The former owner of a mortuary transport company who hid three bodies for more than five years has apologized on a highway billboard that begins: “I should treat the deceased in my care with dignity and respect.”
Donald Short, 44, of Hurst, was arrested in 2005 when the bodies were found after his abandoned van was repossessed.
“Donald Short has not apologized to me,” said Cheryle Jacobs, of Arlington.
Jacobs said she thought her father, Thomas Shadowens, was cremated after he died at age 89 in 2000. She believed she had his ashes in an urn on her mantle.
Shadowens was one of the first black real estate agents in Fort Worth.
Jacobs said she was shocked when police notified her five years later that his body had been found in the van.
Short was later convicted of abusing a corpse, a misdemeanor.
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"When we were in court, his expression was deadpan,” Jacobs said. “He looked straight ahead. There was no emotion."
Short said he lost the paperwork when he transferred the bodies in 2000 and did not know what to do, so he left the bodies in a refrigerator at a funeral home.
His contract with the funeral home was canceled years later, and he then left the bodies in his van for five months.
The tow truck driver who repossessed the van found the bodies in the back.
As part of Short’s sentencing, the judge ordered him to reimburse the families the cost of the cremations that never took place and make a public apology.
The billboard, at Highway 121 and Beach Street, reads: “I should treat the deceased in my care with dignity and respect. I utterly failed them, their families and the community. I am remorseful and I apologize."
It is signed “Donald Short.”
Jacobs said the wording is clear, but that she doubts the apology is sincere because it was court-ordered.
She said the message had to be approved by prosecutors and the judge.
As for what was actually in her father’s urn, tests by the medical examiner showed it was “dirt and leaves,” Jacobs said.
She now has her father’s actual ashes, she said.
"At this point, after all the time that has elapsed and the emotional rollercoaster that has gone on and on and on, it's time for closure," Jacobs said.
Short was sentenced to probation, but Tarrant County jail records show he was jailed on Dec. 20.
Hugo Martinez, the Tarrant County assistant district attorney who handled the case, was not available for comment Monday. Another prosecutor who works with Martinez could not explain why Short was jailed but said he apparently violated terms of his parole.
