Dumb Burglars Snort Stolen Cremains

Netlore Archive: As allegedly reported in a Florida newspaper, dumb criminals confuse woman's cremated remains for crack cocaine

Description: Urban legend
Circulating since: 1996
Status: Partly true


Email example contributed by Jane B., 10 July 2006:

A news article from a Florida Newspaper: When Nathan Radlich's house was burgled, thieves left his TV, his VCR, and even left his watch. What they did take was "generic white cardboard box filled with grayish-white powder." (That at least is the way the police described it.) A spokesman for the Fort Lauderdale police said, "that it looked similar to cocaine, and they'd probably thought they'd hit the big time." Then Nathan stood in front of the TV cameras and pleaded with the burglars, "Please return the cremated remains of my sister, Gertrude. She died three years ago." Well, the next morning the bullet-riddled corpse of a drug dealer known as Hoochie Pevens was found on Nathan's doorstep. The cardboard box was there too with about half of Gertrude's ashes remaining, and there was this note which read, "Hoochie sold us the bogus blow, so we wasted Hoochie. Sorry we snorted your sister. No hard feelings. Have a nice day."

Comments: One reason urban legends exist is that people can't resist the temptation to make a good story even better by embellishing the facts. Nathan Radlich is a real person. In May 1993, his house in Boynton Beach, Florida really was burgled, and the thieves really did make off with the cremains of Radlich's sister, Gertrude, leaving his TV, VCR, and watch untouched. Police speculated that the burglars mistook the ashes, which Radlich kept in a cardboard box in his fishing tackle box, for crack cocaine. The rest of the story is fiction.

As reported in the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel at the time, Radlich never found out what happened to Gertrude's cremains. There was no bullet-riddled corpse left on his doorstep, no handwritten apology for "snorting" his sister.

"The remains were probably strewn on the street when they found out it wasn`t drugs," Radlich was quoted as saying. For the dignity of all concerned, let's leave it at that.

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Sources and further reading:

Woman's Ashes Take a Powder
Sun-Sentinel (Ft. Lauderdale), 4 June 1993

Last updated: 09/02/06

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