A Pennsylvania funeral director has been charged with abusing corpses by allegedly taking cellphone pictures of the dead to ‘gross out’ her friends and family.
Angeliegha ‘Angel’ Stewart, 27, also faces a marijuana charge, after Monroe County detectives found conversations about drug deals when they searched her phone last month amid their investigation into the corpse photos.
Authorities say Stewart, who worked at the Lanterman & Allen Funeral Home in East Stroudsburg, took pictures of one dead body during an organ-harvesting process and others of a decomposing corpse crawling with maggots.
Macabre: Pennsylvania funeral director Angeliegha Stewart, 27, dubbed ‘Angel,’ has been charged with abusing corpses for allegedly taking cellphone pictures of the dead to ‘gross out’ her friends and family
Stewart worked at the Lanterman & Allen Funeral Home in East Stroudsburg, where she also lived (pictured)
Some of the human cadavers were in caskets; some were not. Authorities on Monday were still identifying the deceased.
A spokesman for the Lanterman & Allen Funeral Home says officials are ‘disappointed’ in the allegations and cooperating with authorities.
Police began investigating Stewart last month after being tipped off up by confidential sources claiming that the 27-year-old was showing alarming photos of dead people to friends and family, and also illegally selling marijuana on the side, according to a criminal complaint cited by The Morning Call.
On Thursday, detectives seized Stewart’s phone, which was found to contain four photos showing a dead person during an organ harvesting process, four others showing a rotting corpse, six images of deceased people and 13 more of bodies reposing in caskets.
Confession: When questioned by police, the woman allegedly admitted to taking photos of human corpses, including one dead body during an organ-harvesting process and others of a decomposing corpse crawling with maggots
When detectives executed a search warrant at Stewart’s apartment, located at the funeral home where she worked, the woman allegedly admitted to photographing the dead, saying the images were meant to be shared with colleagues ‘as a joke,’ but she confessed that she showed one specific picture to gross out her ex-boyfriend.
The search of the woman’s home and car yielded marijuana, drugs paraphernalia, a Ruger 9mm handgun, two hunting rifles and ammunition.
Stewart was charged on Friday with abuse of a corpse, disorderly conduct, harassment and multiple drug-related counts.
She was freed on her own recognizance after her arraignment.