Terri Schiavo Relatives Feud Over Burial

This article is copied in it's entiretly below:


Friday April 1, 2005 1:01 AM

By MICHAEL RUBINKAM

Associated Press Writer

LEVITTOWN, Pa. (AP) - Terri Schiavo's ashes will be buried in an undisclosed location near Philadelphia so that her immediate family doesn't show up and turn the burial into a media spectacle, a member of the Schiavo family said Thursday.

``If Mike knew they would come in peace, he would have no problem with it,'' Scott Schiavo, Michael Schiavo's brother, said during an interview at his home.

After an autopsy, Michael Schiavo plans to have his wife's body cremated and her ashes brought to Pennsylvania, where she grew up. Scott Schiavo said the ashes would be buried in a plot left by an aunt and uncle, but the family does not plan on providing the specficic location for the burial - underscoring the bitterness of the dispute.

Her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, had fought for years to prevent her feeding tube from being removed, and they opposed cremation and wanted her buried in Florida.

A spiritual adviser to Terri Schiavo's parents, Paul O'Donnell, said they plan to hold a Roman Catholic Mass without her body sometime next week. Asked about perhaps never knowing where his sister might be buried, Bobby Schindler said, ``We've already said goodbye. ... He's been doing this kind of stuff for 15 years. What would make him stop now?''

As he monitored TV news reports from the kitchen of his small house in the Philadelphia suburbs, Scott Schiavo received a stream of calls Thursday from people denouncing him and his brother. On his answering machine was a lengthy message from a man from Texas who, shouting obscenities, called the Schiavo family murderers.

``This isn't over by a long shot. We're going to get our name right,'' he said. ``The world is going to know who Mike was, they're going to know Mike wasn't a beast"