celebrity cremation
John Lennon pictured here as a statue in John Lennon park (Cuba) was was shot and killed in front of his home on the night of December 8th 1980. He was cremated on December 10th, and his ashes were given to his wife. Lennon was 40 years old.
According to biographer Albert Goldman, "Lennon had a horror of cremation, a practice that he inveighed against and once proposed to protest in a song. Despite his aversion, his widow arranged to have his body burned." According to Fred Seaman, (Lennon's assistant), John's face had been serene and calm until just before the body entered the cremator, when suddenly it contorted into a "pained, macabre grin" apparently due to rigor mortis. The source of this information was claimed to be Douglas MacDougal at Ferncliff Mortuary where Lennon was cremated.
Born in April 1960, at Colwyn Bay, North Wales, Paula Yates became famous for her fashion sense as well as her lovers. She started out modeling and later became the host of a popular TV show called "The Tube."
Paula Yates was found dead in her home in London's Notting Hill area, on 17 September 2000. The coroner listed the cause of death as "Non-dependant abuse of Heroin"
Her funeral was at the Church of Mary Magdalene Kent.
Paula was in a white casket, covered in Tiger Lily's. Supposedly Paula was wearing a two piece mink bikini that she loved, but the people at the Chelsea Funeral Services denied that, and said she was wearing "normal clothes."
After the service, the hearse took Paula to the Kent County Crematorium to be incinerated. Paula may have gone up the chimney but she lives on in her daughter Pixie (above right). Paula supposedly wanted to be cremated with that pillow that had Michael Hutchence's ashes in it. The crematorium forbade it. The location of her ashes is unknown, although rumour has it that they are being kept in a vault for her daughters.
(Rock star Michael Hutchence's ashes were split three ways because his family and Paula Yates couldn't agree on a final resting place. Paula reportedly had even kept Hutchence's ashes in her bed while having sex with other lovers. "She would curl up around the little pillow, after we'd had sex, to sleep with Michael," said lover Kingsley O'Keke.)
He was born Faroukh Bulsara in Zanzibar, stood 5ft 9 inches tall with black hair and dark brown eyes, and died Freddie Mercury, in a six million dollar home in London. On November 24, 1991, the announcement came: "Freddie Mercury died peacefully this evening at his home at 1 Logan Place, Kensington, London. His death was the result of pneumonia brought on by AIDS."
Freddie was cremated at the West London Crematorium. No one knows for sure what became of his ashes. Some say that Mary (Mary Austin, the company secretary of Freddie's private business) has the urn, others think he was taken back to Zanzibar, and yet others think he was scattered over a south London cemetery. There is one unconfirmed report that his ashes were scattered over Lake Geneva, in Montreux, Switzerland. Queen did own a recording studio there, and Freddie was very fond of the place.
Blond, B-Movie actress Lana Clarkson died in 2003, aged 40, allegedly shot in the face by music produced Phil Spector.
