Widower asks N.H. to pay for DNA test

SEABROOK, N.H. – A widower from Unity, Maine, wants New Hampshire to pay for genetic testing on his dead wife’s ashes.

Mike Ellis, 43, said his wife, Dawn, was cremated at Bayview Crematorium in January.

The crematorium was shut down last month after searchers found a decomposing body in a broken refrigeration unit, two bodies in the same oven and ashes without identification.

Bayview had never registered with the state, as required by law, and was never inspected by the state Department of Health and Human Services.

Six urns of ashes seized from Bayview remain unidentified. Rockingham County Attorney Jim Reams has said there is no assurance that families got the correct ashes in the past.

Ellis wants to make sure the ashes he got from Bayview really belonged to his wife, and thinks New Hampshire should pay the $1,300 DNA testing fee because the state failed in its oversight duties. However, he said Reams told him the state would not pay.

“I feel they should be responsible for identifying loved ones,” Ellis said.

Reams was not available for comment. He has said previously that no evidence of identity survives cremation. But Ellis says some labs he has contacted think some DNA might have survived in bone fragments. Ellis said he has a fingernail clipping from his wife for comparison.

Dawn Ellis died Jan. 5 in Boston, and her body was cremated at Bayview a few days later. Because he was in a hurry to get the ashes before a memorial service Jan. 15, Mike Ellis agreed to pick them up in the parking lot of a McDonald’s restaurant in Saco, Maine, on Jan. 13, he said.

Now he wonders about a comment made by the funeral home or crematorium employee – he’s not sure which – who delivered the ashes.

“He asked me if I was the grandson,” Ellis said. “I didn’t think anything at the time.”

Ellis also asked about a shiny, golden tag with his wife’s name on top of the box. The tag was supposed to be attached to her remains as they were cremated, and Ellis asked why the tag didn’t look as if it had been through a fire.

The employee told him the metal tag had been cleaned, he said.

Ellis has not paid for the cremation yet. He’s waiting for Reams to find paperwork on his wife and determine whether her identification number matches the one he got with the ashes. State police seized 12 boxes of records from Bayview.

“It’s making it a little hard to move on,” said Ellis, who had planned to scatter Dawn’s ashes. “I don’t know what else to do.”