A grieving daughter has been left traumatised after her late mother's eyes opened when she saw her in her coffin. Rachelle Whitney-Bey recalled how her family was viewing the body of her 82-year-old mother Helen Mercer at an Illinois funeral home after her death in 2020. But as she approached the coffin to say her last goodbye, she was stunned when her eyes opened.

Rachelle and her family accused Clark Morgan of posing as a funeral director and leaving their mother's body to decompose, which was why her eyes popped open. "It was hurtful. I couldn't, I couldn't stand there and look at it" Rachelle said.

The distraught daughter says that her mother's poor condition was because she was not properly embalmed, and he had not applied any make up. Undertakers usually use cosmetic products to try make the deceased look as close to how they looked when they were alive.

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"It's not fair to the families," Rachelle told CBSNews. "It's not fair to the deceased, and they've been profiting from it."

The family filmed themselves confronting Morgan, who was previously investigated for taking bodies from a hospital without a funeral director's license, and questioned his credentials.

In the video, Clark says that he is the owner of the funeral parlour. He's then asked if he's a funeral director, to which he says, "yes". However, records from the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulations suggest that he's never been licensed.

Earlier this week, a was charged with desecreating a corpse after that died four decades ago. Matthew Fortner, 49, was at Baylous Cemetery in West Virginia when he allegedly struck a casket. He pulled the casket out of the ground and chucked it over a hillside, it's been claimed. Meanwhile, a couple were decorating headstones for Easter when they spotted some baby's clothes. After a short search, they discovered the baby's corpse in the middle of the cemetery.

Fortner, who previously served time for murder, was arrested Wednesday and charged with displacement of a dead body, and intentionally withholding information about the disturbance of human, skeletal remains. He has pleaded not guilty and posted bond the day after his arrest. If convicted, he could be sent to prison for five years.

Police attended the cemetery and looked at all the graves, hoping to find signs of disturbance, but did not see any. It wasn't until later that they suggested Fortner had been digging another grave when he found the casket of the baby - who was thought to be five years old when he was buried. The man who contacted police said, "It’s like someone dug a grave up and there’s a baby. The casket’s thrown over a hill," according to local outlet WSAZ.