Episode 54: Caitlin Doughty on the Oversight of Funeral Homes

On this week's episode, Caitlin Doughty discusses the most recent scandal in the funeral industry and what regulatory structures could be used to prevent this from happening again. On August 7th, Chicago police, acting on a tip, entered a funeral home on the Far South Side called South Chicago Chapel, at 2939 East 95th Street in the South Deering neighborhood. What they found inside was the stuff of nightmares. Fifty-six bodies, unrefrigerated, in various states of decomposition, spread throughout the building. The funeral home was operated by Clark and Johanna Morgan. Astonishingly, this was not the first time the Morgans had been caught doing something like this. The Morgans previously ran a crematory called Heights Crematory in Chicago Heights, where authorities found improperly stored bodies — roughly a hundred of them — stacked on top of each other, unrefrigerated, partially exposed. The comptroller's office permanently shut Heights Crematory down in 2025. Clark Morgan's funeral director license had already been revoked back in 2024 for practicing with an expired license and what the state called "unprofessional conduct". And yet here they were, two years later, running a funeral home and doing the exact same thing. We have a lot to unpack in this episode — why these things keep happening, why our regulatory systems keep failing to catch them, and what, if anything, can actually be done about it.