An engraver to the royal family who buried his father in the garden of their village home is suing the police for alleged wrongful arrest and the distress of having his body exhumed.
Pierre Frenette and his wife, Donna, said it was the dying wish of his father, Peter, to be buried in their garden alongside his own father’s grave.
The couple claimed armed officers raided their home and dug up the body two days later.
The couple were arrested on suspicion of concealing a body and held in custody for 36 hours. They were not been charged with any offence but two years later have been told police investigations are continuing.
The Frenettes are suing the chief constable of Cambridgeshire constabulary along with three officers. The couple claimed they were arrested within the five-day limit for registering a death, which they were preparing to complete.
Cambridgeshire constabulary denied wrongdoing and said in a court document that “the unlawful disposal of a body following an unregistered death is a criminal offence”.
The government website says deaths must be registered within five days, or eight days in Scotland. For advice on “private land burials” it refers to the Natural Death Centre. The centre states that the person responsible for the burial “must obtain a certificate of authority for burial from the registrar of births and deaths”. There are environmental rules on the siting of graves to prevent the contamination of groundwater and a recommendation to “contact your local council to let them know you are planning a home burial”.
There do not appear to be official statistics on the number of garden burials. Diana, Princess of Wales, was buried on an island in the grounds of her family’s Althorp estate in Northamptonshire in 1997. Kirstie Allsopp, 54, the presenter of the Channel 4 show Location, Location, Location, said she buried her mother, Lady Fiona Hindlip, 66, in the back garden of their Dorset home, close to her pony, in 2014. She said she regretted the decision when her mother’s plot filled with water after a heavy downpour.
Diana, Princess of Wales, was buried on an island in the Round Oval lake on the Spencer family estate
JEROME DELAY/AP
• My mother’s funeral was like a dark comedy, says Kirstie Allsopp
Frenette, 60, is an artist and engraver who has completed decorations on guns for King Charles, the late Queen Elizabeth and the late King Hussein of Jordan and on a watch for Sir David Beckham, the former England football captain. His wife, 51, is a paramedic.
Frenette’s 80-year-old father had prostate cancer which spread and became terminal in September 2023, the couple said. At Peter Frenette’s request the pair took him from Hinchingbrooke Hospital near Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, to die peacefully at the home of his former wife, Sylvia, 79, in a sheltered housing block, the couple added.
Donna Frenette said: “We took him home from hospital because there was nothing more they could do. He died at 3.20pm and 90 minutes before the family doctor had come to visit to administer pain relief and said that death was imminent.”
She said she gave her father-in-law a small dose of morphine prescribed by the GP rather than wait for a nurse because her father-in-law was in intense pain and she was trained to give injections.
“Because of my job as a paramedic I knew we had five days to register the death,” she said. “It was not a sudden death.”
The next day the couple took the body to their home. That night they buried him in a grave dug by Frenette next to his grandfather’s remains. The grave is also close to the burial places of his father’s three Parson Russell terriers, Tuppence, Buble and Sykes, and his three-legged cat named Trio.
The Frenettes are representing themselves in a legal action under the “natural common law of the land” at the Central London county court. Judge Alan Saggerson has scheduled an eight-day trial next November.
The grave of Peter Frenette, who was born in 1942
TERRY HARRIS FOR THE TIMES
Frenette said his grandfather, Edward, was originally buried in the garden of his father’s home 45 years ago. He said his grandfather was following the tradition in Sicily, from where he came to Britain before the Second World War. When his father moved abroad in 2015, his grandfather was re-interred in the middle of their 100ft garden.
Frenette said his mother, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, was arrested at her sheltered accommodation after she refused to tell a nurse the location of her former husband two days after the burial.
Police then sealed off their village, Hail Weston, before officers raided their home, leaving neighbours concerned they might have been involved with drugs or murder, the couple claimed.
Frenette claimed the police left behind the contaminated blanket in which his father was buried but kept mementos from the couple and their two adult daughters that were placed in the grave. Mrs Frenette said officers took her wedding ring, which she had removed for gardening, a claim denied by the police.
Frenette said his father’s body was “very decomposed” when it was returned six weeks later and they were able to rebury him.
His wife said they were both so traumatised that they had dropped their own plans to be buried in the garden. She said she would now be buried in a woodland cemetery while her husband would be cremated.
The couple are claiming “substantial damages” for alleged wrongdoing including trespass, false imprisonment and emotional distress. In a court document they said: “We are unable to grieve our loss. What Cambridgeshire police have done to us is barbaric. The foundation of our lives has been rocked to the very core.”
Cambridgeshire constabulary said in a court defence document that the couple were initially arrested on suspicion of preventing a lawful burial, concealing a death and obstructing a police officer. They were further arrested the next day for the alleged possession of a firearm and cannabis after a search of their home.
“The unlawful disposal of a body following an unregistered death is a criminal offence,” the force said. “The law exists for good reason, preventing the concealment of deaths without oversight into the circumstances of the same.”
The force claimed the GP “had impressed upon the family that they must call the surgery when Peter died”.
“Their failure to do so, and their acts thereafter in transporting and burying Peter’s body following his unregistered death, gave rise to a reasonable suspicion that the [Frenettes] had committed the crime of preventing a lawful burial and/or concealing a death,” it said.
The force said a nurse had called police after Sylvia Frenette refused entry to her home.
“Sylvia stated that Peter Frenette had died, but there was no record of that death being registered,” the police said. “Either Peter was alive, in which case he would have been in a great deal of pain and needed assistance, or he had died but the same had not been registered as the law required.”
The force said it was necessary to arrest the couple “to ensure a prompt and effective investigation, prevent collusion and the contamination or destruction of evidence and to effect a search”.
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