Man Arrested for Stealing His Dead Father’s Body in Attempt to Bring Him Back to Life

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AP / Ed White

Gethsemane Cemetery, Detroit

There can be no words to express the pain a son goes through when he loses his father. But after the death of Detroit man Clarence Bright, his son’s grief took him a little too far.

Detroit police say Bright’s son, Vincent, 48, was so aggrieved by the passing of his father that he took his father’s corpse from a mausoleum at Gethsemane Cemetery and brought it home, in hopes of resurrecting him through prayer, the Detroit News reported Friday. The body had been slated for burial on Saturday, but weather conditions caused a postponement until Monday. That gave the distraught Bright enough time to come up with an idea that might bring his father back from the hereafter.

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Officers later discovered a white van abandoned outside of a gas station containing the coffin Bright had been buried in, but when they looked inside, Bright wasn’t in it. Instead, his son had allegedly taken the body and stuffed it inside a freezer in the basement of his home on the city’s east side. Family members tipped police off on the location of the stolen cadaver.

Police spokesman Lt. Harold Rochon told the News that Bright, a religious man, felt that he would be able to bring his beloved father — who was 93 at the time of his death — back to life through a miraculous resurrection. Bright and another man were arrested and charged with disinterring a body.

Bright, who had one other felony charge in 1993, according to court records, was expected to be arraigned Friday. If convicted, he faces 10 years in jail. A local funeral home has taken possession of the body to give it a proper — and final — burial.