A family in Oklahoma is reeling after a thief stole their late patriarch’s ashes from a car. The widow, named Barbara Beshear, moved from California to Oklahoma City recently to be near family. But when a granddaughter went on a road trip with her grandfather’s ashes to bring her grandmother’s car to Oklahoma, a thief broke in and stole the urn.
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According to ABC 7 News, the granddaughter had stopped in Amarillo and got a room at a hotel. But someone decided there were good things sitting in the car, so they broke in and helped themselves. Inside one of the pilfered boxes was the ashes. Jeff Beshear’s photo was on the box.
Now the family just wants the ashes returned, no questions asked. Having your love one’s remains stolen by a burglar like that has got to really hurt, so we feel badly for them. Sadly, we also bet there’s a good chance the thief dumped the ashes once they realize what was in the urn.
After all, people who break into cars are looking for valuable items to quickly steal and sell. Anything they take that doesn’t have a market value needs to be disposed of since it’s evidence of the crime. So the ashes are likely gone forever. That’s a harsh reality.
For some reason there’s a trend of thieves stealing ashes from cars. We see stories like this one pretty often and can’t entirely figure out why. Do the thieves think the urn looks nice and figure there’s something monetarily valuable inside? That’s the best explanation we have for this.
It’s sad, but the reality is with how common theft is these days we would advise anyone to not leave their loved one’s ashes in a car, even for a little bit. They’re apparently far too tempting to dishonest people.
Images via ABC 7 News
