By Marcus Dysch

LONDON - A woman whose husband's funeral was delayed because his coffin had been measured incorrectly and the grave dug to the wrong size could take an undertaker to court after he refused to increase his compensation offer of £300 ($393) and a bunch of flowers. Sarah Coleman's husband, David, who ran the Rampley's plumbing company in Finchley, died on New Year's Day following a two-year battle with cancer.

Purcell, OK -- An early morning drug raid at a Purcell funeral home landed the funeral director and five others in jail. The McClain County Sheriff’s Office, assisted by the Purcell Police Department and district attorney investigators, executed a search warrant at Yoakum Funeral Home.

A Dutch primary school teacher who is dying of cancer is overseeing one last project among her beloved pupils - they are making a coffin for her. Eri van den Biggelaar, 40, has just a few weeks left to live after being diagnosed last year with an aggressive form of cervical cancer. Always popular at school, she asked the arts and crafts teacher to build a casket for her.

By Marissa Amoni, The Beacon News

Calvary Cemetery, Aurora, Illinois: Tombstones and Obituaries: Michael Fichtel and Jane Haldeman walked among the dead for the last couple of years. They were not spooked. They were intrigued. As members of the Fox Valley Genealogical Society, Fichtel and Haldeman make it their mission to become acquainted with those supine and six feet under in the Aurora area.

By Rae Lyn Hartley

MEMPHIS, TN - A woman accused of trying to sell stolen cemetery vases is on the loose.  The man accused of stealing those vases is charged with the crime. Memphis Police say $55,000 worth of bronze cemetery vases have been stolen from numerous graves at Forrest Hill Cemetery. 

By Jack Broom, Seattle Times staff reporter

Would you spend eternity in a cigar? Would you keep a loved one in a motorcycle gas tank? Display her in a graceful glass statue, place her in Puget Sound in a paper pillow or mix her into the paint on her very own portrait?

By Carrie Hanenberger, Hi-Desert Star

On what note would you like to end? Across America, funeral ceremonies are becoming less ritualized and formal and more personal. And what’s more personal than music? The National Funeral Directors Association reports that personalization is what more and more people want as they plan ceremonies: “Funeral service consumers are seeking a service that is as unique as the person who died.”

MEMPHIS, TN - A judge in Memphis has allowed state officials to step in and take over trust fund assets of three cemeteries and three funeral homes that haven't been honoring prepaid funeral plans. Chancellor Arnold Goldin said he had "little confidence" the business owners wouldn't try to take the money.

By JENNIFER McKEE, Gazette State Bureau

HELENA, MT - Funeral directors are backing an effort to designate who may handle remains of the dead. House Bill 323, sponsored by Rep. Bill Thomas, D-Great Falls, says that only licensed morticians and funeral home directors may pick up a body from the hospital or other place of death, that only such licensed people may house the dead in the days before burial or cremation, and that only such people can handle funeral arrangements.

By Amanda Cartwright

Could Deaths of Big Bopper, Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens Have Been Anything but Accidental? This week, the University of Tennessee announced that Dr. Bill Bass, one of the country's leading forensic scientists and a professor emeritus at the college, would be investigating the circumstances surrounding the plane crash in 1959 that claimed three of rock music's brightest stars: Buddy Holly, J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, and Ritchie Valens.

By Daniel Chang, McClatchy Newspapers

MIAMI, FL - The steps of the former Versace Mansion on Ocean Drive in Miami. Bungalow 3 at the Chateau Marmont Hotel in Los Angeles. With hundreds of slot machines, a tropical lagoon pool, restaurants and nightclubs, a celebrity death spot may not be the type of tourist attraction the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino wanted to become.