Grieving widow's horror at cemetery bones find

A WIDOW was left distraught after discovering a human skull and hundreds of bones by her husband's grave.

- ISABELLE BATES

Dawn Cotterell, aged 59, visited the grave of her late husband, Roger, in Tipton Cemetery, where she made the chilling discovery just one day following his funeral.

Roger died suddenly in 2022 at the age of 53. He suffered what doctors suspect to be a fatal blood clot during a game of football.

As Dawn approached Roger's final resting place, she noticed a skip filled with soil that shockingly contained a multitude of human remains, including a skull.

Dawn, from Dudley, said: “I was very upset anyway when I visited Roger’s grave the day after the funeral but was horrified by what I saw.

“When they counted them, there were 432 bones. There were femurs everywhere?”

Overcome by the grim scene, Dawn shared: “I was just so traumatised, I just couldn’t believe what was going on.”

After notifying cemetery employees, she was informed that the remains were from those in paupers’ graves dating back to the 1960s.