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Authorities flooded with queries about bodies found at closed Mexican crematorium

Forensic workers remove a body found at the crematorium of an abandoned funeral home near Acapulco, Mexico, early Friday Feb. 6, 2015. Bernandino Hernandez/AP Photo

MEXICO CITY – More than 100 people have come forward to ask if one of the 60 bodies found at an abandoned crematorium last week in Acapulco is a relative, the top prosecutor in the southern state of Guerrero said Monday.

An anonymous tip led authorities to 60 embalmed bodies inside the crematorium on Thursday. Guerrero state prosecutor Miguel Angel Godinez said on MVS Radio Monday that 40 were in a room with a non-functioning cremation oven. The others were found scattered in other rooms, including stacked on desks.

Godinez said investigators are talking with more than a dozen funeral homes that used the crematorium. Authorities believed the bodies had been there six months to two years, but the crematorium stopped operating about a year ago.

So far, 107 people have contacted the prosecutor’s office with doubts about whether they were given their relative’s ashes.

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“They are uncertain that what they have at home are the ashes of their relative,” Godinez said. “They want to see if theirs is one of the bodies now at our office.”

He said one man came to authorities with a photo of bodies that had circulated online. The man told investigators he recognized his wife’s flowered dress.

Godinez said the man told him, “I gave her to them to cremate,” and then he began to cry.

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