Funeral has everyone fooled
Rob Cibik
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
February 25, 2008
EAST ST. LOUIS - Everyone at the funeral thought Junior was dead. The
casket was open, after all.
His estranged wife wept as she placed a photo in the casket. Junior’s
9-year-old son cried after he saw the body. Then, Grandpa says, the
boy ran and climbed onto his lap.
More than 100 of Frederick McWherter Jr.’s family and friends attended
House of Prayer to All Nations Church to pay their respects Wednesday
to the 41-year-old man everyone still calls Junior. At least they
thought they did.
In a case of mistaken identity, Junior was, in fact, not dead. He was
in a downtown St. Louis drug rehab center about seven miles from his
own funeral. That wasn’t Junior in the casket.
”Everybody there mourned Junior’s death,” his father, Frederick
McWherter Sr., told the Post-Dispatch Sunday from his East St. Louis
home. “If anyone thought that was someone different, no one said
anything. I buried my son, I thought. That’s what everyone thought.”
McWherter Sr. was the one who identified the man as Junior in the
first place. The similarity between the two men was uncanny, he said.
And under the circumstances, he feels, it was a regrettable mistake
any grieving father could make.
After all, Junior had a habit of disappearing, said McWherter Sr., 67,
a retired journeyman mechanic. He and his wife, Gloria McWherter, were
always on edge wondering whether the next telephone call would be bad
news.
So when local TV stations ran an East St. Louis murder story on the
morning of Feb. 15, Gloria McWherter was quick to turn off the TV,
fearing the worst.
But a friend who regularly monitors a police scanner called to say the
body of a man had been found on Wilford Avenue, the same street where
McWherter Sr. owns a rental property. While out on an errand, he said,
he decided to swing by.
“When I got there, I saw six cop cars, a hearse, yellow crime tape and
a dead body,” McWherter Sr. said. “A policeman came up and said, ‘That
body looks just like you.’ ”
McWherter Sr. said a policeman asked him to see whether he recognized
the body. A coroner handed his camera to McWherter Sr. It showed a
picture of a man who had been shot three times in the head.
“He looked just like my son,” McWherter Sr. recalled. “He had two
missing front teeth like my son. He had a beard like my son. The
coroner asked if I needed to see another picture. I told him, ‘I don’t
need another picture.’ You’d think they were Siamese twins.”
Investigators took fingerprints of the victim, but after McWherter
Sr.’s identification, they didn’t check them for a positive match,
police said. While that’s standard procedure, the department likely
will now change its policy, East St. Louis police Detective Michael D.
Floore said Friday.
McWherter Sr. said the events were so traumatic, he wasn’t able to
leave the scene on his own. “I’m still shaken up. I am not myself.”
McWherter Sr. eventually called the House of Prayer to All Nations
Church in Washington Park and asked the reverend whether they could
hold a Wednesday funeral there. The place was packed, the father said.
One by one, visitors passed by the open casket. No one said they
doubted that was Junior.
But the next day, Junior’s wife, Michelle McWherter, got an unexpected
call. It was Junior himself, and he was alive in St. Louis at a rehab
center to kick a crack habit, his dad said.
Michelle McWherter, who didn’t return calls for comment, informed East
St. Louis police that Junior was alive. Officials then ran the
original fingerprints they had taken at the scene. The Illinois State
Police database turned up the name Kenny Stainback, age 37.
On Thursday, the Post-Dispatch called McWherter Sr. about the mix-up,
but he said he hadn’t heard of any mistaken identity. Police later
confirmed that his son was still alive. But McWherter Sr. still hasn’t
heard from Junior.
“I feel anguish,” the father said Sunday. “I feel hurt. I’m still
distraught. I feel relieved, but I’m frustrated I still haven’t talked
to him.”
While police don’t suspect McWherter Sr. was trying to deceive anyone,
he has heard about talk around town that the family was trying to cash
in on a $5,000 life insurance policy. But that would barely have paid
for the funeral, the father said.
“I mean, $5,000?” McWherter Sr. asked. “I spend more on that on spare
car parts.”
When Gloria McWherter, McWherter Jr.’s stepmother, went to the beauty
shop Saturday, she was scared people would ask how they weren’t able
to recognize Junior.
She and McWherter Sr. say that, despite the gunshot wounds, the victim
looked like Junior. And the way Junior had gone missing before, it was
almost to be expected.
“It was just a mistake,” she said. “A mistake, a mistake, a mistake.
Our hearts go out to that man’s family. We’d like to express our
sincerest condolences.”
Kathleen Beecher, the mother of Kenny Stainback, said she would prefer
an apology directly from the McWherter family. She’s easy to reach,
she said.
Meanwhile, she doesn’t know when she’ll get her son back, and a proper
funeral is on hold until then. His body is still buried at Sunset
Garden of Memory cemetery in Millstadt.
The cemetery workers tried to get the body out Friday, Beecher said,
but the ground was too wet. They’ll try again today.
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