Police return ashes to widow

After being stored in a police evidence room for more than six years, Brownsville police turned over the remains of a Laguna Vista man to his wife — who thought she had lost his ashes forever.

Last week detectives arrived at the Laguna Vista home of Jo Ann Nelson and reunited her with the remains of her late husband, Donald Ray Nelson, said police spokesman Sgt. Jimmy Manrrique.

"We were a very close family," Jo Ann Nelson said. "After ten years apart he’s found his way back to us."

The story of Donald Ray Nelson begins shortly after his death in 1999, when his widow came into financial problems and could not pay the $50 handling fee that Valverde Memorial Gardens was charging, so the funeral home kept the remains in storage, she said.

After several months, the widow returned with the money, but the funeral home couldn't find the remains. The funeral home then soon went out of business and the items in storage were auctioned off, police said.

Giving up on finding her husband’s remains again, Jo Ann Nelson left the Rio Grande Valley for a few years to live with family members. She recently moved back to Laguna Vista.

Police came into possession of the ashes on Sept. 19, 2003, after a woman who had a stand at a Brownsville flea market found them in a file cabinet. The woman had purchased the file cabinet at a storage facility auction at 3605 S. Expressway 77/83, Manrrique said.

Inside the file cabinet was a small white box containing a black plastic bag labeled Valverde Memorial Gardens — Donald Ray Nelson. Also in the box was a certificate of cremation, along with 25 bottles of embalming fluid, he said.

"Memorial Gardens stored their property there (at the storage facility), couldn’t afford to pay for storage and left everything behind," the police spokesman said. "At the time, even with the name we didn’t have an address, so it was very difficult to trace down a next of kin."

Police stored the remains in an evidence room, where they stayed until earlier this month when newly obtained information led to a family member, Manrrique said.

"Contact was made and that person provided us with a way to contact Mrs. Jo Ann Nelson," he said. "She stated that she was indeed the widow of Donald Ray Nelson and hadn’t received her husband’s remains."

On Sept. 10, police arrived at the Laguna Vista residence and turned over the remains.

"I just broke down," Nelson said. "After ten years we are finally back together."

Now that the remains are home, the Nelson family is still deciding on a final resting place.

"He loved the sea," Nelson said of her husband’s many years as a merchant marine. "That’s where he learned to cook and got his chef license. He used to be a chef in Lake Tahoe. He would have liked a sea burial but, then again, he just found his way back to us, so we don’t know were to go from here."