Politics & Government

Unclaimed Cremated Remains to be Buried in Kane County Ceremony

Earlier this year, newly elected Kane County Coroner located the unclaimed cremated remains of 47 individuals. Since then, seven of those remains have been returned to next-of-kin.

A proper burial will be given to 40 unclaimed remains — some decades old — Thursday at North Cemetery, 1200 N. 5th Avenue in St. Charles, according to a Kane County press release. 

A non-demotional ceremony and internment will be held at 1:30 p.m. on Thursday, June 20 at the St. Charles cemetery. 

Earlier this year,  Kane County Coroner Rob Russell discovered the cremated unclaimed remains of 47 deceased individuals. Russell turned to the media to get the word out with the hopes of uniting the remains with their next-of-kin, according to the news release. 

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The story ended up garnering international media attention. And the county ended up uniting seven families with their loved ones, including a father with the cremains of his 2-month-old child 26 years after the child's sudden death and another person's cremains was shipped to Australia to be reunited with next-of-kin, according to the news release. 

“The outpouring of support has been tremendous. We were able to find a solution to this problem because so many people cared,” Russell said in the news release “And now our long lost deceased residents have a respectable resting place. They have not been forgotten.”

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The coroner's office ended up having a 15 percent success rate in uniting cremains — a much higher success rate than the coroner's original goal of a 5 percent success rate. 

“That’s better than I could have imagined," Russell said in a news release. 


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