Welcome to the hundred-and-seventy-sixth edition of Morticians’ Monday Morning Mashup, 4M #176, 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!
Super brother
Even if you’re an Eagles fan (Roll Tide, Jalen Hurts!), you might have had to root for the Chiefs if you’d heard the story of Jeremy and Jawaan Taylor before the big game. It seems that Jawaan Taylor is not only an offensive tackle on the Kansas City team, but is also the benefactor who helped make his brother Jeremy’s childhood dream of owning a funeral home a reality. In 2024, Jawaan purchased land in Rockledge, Florida where Jeremy would build Taylor Funeral Home and Cremation — a beautiful business Jeremy manages and co-owns with Jawaan and the boys’ mother, Wendy. To date, the funeral home has served more than 60 families.
Doncic drama
Three dudes brought a coffin to American Airlines Center. They’re playing “See You Again.”
“Rest in peace to the Mavs.” pic.twitter.com/0Ndv26vGyb
— Shawn McFarland (@McFarland_Shawn) February 2, 2025
Don’t worry. Even though these Dallas Mavericks fans in this X post are legitimately mourning in dramatic fashion, NBA phenom Luka Doncic isn’t actually in that coffin. But he may very well be dead to them, considering that last week fans were caught off guard by his sudden trade to the Lakers. After capturing this video of the “Mavs funeral” and posting it to X, Shawn McFarland retweeted it, adding, “One of the pallbearers told me that he spent $3,000 to have this casket express shipped overnight. It sounds crazy but also ‘casually owning a blue casket’ also sounds crazy.”
Maybe “curious” isn’t the right word
Who doesn’t love a good ID channel mystery show? People in deathcare, that’s who, when the show highlights the horrific actions of a few bad actors within the otherwise well-respected community. Last week the Investigation Discovery network aired a new installment of its show “The Curious Case of …” with the title “The Funeral Home of Horrors.” The episode related the story of Jon and Carie Hallford of Return to Nature funeral home in Penrose, Colorado — a tragedy that was discovered in October 2023 and landed the Hallfords in prison. The show humanized the victims through interviews with family members, and highlighted the inhumanity of the Hallfords through their own social media posts and videos that prove they are much worse than we could have imagined.
Going once, going twice …
Yes, you, too, could own your very own cemetery. Sadly, the cemetery portion of the Hendersonville, North Carolina funeral business formerly owned by the Shepherd family will be sold at auction on March 5. The Shepherds opened the cemetery in the 1950s, but their deathcare legacy began in 1903 as coffin makers; they later became funeral home owners. In 2021, the funeral home was shut down by the state funeral board and was later sold by court order; the cemetery has been in receivership since April 2022. According to this local outlet, the receiver has taken great care of the property, and has worked hard to place and/or inscribe nearly $71,000 of gravestone orders the owner had not completed.
Unprecedented, but not uncalled for
A Tennessee jury deliberated for only 30 minutes before finding the defendant in an “unprecedented” case not guilty of grave desecration after he removed coins placed on the headstones of veterans. Although the closest precedent to this case was one involving desecration of a flag in Wisconsin, the jury evaluating Philip Wright’s actions decided that his 2023 removal of an unknown number of coins from “multiple” headstones did not meet the legal requirements of a felony desecration charge. Still, the judge wrote that this was “physical mistreatment that does not comply with common notions of decency and respect and would outrage the sensibilities of someone likely to observe or discover the person’s action.”
