Lost in the Mail: Hundreds of cremains sit undelivered in USPS facility

(InvestigateTV) — On paper, Amy Medrue was Sarah Jelinek’s stepmom, but their bond transcended formal titles.

“She was always an amazing rock, she was always my mom,” Jelinek said. “She meant everything to me.”

The two had even moved in together at Jelinek’s Spokane, Washington home. That’s what made Medrue’s death from COPD in November 2021 so difficult.

“It was really hard. It’s been really hard,” Jelinek said. “It’s like, I lost my mom. I lost my best friend.”

The month after Medrue’s passing, Jelinek sent a portion of her ashes through the U.S. Postal Service to be turned into a rock – a symbol of what she had meant to Jelinek her whole life.

But Medrue’s cremated remains – known as cremains – never made it to their destination.

“It’s not, you know, like a lost Christmas letter to Santa. You know? This is my mom who already felt kind of disappointed with the way things turned out,” Jelinek said more than two years later. “It’s time to get her back. Get her home.”

Medrue’s cremains are among hundreds lost in the mail in recent years, leaving families furious with the government agency they trusted to handle their loved one’s remains.

Audit finds USPS ‘not always in compliance’ with procedures

Halfway across the country, Mikayla Eckler found herself in the same boat after her grandmother, Charlotte Dillon, died unexpectedly during a visit to Oklahoma.

Dillon’s family had her cremated, but Eckler said USPS never shipped her remains back home to South Carolina.

“The fact that the level of how much they don’t care, it’s just gut-wrenching,” Eckler said. “They do not care.”

The Postal Service is the only carrier allowed to ship remains in the U.S. – something neither Jelinek nor Eckler questioned.

But that confidence was shaken after InvestigateTV+ showed them an audit performed by the agency’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), which found the Postal Service was “not always in compliance with Cremated Remains acceptance procedures.”

“I had no idea [about the audit],” Eckler said. “None.”

Specifically, cremated remains packages were not always properly labeled and procedures for monitoring those packages in the Postal Service network were not always followed, the audit found.

The audit noted USPS was in custody of 452 undelivered cremains at its mail recovery center in Atlanta, some of which had been there since 2015. It’s important to note that the number includes both human and animal remains, as both get the same label.

‘You’re talking about the sanctity of remains’

In 2022, Daniel Smith’s mother’s cremains shared the same fate as Medrue and Dillon’s – lost in the mail.

“I think at one point I told them it’s not like they lost a rug that I ordered, they lost my mom,” Smith recalled.

After trying to get his mother’s remains back to no avail, the Indiana native turned to U.S. Senator Mike Braun, who demanded the OIG audit.

“When you’re talking about the sanctity of remains and to see that, we jumped into action and tried to get to the bottom of it,” Braun said.

While the OIG provided recommendations on how to prevent future loss of cremains in its report, it did not address what to do with the 452 cremains deemed “undeliverable.” They remain sitting in the USPS facility – months or in some cases years after they were first mailed.

The OIG declined InvestigateTV+’s request for an interview. USPS will not provide an exact address for the facility due to security reasons or allow families – Jelinek, Eckler and Smith included – access inside.

In a statement, USPS said: “The cremated remains packages are stored at the M-R-C indefinitely.”

Senator Braun said what these families are having to go through is unacceptable and vowed to look into the issue.

“I’ll get involved if there’s no motion in terms of the staff that I’ve got, that does an amazing job. Generally, when a Senate office gets involved at this level something starts to crack, it starts to change and we’ll stay in touch and keep you informed in terms of the progress,” Braun said.

Smith hired a lawyer, who told him the USPS would only be liable for the insurance value – about $100.

As for Jelinek, she remains hopeful a reunion is in the near future, despite having waited so long.

“I still do have faith in part because you’re here,” she said. “In huge part because of that. I have a good gut feeling that it’ll work out, but it is just, it is just insulting.”

Legal Rights of Those Searching for Remains

“I never expected something like this to happen.”

The death of Amy Redford’s mom wasn’t easy. She passed away while the two were estranged.

But that hasn’t been the hardest part.

“It kills me to know that I cannot place her somewhere where I know she deserves to be.”

Her mother’s ashes are missing.

Back in 2020, Amy shipped the ashes in the mail from Louisville, Kentucky, to her sister in Florida, where she planned to bury her mother.

But Amy mistakenly put the wrong address on the box. And the woman who accidentally received the ashes left the package outside the door.

From there, she doesn’t know what happened to it.

For years, Amy has feared the worst. That the Ashes ended up in the trash. That was until she learned of the USPS facility housing the undelivered cremains.

Amy believes her mother’s remains are in the Mail Recovery Center in Atlanta.

However, she cannot find out because the post office says it will not let anyone from the public access the secure facility and says it will hold those undelivered packages indefinitely.

A response that leaves Amy - and many others - frustrated.

Robert Greenisen is a funeral director in Ohio. He offered to help, saying he was willing to go through every box to find where the ashes belonged.

InvestigateTV+ contacted the Postal Service with Greenisen’s offer and received the following response:

“The Postal Service appreciates the outside interest but will have to respectfully decline the request.”

The post office would not comment on whether it found any other forms of identification in the boxes.

Amy, who says her mother’s death certificate is in that box, says it’s a punch to the gut.

“It’s wrong. It’s absolutely wrong. It’s not like I lost a rug. It’s not like I’ve mailed some of my jewelry to somebody and disappeared. That’s different. This is a person’s body. And if you ask me, I think that they should be prosecuted.”

But could the post office face legal consequences for this?

Stephen McAllister, a former U.S. Attorney for the District of Kansas and law teacher at the University of Kansas, said he has never heard of anything like this situation before.

“I find it shocking, just shocking...that the Postal service can be sort of this indifferent and just almost cruel about it.”

McAllister says there is nothing preventing the post office from accepting help from professionals like Greenisen to determine where these cremated remains belong.

But it’s up to their discretion.

While he says the post office is heavily protected from being sued due to sovereign immunity, there is a route these families could take to get the packages identified.

“If you could turn it into a constitutional claim.”

A constitutional claim is a civil claim where families could argue the post office is violating their constitutional rights by holding on to the cremated remains.

Filing an injunction could get the courts to force the post office to take steps to find where these cremated remains belong.

But it would not include any jail time or fines.

“It wouldn’t be about money. It’s just about getting the government to do the right thing.”

And the right thing, these families say, is all they want.

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