Amber Paige Laudermilk, 34, has been charged with abuse of a corpse
Content warning: The following article contains graphic descriptions.
A Texas funeral home worker has been accused of castrating the body of a deceased sex offender as she prepared his corpse for cremation, per a police affidavit.
Amber Paige Laudermilk, 34, who worked as an embalmer at Houston’s Memorial Mortuary and Crematory, has been charged with abuse of a corpse after she allegedly used a scalpel to stab and cut the penis off the body of Charles Roy Rodriguez, 58, a registered sex offender, last month.
Laudermilk was in the presence of an embalming trainee and another employee at the time of the alleged crime on Feb. 7, 2025, according to a probable cause affidavit filed in Texas court and reviewed by PEOPLE.
Per the document, Laudermilk was observed by two others as she allegedly cut off the decedent’s penis and stuffed it in his mouth. She also allegedly stabbed the body of Rodriguez twice in the groin with a scalpel, the document says.
The embalming trainee who witnessed the incident also claimed Laudermilk told her, “You didn’t see anything” in a threatening manner afterward, the affidavit states.
Immediately following the alleged incident, the funeral director reportedly noticed that Laudermilk was “fondling the mouth of the decedent,” per the charging document. The director also noticed that Rodriguez’s groin area looked “disfigured” and asked Laudermilk about it.
In response, Laudermilk allegedly covered Rodriguez’s lower body with a towel and replied that the corpse had “a lot going on with him,” per the document.
Rodriguez died of natural causes at a Houston hospital in January. He’d received 10 years of Deferred Adjudication after being charged with Sexual Assault in 2001, according to a statement from the Office of Harris County Constable Precinct One.
“This case is about two troubled people: the victim who was a registered sex offender and the defendant, who is accused of viciously attacking his dead body,” Precinct One Constable Alan Rosen said in the statement. “No matter what one thinks of his life, the law requires that he be treated with dignity in death.”
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“I don’t know the suspect’s past, but we have the utmost empathy for anyone who has been the victim of a sexual assault or is the family or friend of someone who has been the victim of a sexual assault,” Rosen also said, per the statement. “The facts clearly indicate she was angry and I hope after this is resolved in the courts, she gets the help she needs.”
