Funeral home mix-up: Philly family mourns wrong body

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - The blue suit and black boots were right, but mourners at a retired Philadelphia trucker's funeral were staring at the wrong body.

Relatives of 80-year-old Kenneth "Tex" Roberts had spent two hours greeting mourners at a South Philadelphia church Tuesday before the funeral home admitted it had sent the wrong body. It then rushed to replace the casket.

The relatives had been suspicious all along that the body wasn't his.

Rhonda Wearing, Roberts' 52-year-old daughter, says the man looked older than her father. And she says the person had been killed, while her father died of a heart attack.

Wearing calls the mix-up traumatic.

The funeral home declined to comment to The Associated Press.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.

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Additional information from Philly.com:

Roberts' wife, Janie Holsey, and others went to check the body...and told a female employee: "This is not my husband." But family members said the woman at the South Philadelphia funeral home insisted: "That's how they look when they die." ...