SEAFORD, DE-For years, the ashes of a local woman have sat on the shelf in Ed's Auto Center. Back in 2012, Ed Cole, the shop's owner said he was cleaning out a car when his team made a startling discovery.
"It was approximately 2012 that we were cleaning out a car that had been repossessed by a local bank that we were doing a lot of work for and we came across the box of cremains of an individual," he said.
Cole says the woman's name, her date of birth and date of death are listed on the outside of this box, as well as the funeral home--Holloway Funeral Home.
It appears the woman died at the age of 65, and could have been a local of Salisbury.
"We made several attempts to contact a local funeral home. I think they went from a non-computer system to a computer system and the records didn't get transferred, so the funeral home was not a whole lot of help," Cole said.
But Cole said they were able to track down a few numbers, but all were disconnected.
Cole says he contacted the Delaware State Police and the woman's hospice center, but no one was able to find the woman's family.
Cole says the police have been in contact with him--but a spokesperson from the Delaware State Police says this is not a police matter.
After a few Facebook messages and calls to people we assumed could be related to the 65-year-old woman, WBOC tracked down multiple family members--one who called us back.
The family asked we respect the privacy of her and their family, but the daughter of the woman says they were not aware she was no longer in the family's possession.
The daughter would not go into detail as to how this could have happened, but did say her father was no longer alive either.
WBOC connected her with the auto center and Cole says the daughter is flying down on Friday to pick up her mother's remains.
The family says the woman died of lung cancer in 2008. She was 65 when she died.