing $30,000 doors off of cemetery mausoleums. Our take was that bronze markers and vases were just small change in the illegal metals market, so why not go big? Well, now at least one of the criminals responsible for heists in several Pennsylvania cemeteries is going to the big house, because he made one very dumb mistake. He left his discarded saw blade at the scene — covered in his fingerprints. Gotcha!

We’re not claiming him

It seems that the man accused of assassinating Minnesota Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark and shooting Minnesota state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, has a background in deathcare (we’re not going to call him a deathcare professional). Separate stories have identified the alleged shooter, Vance Boelter, as a former student at Des Moines Area Community College in Iowa as well as a former funeral home worker at Metro First Call, a funeral home based in Savage, Minnesota. The owner of Metro First Call shared that Boelter was employed from August 28, 2023 until he “voluntarily left” on February 20, 2025.

On a much lighter note (maybe?)

Hilaria Baldwin, wife of actor Alec Baldwin and mother of seven of his children, recently shared during a podcast that she regularly takes her kids to cemeteries to ensure that they “don’t develop a fear of dying.” She explained, “Once you become a parent, I think that how fragile life can be, it comes into my fears all the time. But I really feel like, we spend time in cemeteries and everything from the history of it and just also acknowledging, this is part of life.”

Watch out for number 10

Last week a blog shared a list of the “11 Best Costco Deals Most Members Don’t Even Know Exist.” Sliding in at number 10 was the “luxurious and sleek Titan Orion Series steel casket,” which Costco members can purchase for $1,299.99 (it’s $1,499 for the non-members). Other items on the list include Yo Mama’s Vodka Tomato Sauce (number 1),  Dearfoams flip-flops (number 7), and the ZLINE Autograph Edition 24 in. Touchstone 151 Can Beverage Fridge (last but not least at number 11).