In Humboldt County, California, one family was forced to pay $5,000 to get their son’s remains back.
Ryan Wagner was just six years old when he lost his battle with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2011. The family had him cremated and his ashes remained locked in a safe owned by Ryan’s uncle. On December 29, the family discovered that the safe, including Ryan’s remains, had been stolen in a home robbery.
The family created a Facebook page to help find Ryan’s remains, where they posted this update on Friday, January 13.
On Friday the 13th the sheriffs department received a call from Kathleen Bryson a local criminal defense attorney saying that a client of hers had access to Ryan’s ashes and wanted to split the reward money with the thieves or else the people who had Ryan’s ashes threatened they would dump them.
We were told to gather the 5,000.00 dollars in small denominations because the individuals were paranoid of $100 dollar bills. We met with Kathleen Bryson who said she just wanted to help the situation and gave us the 500$ she was paid by her client and said she was doing this for free.
We handed her 5,000.00 with no real concrete security of knowing she would return with Ryan. We waited 45 minutes for her to return with all of the belongings.
Although we are extremely happy to have Ryan back we are further more disgusted by the criminals behind this for holding Ryan ransom because the reward money basically went to the thieves.
We are still working with authorities and It is our hopes that these criminals can still be brought to justice.
Bryson believes that her client had nothing to do with the robbery and did not profit from the exchange. “I wouldn’t have fucking represented someone who was sharing in the reward,” Bryson said. “He was motivated because he heard that these people he knew were going to dump the ashes unless they received the reward.”
The family has said that there is still an ongoing investigation and they hope whoever is behind the robbery is brought to justice.
