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WADESBORO, N.C. – The Wadesboro Police Chief tells WCCB News he expects more charges to be filed next week in a funeral home investigation. Wednesday, investigators found two bodies inside the shut-down facility; they were only expecting to find one body.
The bodies had been there since at least 2012. That was the year McLendon Funeral Home shut down after complaints that the owner, Mary McLendon, was taking money from grieving families and not performing promised services.
A judge ordered McLendon to show police where she said there was one body inside the building. Investigators quickly found the second body. Wadesboro Police Chief Thedis Spencer tells WCCB, “One body was located in the entrance way, walking into the funeral home. It was in a casket.” The second body was found at the back of the building. “And I think it’s like, on a table,” says Spencer.
The body in the casket has been identified as Marshall Lee Allen and his family, specifically his daughter Kimberly Wall, has been notified. Court documents show she paid McLendon $1,500 to have her father’s body cremated. The other body, the one found on the table, still hasn’t been identified. Medical examiners are working to make a positive match.
Spencer says the discoveries, while gruesome, are positive. He says, “Closure. I think it’s really gonna be closure for the family, and I feel good about that for it to be closure for a family.”
McLendon will serve between 6 to 17 months on her conviction in the Allen case. There are also no answers yet as to why she failed to perform the work she was paid for.
