On November 21, 2025, Houston police executed a search warrant at an unlicensed funeral home in the city's Third Ward. The warrant was served during an active funeral service. Officers moved the service to another funeral home so they could search the building.
The business is A Community Funeral Home, located on Wheeler Avenue near Live Oak Street. Its owner is Green-Battle. According to Texas Funeral Service Commission records reviewed by FOX 26 Houston, the required licenses for a listed owner of the business were revoked in 2022. The home had been operating without a license for three years.
HPD Lt. Larry Crowson said several families who had used the funeral home accused its personnel of stealing their deceased loved ones' identities. Officers seized financial records during the search. Police found no bodies inside the business but recovered several boxes of cremated remains.
By the Numbers
The allegations escalate
On December 9, 2025, ABC13 Houston reported that a new search warrant had been obtained. This one alleged fraud and tampering with a corpse against the funeral home operator.
The case moved from identity theft to something far broader. On July 21, 2026, Click2Houston reported that the funeral home director had been arrested on felony charges. The allegation: stealing nearly $2.2 million from a dead man's estate.
On July 22, 2026, ABC13 Houston and the Houston Chronicle reported that the operator faces theft and forgery charges, eight months after the initial raid. The Houston Chronicle identified the victim family as Gammon. According to the Chronicle, Gammon's family had hired A Community Funeral Home to handle funeral arrangements and provided Green-Battle with personal information.
On July 23, 2026, ABC13 Houston reported that a "bucket filled with organs" was found during a search of the funeral home. The discovery added potential physical evidence to the tampering with a corpse allegations from the December warrant.
Previous problems
The November 2025 raid was not the first sign of trouble. On November 22, 2025, KHOU reported that the funeral home "had previous problems resulting in charges and fines, records show." Two days later, ABC13 Houston reported that the same funeral home, despite those problems, "was awarded a contract with county in 2019."
The Texas Funeral Service Commission is the state regulatory body responsible for licensing and overseeing funeral homes in Texas. TFSC records showed that the owner's licenses had been revoked three years before the raid. The business continued to operate. Families continued to bring their loved ones there. No public notification system alerted them to the revocation.
The regulatory gap
A Community Funeral Home held a county contract in 2019 and had its licenses revoked in 2022. Between 2022 and November 2025, families trusted the business with their dead. Some of those families now say their loved ones' identities were stolen. One family says $2.2 million was taken from a dead man's estate.
Texas requires funeral homes to be licensed through the TFSC. Running an unlicensed funeral home is a violation of state regulations. But the enforcement mechanism appears to rely on complaints rather than active monitoring. The licenses were revoked in 2022. No action was taken until families started reporting theft in 2025.
HPD coordinated with the TFSC after the November raid. The Harris County District Attorney's Office is handling the criminal case. Green-Battle faces theft and forgery charges. The "bucket filled with organs" discovery adds potential evidence of tampering with a corpse.
The pattern
This case follows a pattern Obitley has documented in other states. In Nevada, McDermott's Funeral Home had its license revoked after inspectors found 146 bodies in unsanitary conditions. In Colorado, Return to Nature Funeral Home accumulated 190 decomposing bodies while telling families they had been cremated. In Connecticut, Philip Pietras embezzled $790,000 in prepaid funeral funds over 15 years.
In each case, warning signs existed before the public learned what was happening. In Houston, the warning sign was specific and documented: the owner's licenses were revoked in 2022. The business kept operating for three more years.
Sources
- FOX 26 Houston (KRIV), "Unlicensed Third Ward funeral home accused of identity theft," November 21, 2025
- ABC13 Houston, "Law enforcement serving search warrant at unlicensed funeral home on Wheeler Street in Third Ward area," November 21, 2025
- KHOU, "Funeral home being investigated for identity theft had previous problems resulting in charges and fines, records show," November 22, 2025
- ABC13 Houston, "Funeral home raided by police was awarded contract with county in 2019," November 24, 2025
- ABC13 Houston, "New search warrant alleges fraud, tampering with a corpse against funeral home operator accused of working without a license," December 9, 2025
- Click2Houston, "Funeral home director arrested on felony charges after allegedly stealing nearly $2.2M from dead man's estate," July 21, 2026
- ABC13 Houston, "Third Ward funeral home operator faces theft, forgery charges months after raid," July 22, 2026
- Houston Chronicle, John Wayne Ferguson, "Third Ward funeral home operator accused of stealing dead man's $2.2M estate," July 22, 2026
- ABC13 Houston, "'Bucket filled with organs' found during search of funeral home," July 23, 2026
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