Vicar apologises for 'wrong body' burial

A vicar apologised to a Church of England court yesterday for a "foolish mistake" that led to a murder victim being buried in the wrong grave.

The Consistory Court of the Diocese of Lichfield heard that the body of Daniel Hastelow was buried in a reserved grave after the Rev Nigel Carter forgot to mark out the correct burial plot.

The court, sitting at St John's Church in Walsall Wood, West Midlands, was convened to hear a petition for the body of Mr Hastelow to be exhumed and reinterred in a different grave.

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Judge Marten Coates, the Chancellor of the Diocese of Lichfield, adjourned his decision on the petition until next week after hearing how the plot had been reserved by widow Jean Best.

Mrs Best wished to be buried alongside her late husband and was granted a faculty – or official permission – by the Church, reserving the adjoining plot at Walsall Wood churchyard.

But the body of Mr Hastelow, who was unlawfully killed in Majorca in 2008, was buried in the reserved plot on November 9, 2009.

That burial followed a lengthy campaign by family members for Mr Hastelow's body to be exhumed from a cemetery in Spain and flown back to the UK.

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Giving evidence to the court, Rev Carter acknowledged that his error had caused considerable grief to both families and was entirely his fault.

He added: "I would like to offer my sincere apologies to the families of the late Mr Michael Best and the late Daniel Hastelow."

Mr Hastelow's mother, Susan, also gave evidence to the court, describing him as a lovely son and saying she did not want to see his body exhumed.

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