After a great deal of gumshoeing, North Precinct burglary detectives have reunited an 85-year-old woman with the stolen cremated ashes of her “soul mate,” taken by a ghoulish car prowler earlier this month.
Police found the ashes after they pulled over two men in a stolen car in north Seattle on May 18th. When officers searched the vehicle, they found a number of stolen items, including the box of cremated remains.
At first, the suspects refused to tell police where they got the box of ashes. But one man later said the box was stolen from a car parked in Magnolia, and gave detectives a description of the prowled car.
Without much to go on, detectives contacted the funeral home listed on a tag on the box of ashes, hoping they would have contact information for the owner of the box.
The information from the funeral home was out of date, so detectives tracked down an obituary for the deceased man, which listed a Seattle woman as his next of kin. However, when detectives tried to contact the woman, they found out she had recently moved.
Out of leads, and unable to find the woman’s new address, detectives headed to Magnolia. They figured if they could find the car the prowler had stolen the ashes from, they could find the woman.
Detectives finally spotted the woman’s car—which was just like the one previously described by the suspect—and were then able to find the 85-year-old woman. She told detectives someone had recently broken into her car, but she had just moved and had not reported the theft. The thief, she said, had stolen the ashes of her “soul mate” of more than twenty years.
Detectives were then able to return the ashes to the woman.