Widow says Celebrity Cruises let husbands body rot in beverage cooler

Marilyn and Robert Jones set sail aboard the Celebrity Equinox cruise ship on Aug. 13 to leave Florida for eight days of island hopping around the Eastern Caribbean.

But tragedy interrupted their tour of paradise two days into the cruise when Robert died of a heart attack. Equinox crew members gave Marilyn a choice: She could have her husband’s body removed in San Juan, Puerto Rico, or let them preserve it in the ship’s morgue until they returned to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., six days later, according to a lawsuit filed this week. Marilyn Jones chose the latter.

But by the time they docked in Fort Lauderdale, Equinox employees had allegedly let the body decompose so badly that Jones and her family couldn’t hold an open casket at his funeral.

On Wednesday, Jones sued Celebrity Cruises in the U.S. District of Southern Florida, accusing the cruise line of mishandling her late husband’s body by storing it in a beverage cooler instead of the ship’s morgue. Jones and her family are seeking at least $1 million in the suit, which was first reported by the Miami New Times.

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Celebrity Cruises did not respond Thursday to a request for comment from The Washington Post.

Both in their late 70s, the Joneses, who were married 55 years and lived in Florida, had planned to cruise around the Caribbean for more than a week, hitting up ports of call in Puerto Rico, St. Maarten, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands before sailing back home.

While on the Equinox, which is more than 1,000 feet long and holds 2,852 people, passengers can avail themselves of a spa, salon, theater, casino or any of the 10 dining venues onboard, according to the Celebrity Cruises website. They can play bocce, take glass-blowing classes, and get facials, manicures or massages.

Two days into the cruise, the charms of the Equinox no longer mattered when Robert Jones died of a heart attack, his widow’s lawsuit says. The ship’s crew members told Marilyn Jones that if she decided to take her husband’s body off the ship into San Juan, she would have to accompany him while the ship left her behind, the lawsuit states. Then, they allegedly warned her, she would be responsible for booking transport back to the U.S. mainland for herself and her husband’s body.

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Crew members pushed her to keep the body on the ship, the suit states. They allegedly cautioned her that there was a “50/50 shot” that the coroner’s office in San Juan would take possession of the body to perform an autopsy before releasing it to a funeral home. They assured her they could store the body in the ship’s working morgue, keeping it preserved until they got back to Florida, the suit alleges.

Jones decided to stay the course.

When the Equinox arrived in Fort Lauderdale on Aug. 21, an employee from a local funeral home and a Broward County sheriff’s deputy boarded to retrieve the body, according to the suit. The funeral home employee had prepared for it to be sent to Robert Jones’s hometown of Bonifay, Fla., for his funeral.

But Jones’s body was not in the ship’s morgue, having been moved at some point to a cooler on a different floor, the suit states. The funeral home employee saw drinks placed outside the cooler, which was not cold enough to stop the body from rotting, it alleges.

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The employee found Jones’s body, which was in advanced stages of decomposition, lying in a bag on a pallet in the cooler, according to the suit. It was so far gone that the funeral home staff in Fort Lauderdale couldn’t salvage enough of his remains for a “suitable” open casket at his wake and funeral, which is what Jones wanted as a long-standing family custom, the suit alleges.

Tom Carey, a lawyer representing Marilyn Jones and her family, said the crew of the Equinox shouldn’t have offered up the morgue if they knew it wasn’t working, and they should have known if it wasn’t.

“​​They know what’s on the ship. They know what works and doesn’t work,” he said. “And the captain is responsible. They all are, really.”

If Jones had known the morgue was broken, she would have disembarked in Puerto Rico, the suit states. Instead, she’s been emotionally destroyed by what happened, Carey said.

“She’s devastated,” he added.

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