More than six months after radio icon Casey Kasem’s death, his body has finally been buried.
In Norway.
Kerri Kasem, the eldest of Casey Kasem’s children from his first marriage, lit up Facebook on Monday on learning of the burial, which, according to Norwegian news outlet VG, took place at Vestre Cemetery in Oslo on Dec. 16.
“This morning my family and I learned that my Dad’s abusive wife Jean Thompson Kasem and their daughter Liberty conned a cemetery in Norway into burying my Dad there,” she wrote.
“Even with ALL the letters . from my father’s friends and family stating that he wanted to be buried in the UNITED STATES, the country in which he was born and raised, his wishes were, once again, ignored by his unfaithful wife.”
(A private investigator hired by Kerri Kasem has alleged that Jean Kasem was having a years-long affair at the time of her husband’s death.)
Kerri Kasem has been convinced that the overseas burial is part of a continuing effort by her father’s widow to thwart an elder-abuse investigation.
“HOW MANY MORE WITNESSES DO YOU NEED . “ she said Monday on Facebook. “WEST LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT WHERE ARE YOU?!”
After Casey Kasem died June 15 in Washington state, where he had been taken by his wife, his remains were transported to Montreal and then, in mid-August, to Norway.
Kerri Kasem filed a complaint with the Santa Monica Police Department alleging elder abuse occurred when Jean Kasem took her husband out of a care facility and stopped in Las Vegas on the way to Gig Harbor. She alleged that her father picked up an infection along the way that hastened his death. The investigation was eventually transferred to the Los Angeles Police Department, which Kerri Kasem said “dropped the ball” on getting her father’s body back to the United States for autopsy.
In a Nov. 7 court filing, Kerri Kasem claimed that Jean Kasem hadn’t had her late husband’s body embalmed before it was moved to Europe but instead, the New York Daily News said, allowed the remains to decay “significantly.”
Casey Kasem died after Kerri Kasem — who has been acting on behalf of her sister Julie and brother Mike — was granted a conservatorship that allowed her to remove her father’s hydration and nutrition, per the wishes he had expressed in a 2011 medical directive.
The “American Top 40” host wanted to be buried at Forest Lawn in Glendale, Calif., Kerri Kasem has maintained, backing up her statements with letters from Casey’s friends and colleagues testifying to Casey Kasem’s wishes.
On Kasem’s death certificate, which presumably includes information provided by his wife and was posted by Kerri Kasem on Facebook, it says he lived in Jerusalem for 18 years. Kerri Kasem said he’d never been there.
In a letter to officials seeking permission to bury her late husband in Norway, Jean Kasem said she had Norwegian relatives on her mother’s side and intended to move there herself. However, one of Jean Kasem’s nephews said: “We don’t have an ounce of Norwegian blood to our knowledge.”
Her late husband “always said that Norway symbolizes peace and looks like heaven,” Jean Kasem wrote, adding that she’d “like to respectfully fulfill his wishes.”
A November legal attempt to get Casey Kasem’s body returned to the United States for burial in accordance with probate law — an attempt Kerri Kasem herself called a “long shot” — was unsuccessful.
“I believe (Jean Kasem’s) intentionally doing this because we obtained an order authorizing a private autopsy,” Kerri Kasem’s lawyer, Martha Patterson, told the New York Daily News after the request was filed with the court.
The two sides are also in conflict over who will benefit from a $2 million life insurance policy, TMZ reported after obtaining documents in a case filed by insurer MetLife, which asked for court guidance in settling the claim.
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