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Bodysnatchers in New Zealand strike deal with woman's family

A woman's body snatched from a hearse in a family dispute involving differences between ethnic Europeans and indigenous Maori in New Zealand was buried yesterday in the correct cemetery, police said.

The seizure of Ivy May Ngahooro, 76, an ethnically European woman who had married an indigenous Maori man, had dismayed members of the family, said her niece, Trish Scoble.

Scoble had arranged for Ngahooro to have an Anglican Church ceremony as she had stipulated in her will. But Ngahooro's estranged daughter, Joanne Bennett, arrived at the funeral home with a group of people and removed the casket before it could be taken to the cemetery.

Police spokesman Andrew McAlley said family members had negotiated an agreement for the return of Ngahooro's body early yesterday after a High Court injunction ordered she not be buried in a Maori burial ground.

"It is a positive that both parties were able to come to an amicable resolution," he said.

He said plainclothes police attended the burial in the northern city of Hamilton, the location specified in the dead woman's will.

The raid was the third bodysnatching in recent months in disputes fueled by differing funeral practices among European New Zealanders and indigenous Maori who have intermarried.

In Maori tradition the burial place of a body is determined by negotiation and differences among mixed families can lead to "cultural collisions," Maori expert Ranganui Walker said.

Police say they have limited scope to intervene, because taking a body is not technically a crime.

Scoble, an executor of Ngahooro's will, said she would have been given a Maori burial if she had requested that.

"She didn't want that," Scoble said. "She asked to be buried in Hamilton."
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