Mystery surrounding ashes found in Intracoastal continues

Crematorium owner says he's 99 percent sure the ashes are human remains

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. – The man who found an urn floating in the water near the 163rd Street Bridge has been holding onto it for more than a week.

Clive Taylor was riding waverunner when he saw the brass urn. He opened it to find a plastic bag filled with human ashes.

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It has since been sitting on his dining room table, waiting for someone to claim the remains.

It's still unclear how the urn ended up in the water. Was it a burial at sea gone bad? Was the urn stolen?

There's no tag, labels or markings to show whose ashes are inside.

"I'm 99 percent certain that these are human remains," said Geronimo Mena Jr. of Guiding Light Cremations.

Mena has been incinerating the dead for nearly two deceased. He says it's strange that the plastic bag is cinched with string. Usually the bags are bound with a metal tag with the name of the crematorium.

"In addition to lacking a tag, there's usually a label that goes on the plastic bag so it will identify the person," Mena said. "It may have been that whomever deposited this in the Intracoastal removed the tag for keepsake purposes."

Mena removed the plastic bag from the brass container and felt through the ashes. But he didn't find the tag inside either.

The urn itself is worth abut $250. The contents insides are no doubt priceless to someone.

Mena agreed to hold onto the bag for a while. If no one claims the remains, he says he will give the discarded deceased a proper burial at sea.
"So it will remain a mystery until someone comes forward and says 'I threw it in there and I would like it back,'" he said.