Houston funeral worker accused of taking posthumous justice into her own hands, leaving a crime scene fit for a horror flick.
Funeral homes are supposed to be places of quiet dignity—not makeshift crime scenes. But that’s exactly what Memorial Mortuary & Crematory in Houston became when embalmer Amber Laudermilk allegedly decided to make one last statement about the life of Charles Roy Rodriguez, a convicted sex offender.
According to police, the 34-year-old funeral worker didn’t just prepare Rodriguez’s body for burial—she took a scalpel, sliced off his penis, and shoved it in his mouth. To top it off, she reportedly did all this in front of an embalming student, whom she then tried to intimidate into silence.
“You didn’t see anything,” she allegedly told the shocked trainee, perhaps forgetting that some things you just can’t unsee.
Rodriguez, 58, had died of natural causes in January, but his criminal record still loomed large. A convicted sex offender, he had been sentenced to probation in 2001 for sexually assaulting a 31-year-old woman. It remains unclear how Laudermilk learned about his past, but when another funeral home employee later questioned why Rodriguez’s body had been, let’s say, significantly altered, she reportedly brushed it off, saying the man had “a lot going on with him.”
Harris County Constable Alan Rosen made it clear that while Rodriguez wasn’t exactly a sympathetic figure, the law doesn’t allow for freelance vengeance—even on a corpse. “No matter what one thinks of his life, the law requires that he be treated with dignity in death,” Rosen said, adding that he hopes Laudermilk “gets the help she needs” after the legal process plays out.
Laudermilk now faces charges of abuse of a corpse, proving that even in death, crime doesn’t always rest in peace.