COURTESY ST. LOUIS COUNTY POLICE
Brian Schaake stole a funeral van with a woman's body inside.
A man who stole a hearse that was carrying a woman's body was sentenced Friday to six years in prison.
Brian Schaake, 39, and an accomplice snatched the in-service William C. Harris Funeral Home van on February 11, 2021, as it idled at a QuikTrip in Spanish Lake, according to law enforcement. For the next 24 hours, police searched frantically as tipsters reported sightings around the Metro area.
The van was spotted across the river at a gas station in Godfrey, Illinois, and Schaake and a woman named Christina Kalb were arrested the following morning in Festus. The van and the woman's body were also recovered.
Schaake was considered the main culprit and was charged with a felony count of stealing a motor vehicle. Police said that if he didn't realize there was a body in the back when he stole the van, he figured it out at some point and kept driving around anyway.
COURTESY ST. LOUIS COUNTY POLICE
Surveillance footage of the van was distributed widely in 2021 as police searched for it.
He pleaded guilty in October to the felony and was sentenced Friday in St. Louis County.
"Stealing a hearse with someone's loved one inside of it — it's about as low as one can go," St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell said in a news release.
Kalb was charged with a misdemeanor of tampering with a motor vehicle. That case is still pending. Online court records show she didn't show up at a hearing on January 13.
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