Burglar Steals Child's Ashes From Mother

Nothing else taken; police suspect culprit knew the family
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 4, 2012 1:43 PM CST
Burglar Steals Child's Ashes From Mother
Nothing was stolen in the break-in except the ashes.   (Shutterstock)

A burglar broke into a Michigan home last week and made off with just one peculiar, cruel piece of loot: an urn containing a 12-year-old boy’s ashes. When Dave Turnquist came home Friday, he found the window of his house broken, and his bedroom ransacked, but the only thing missing was the steel urn containing stepson Ryan McDonald’s ashes. “We had valuables,” the boy’s mother, Wendy Turnquist, tells the Detroit Free Press. “They weren’t touched.”

Police are operating under the assumption that the burglar knew the family, because “if you think about it, why would someone just take that only,” the chief says. Turnquist’s ex-husband says he’s furious about the theft, too, and is urging whoever is responsible to return the urn. “This was our child,” he says. “The ashes were going to go to his younger brother after we passed. It kills me to think that he's in some trash or dump somewhere.” (More burglary stories.)

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