Storage War Stories – The Improvisational Mortician


The Improvisational Mortician

The world of storage units is a surprisingly intricate one, full of scandal, murder, theft, and sordid affairs (though, none of those things happen at K&L Storage – we’re as pure as the driven snow).

There is a reason countless television shows have focused on storage units and the secrets buried within them (though, K&L Storage has no secrets…what you see is what you get, especially in terms of information and pricing).

What people keep in their units is fascinating to others. Sometimes there are priceless artifacts. Other times, there are love letters from forbidden lovers. Once in a while, there’s a dead body or two.

But it’s not always just what’s in the storage unit that is the story. Sometimes, it’s what happens around the storage unit.

There are Storage Stories, and there are Storage War Stories. This is a Storage War Story.

At K&L Storage, we have a place for you. It’s just, that, we kind of hope “you” are actually, ya know, alive.

That’s not something we thought we would have to ever make note of, but after hearing about a story from Ventura, California, we just want to cover our bases. Much like the man in this story was trying to do.

A man named Joseph O’Donnell has spent his entire career as a mortician. He inherited the business from his grandfather, but when his license expired in 2008 and his funeral home closed, he was left empty pockets and broken dreams.

O’Donnell opted to still accept and spent deposits from family members whose loved ones had recently passed, but now he nowhere to do his, erm, “work.”

So he improvised.

O’Donnell rented a storage unit, which he then used to house his, um, product. And by product, we mean bodies. He stored human bodies in his storage unit and then gave ashes from an unnamed source to his grieving clients.

Eventually, somebody caught on. Because you can only store so many dead bodies in a unit before people start asking questions. When they began asking questions, O’Donnell didn’t really have any answers, so he was indicted on multiple charges, including improper disposal of human remains.

For more on this crazy story, click here.

The Takeaway: We’re sure we don’t have to tell you this, but please do not store dead bodies in your K&L Storage unit. We have a place for you when it comes to a lot of things, but we draw the line when it comes to corpses.

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