Suit alleges wrongdoing at pet cemetery

Instead, their ashes sat in a filing cabinet for years, unbeknown to their next of kin.

The revelation is one of dozens of allegations of fraud and misconduct in a 36-page lawsuit filed by the cemetery's current owner, Portico LLM Enterprises, against its former owner, Darla Norrish.

The lawsuit claims Norrish continued to bury human cremains for nearly a decade after the Arizona Department of Real Estate issued a cease-and-desist order. Portico also says Norrish sold but did not provide headstones, broke into cemetery offices to delete Portico's files, failed to collect sales taxes from customers and concealed the cease-and-desist order when she entered into a partnership with Portico in 2007.

Norrish declined repeated requests for comment.

Filed May 15 in Pima County Superior Court, Portico's lawsuit seeks unspecified damages, for Norrish to relinquish all claims to the property and seeks protection from complaints that stem from the years Norrish ran the business. Norrish is attempting to regain the cemetery.

Tucson attorney Gregory E. Good, who represents Portico, said Norrish and her lawyers missed a Monday deadline to confirm or refute the allegations, but Good has agreed to give them until the end of the month to respond.

Good said he's alerted the state attorney general to the offenses listed in the lawsuit.

Mary Utley, spokeswoman for the Arizona Department of Real Estate, which oversees cemeteries, confirmed that the attorney general was investigating.

"The reason there was a cease-and-desist was (Norrish) only had a license to run a pet cemetery and accept pet remains," Utley said. "That's why the cease-and-desist was issued way back in 1999."

She declined further comment.

Norrish bought the 4-acre cemetery at 5720 E. Glenn St. from Debra Hill in July 1997.

Hill said Norrish had an agreement to pay her monthly to settle an undisclosed purchase price but stopped making payments shortly after she took over.

"She never paid me the full amount that was due on our arrangement," Hill said Tuesday. She is not seeking legal remedies.

The cemetery had financial difficulties in the past few years, but Portico, led by Slivy Edmonds Cotton and Patricia Taylor, entered into a partnership with Norrish and gave her a bridge loan to keep the business running. When Norrish defaulted on the loan, Portico foreclosed on the cemetery and took over ownership in May 2008. Another case

This is the second instance of mishandled remains in which Edmonds Cotton has been associated. Last week, word broke that employees at Chicago-area Burr Oak Cemetery had dug up corpses to resell plots.

Burr Oak is owned by Perpetua, a company Edmonds Cotton used to run. Her picture is still on the wall at Burr Oak and documents filed with the Arizona Corporation Commission say she's still a director, but Edmonds Cotton said she was fired from the company more than five years ago and owns less than 5 percent of company stock.

Although not responsible for the cremains in the filing cabinet at the Pet Cemetery of Tucson, Edmonds Cotton and Taylor weren't quick to notify authorities of the discovery and never called police about the matter.

"Once we took over, we started searching for different files and different items," Edmonds Cotton said. "We ultimately opened a filing cabinet only to see these things that we didn't know what they were and subsequently realized they were human cremains."

Edmonds Cotton and Taylor then discovered the existence of the cease-and-desist order and said it took months to verify they were human remains, as well as to identify the proper channel to take care of the ashes and notify the next of kin.

They confirmed the identities of cremated ashes in late 2008, but say they were advised by their lawyer at the time to face other priorities first. They hired a new lawyer, Good, a few months ago, and he advised them to give Norrish the chance to contact the next of kin. Portico and Good recently sent Norrish a letter informing her of her obligations to take care of the ashes, Edmonds Cotton said.

She added that if Norrish refuses to do so, she and Taylor will seek out the families. The ashes are no longer in the filing cabinet and instead locked up in a "secure location," Taylor said.

She said Portico has had other issues to deal with to clean up the mess they say Norrish left behind. The company has spent $5,000 to fix the crematorium and has bought 20 headstones and porcelain photographs — some as expensive as $650 — which were ordered from Norrish but not delivered.

Taylor said Norrish has made agreements with countless people who have already paid to be buried in the cemetery but will not be allowed. Edmonds Cotton said Portico will not allow human ashes at the cemetery and suspects the ashes of people interred at the cemetery after 1999 may have to be removed to comply with the cease-and-desist order.

"Unfortunately, this is where we are at right now," Taylor said. "We just want to get this whole thing behind us and focus on building this place to what we envisioned."