Symbols of couple's love stolen in death

Brockton hospital tries to find rings

''If they only knew how much those rings meant to her,'' said Marla Seelye of her mother, Evelyn DeFlavis. (Robert E. Klein for the Boston Globe)

BROCKTON - When Evelyn DeFlavis died two weeks ago at 89, her hands were bent into tight fists by arthritis and the toll of age. On her left hand she wore her wedding ring, a gold band with three diamonds on top, and her engagement ring, which had a single diamond. The rings had slid off-center a bit, so that the precious jewels were pressing against the thin, pale skin of her middle finger.

In 58 years, she had almost never removed the rings given to her by her late husband and worn as symbols, according to family members, of a rare love. Evelyn DeFlavis was to be buried with the rings. That is until someone pried open her hands and took them.

"It was unbelievable to all of us," said Marla Seelye, one of DeFlavis's daughters. "To know that someone out there could take a ring off a dead person."

"I don't know if those rings cost ten thousand dollars or ten dollars," Seelye said. "They represented the bond between my parents, who were like Romeo and Juliet. It's what the rings represent. On the last day of her life, somebody takes it from her. If they only knew how much those rings meant to her. . . . I don't think they would have taken them."

Seelye and her two sisters had gone to the Caritas Good Samaritan Medical Center early on the morning of Sept. 10 to be with their mother as she took her last breaths, but they arrived just moments after she died. The family stayed in the private room with their mother for two hours. Seelye adjusted her mother's ring.

As they left to get some sleep before making funeral arrangements, Seelye said, her husband, Michael Seelye, wondered aloud: "Do you think you should take the wedding rings off and give them to the funeral director?"

Seelye told her husband that her mother was going to be buried with the rings, and there was no point in taking them off. "I didn't give it any thought, just assumed the rings would remain on her hand."

But the next day, a mortician from Dahlberg-MacNevin Funeral Home went to the hospital to take custody of the body and noticed that DeFlavis's hands were straightened out and that the rings were missing.

The hospital staff has been unable to recover the rings, and yesterday gave the results of their internal investigation to the Brockton Police Department. Brockton police did not respond to a request for an interview.

Monique Aleman, a spokeswoman for the hospital, said: "This was a situation in which the family notified us and we immediately launched an internal investigation. We recover over 90 percent of what is lost, and that was our first step, to try to recover the rings if they were lost."

Aleman said Caritas has a specific protocol for postmortem care and keeps a list of any hospital staff member who conducts such care. The hospital's security staff has interviewed several employees regarding the rings, Aleman said. She said she hadn't heard of any similar incidents or allegations in recent years at the hospital.

"This is a very sensitive, sentimental issue, and we are working diligently to accommodate the family in any way that we can," Aleman said.