It has been one month since three bodies disappeared from a funeral home in Kuruman, located in the Northern Cape.
The police are offering a reward of R100,000 for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the theft and the recovery of the remains.
According to law enforcement officials investigating Kimberley, the three missing bodies—two adult males and one female infant—were taken from the funeral home in Kuruman on March 17, 2025, around 1:30 AM.
Reward Offered by Police
On Friday, Colonel Cherelle Ehlers announced that detectives from the Provincial Serious and Violent Crimes Unit are actively pursuing this case.
“All tips will be treated confidentially and can be reported to Lieutenant Colonel Doggy Magugu at 082 469 0578, the SAPS Crime Stop number 08600 10111, or through the MySAPS App,” stated Ehlers.
In December 2024, a family in Wattville, east of Johannesburg, faced a similar tragedy when they were unable to bury their deceased mother. They discovered that a well-known funeral home had inadvertently cremated her just days before the scheduled funeral.
When the family arrived at the funeral home to retrieve the body, they were informed that she had been cremated by mistake.
Admission of Error by Funeral Home
The funeral home has acknowledged the mistake and has offered compensation to the family.
Isaac Mamotsau, the executive head of the funeral home, extended his apologies to the family.
Mamotsau explained that an internal investigation revealed the cause of the error. He indicated that the identification tags used for the deceased were confused by the morticians.
“Our investigations uncovered a significant mistake, an error. We apologise for what transpired. When we took the bodies from the cold storage for preparation, the tags on the bodies were inadvertently removed.
“The bodies were prepared while the tags remained in the cold storage. When we returned the bodies to the cold storage, the tags became mixed up. The tag intended for one body that was to be cremated was incorrectly placed on a body that was not meant for cremation.”
