Movie quote. 
Take your dog and get outta here.
Perhaps it’s just a ransom situation. “We stole your daughter’s body. Leave ten thousand dollars under the park bench and we’ll tell you where we hid it.”
Dora: “Why would anybody want to steal a dead, naked body?”
<husband whispers something in her ear>
“On, that’s tacky. That’s really tacky.”
A funny line, but utterly brilliant when delivered by Maggie Smith.
Unless the death involved undetected foul play, & the killer freaked out, panicked, & swiped the body, to prevent an autopsy that nobody was considering.
How old was she?
More to the point, how fresh was she?
See thread title.
Some people can get pretty desperate for any money they can get. Especially drug addicts scrounging for their next fix. We’ve all heard of the desperate thefts they commit just to get $1 here or $1 there. . .
According to this site, the components of a human body, if reduced to separate elements, is worth about $1, or maybe possibly up to $5 if we grant enough generous assumptions.
OTOH, according to this site, the components of a human body, if reduced to separate elements, is worth up to $160. That value derives almost entirely from the potassium, which is apparently abundant enough in the body and valuable enough to contribute about $104 of that value. Sodium is next, with a value of about $29. Other elements adding over $5 each are oxygen, fluorine, and rubidium.
At these values, why are we burying anybody?
I am making fun of the writer, who kept repeating her age throughout the entire article. 
Those values don’t appear to account for any costs, just what your body is worth if it magically degraded into separate contained piles of pure elements. The real value is probably negative.
That you for that; I just added Murder By Death to my Netflix queue.
It’s too hard a sell at the pawn shops and most of the recycling centers? In places other than Baltimore, or course.
Interesting thought. But her name isn’t Mary.
Again?
It’s probably a relative that objects to cremation. Perhaps an older relative like a grandparent or great uncle/aunt. Someone that wants a traditional burial because of religious beliefs. The police probably know who that person is and are trying to get the body returned.
I noticed in this article they stressed that right now it’s a misdemeanor. Perhaps to reassure the person that they won’t get in serious trouble if they return the body. The sooner it’s returned to the family the better. I don’t think they use much embalming for bodies going directly to cremation. So, there is a time factor here.
http://www.people.com/article/julie-mott-santonio-texas-woman-body-stolen
You cannot seriously be that naive.
The girl was young and cute. She presumably died in a hospital or under care of some sort, so the body would have been embalmed quickly and thus very well preserved. There’s only one reason someone would want to surreptitiously steal that body, and it wasn’t her grandma on the way to a clandestine proper Christian burial.
Missed the edit window, but just saw your comment about the procedures for embalming if it’s going for cremation. I’m not sure how they handle that normally, but either way the point is the corpse would have been pretty fresh at the time. The only reason that article even offers the “objecting to cremation” as a possibility is because they want to spare the family’s dignity by not mentioning the much, much more likely event that somebody is fucking their daughter’s corpse barring conclusive proof.
If that’s the case then whoever is responsible needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. That’s too disgusting an act too even contemplate.
What, sometimes you’ve just got to crack open a cold one?