By COREY BYERS
Behind Lori Deem's desk at work is a blue plastic bucket with an urn holding ashy remains of what she believes is a human. But the ashes aren't from a recently deceased relative.
A local woman left the green glazed urn with Deem in mid-August after finding it along the Potomac River at Wayside Park.
Deem is an events planner and marketing manager for The Journal, a weekly newspaper in King George County. Since the urn was left with her, Deem has been trying to figure out if the remains are human or animal--and if whoever left them on the beach would like them back.
"I don't like the idea of it not being in a resting place somewhere," Deem said. "People didn't live all their life to wind up on my desk in a plastic bucket."
A few clues have turned up on, and inside, the vessel. But they haven't helped Deem solve the mystery.
Its lid is wrapped in duct tape, presumably to keep it attached with the bottom, though Deem said the two were found separately. She thinks someone left the urn in hopes the Potomac would carry it away.
Among the ashes and bone fragments inside was a round metal identification tag, slightly bigger than a quarter. The numbers 3399 and 0671 are engraved on it. Along the side of the urn, which has ram's-head handles and gold tassels, is a sticker carrying a warning: "Not for food use, may poison food."
Deem said she has called area funeral homes, the state medical examiner's office and the state Funeral Directors Association hoping to find out who, or what, the remains are. She was told that identification tags placed with bodies cremated in Virginia do not begin with the number 3399.
Keeping the urn and unknown remains hasn't been a problem. Deem said she moved them from the main entrance of her workplace to her personal office because visitors weren't responding to it very well. She thinks someone might have crossed the Gov. Harry W. Nice Memorial Bridge along U.S. 301 from Maryland and left it on the beach. Or that someone could have gotten the remains secondhand.
"If mom had dad's ashes, mom dies, and the kids clean out her house, what do they do with the ashes?" Deem said. "I wouldn't know what to do."
Corey Byers: 540/735-1976
Email: cbyers@freelancestar.com
If you have more information, or want more information, about the urn, call Lori Deem at 540/775-2024. Deem and The Journal staff are planning a service to bury the remains Sept. 10, at 2 p.m. at Historyland Memorial Park in King George. |