Chicago morgue finds missing body      

[June 20, 2007]  CHICAGO (AP) -- The body of a 64-year-old woman reportedly missing from the Cook County morgue was found Tuesday after another round of searches through the crowded facility, according her family.

"She was behind another body and apparently was overlooked," the woman's cousin, Rosemary Fogell, told the Chicago Tribune. "I'm not sure about everything, as far as details, just as long as they found her. That's what made me happy."

Fogell said a service for Rosalie Schultz is scheduled for Wednesday. She was found dead in her Chicago apartment Thursday afternoon and an autopsy found she died from heat stress and heart disease.

Morgue employees couldn't find Schultz's body when a funeral director came to pick it up Monday, said Scott Denton, interim chief medical examiner.

"It is horrible," Denton said. "I wouldn't want this to happen to me and my family."

Before the body was found, the medical examiner's office planned to contact all funeral homes that made pickups between Friday and Monday and to conduct an inventory of the morgue's cooling facilities, which has reached overflow capacity, Denton said.

About two dozen bodies are delivered to the medical examiner's office every day, and funeral homes pick up about 20 bodies on a daily basis, he said.

"We really regret this," Denton said. "And when we find out what happened, we'll try to make a correction and prevent that from happening again."

[Associated Press]