The Stewart Houston Times
Erin, Tennessee
December 14, 2010
The civil suit was filed in Houston County Chancery Court on behalf of former Erin residents William and Sandra Covey, whose 26-year-old daughter, Wendy, died when the family home on Main Street was destroyed by fire on Jan. 26, 2002. According to court filings by Attorney for the Plaintiffs Vincent Zuccaro of Franklin, the Coveys always suspected foul play was involved in their daughter’s death, even though an autopsy conducted the day after the fire by the office of the Tennessee State Medical Examiner in Nashville found no such evidence. It took the Coveys eight years to gather enough money to have their daughter’s body exhumed from the Gray-Barnes Cemetery in Tennessee Ridge and to have a second, independent autopsy performed by Forensic Services LLC and Dr. E. Allen Griggs in Clarksville.
The exhumation took place on April 26 of this year and the second autopsy on May 6. “The good news is the second autopsy found no evidence of foul play,” Zuccaro said. “The bad news is 20 body parts were missing.”
The not-so-subtle implication of the suit is that, at some point, Wendy Covey’s organs and body parts were harvested for sale.
“They say a body, in its entirety, is worth $500 to $1,000,” Zuccaro said, “but cut into pieces it’s worth $200,000.”
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