An article shared on Facebook claims a morgue worker in Missouri was arrested after she gave birth to the child of a dead man.

Facebook/Screenshot

Verdict: False

There is no evidence of such an event taking place. The article was originally published as satire.

Fact Check:

The website shared in the Facebook post links to a Feb. 14 article posted on the website Lansing Daily bearing the headline, “Morgue worker arrested after giving birth to a dead man’s baby.” According to the article, assistant pathologist Jennifer Burrows with the Jackson County medical examiner services in Missouri was arrested after giving birth to a baby boy whose father was “a man who died in a car accident in March 2017, and whose body she was supposed to autopsy.”

The story, however, appears to be entirely fictional. Burrows, nor anyone else accused of sexually assaulting dead bodies, are mentioned in any of the Kansas City Missouri Police Department’s press releases or elsewhere on the department’s website. A wider internet search turned up no reporting from major media outlets about the alleged incident, except to debunk it.

The article identified Darryl Forté as the Kansas City, Missouri police chief, and while he once held that position, in 2018 he was named interim sheriff of Jackson County, according to the Kansas City Star, further adding to the post’s dubiousness. (RELATED: Did North Carolina Scientists Create A T. Rex Embryo Using Chicken DNA?)

“We opened an investigation into this case in October after we were informed that the suspect may have been sexually abusing corpses,” the article quotes Forté as saying. Check Your Fact, however, found no credible media reports attributing the statement to him.

The article appears to have been first shared by the satirical news website World News Daily Report, which includes a “Disclaimer” section stating it assumes “all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictional nature of their content.” While World News Daily Report includes a clear disclaimer about the satirical nature of the article, Lansing Daily lifted the article word-for-word and shared it without a disclaimer, passing the information off as factual.