Man: Wife’s remains found 35 years after Jonestown
Jonestown memorial at the Evergreen cemetery in Oakland, CA (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
A California man says he is glad to finally be able to claim the remains of his wife, more than 35 years after she was among more than 900 who died in a suicide-murder in Jonestown, Guyana.
The cremated remains of nine Jonestown victims recently discovered in an abandoned funeral home in Dover, Delaware, include those of 28-year-old Maud Ester Perkins.
Sixty-four-year-old Irvin Ray Perkins told The Associated Press on Friday that he had been unable to determine what happened to his wife’s remains until Delaware officials contacted him a day earlier.
Perkins says he plans to put his wife’s ashes on his mantle.
Hundreds of decomposing bodies were brought from Jonestown to the Dover Air Force Base military mortuary in 1978. Some remains were never claimed or identified.
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