The State - News from April 26, 1987

A $16.5-million settlement is to be divided among relatives of 5,000 people whose cremated remains secretly were dumped on an Amador County hillside. Lawyers said the ruling by a Superior Court judge in Sacramento against the Neptune Society excludes almost all others from pursuing individual lawsuits against the society, which had contracted to scatter the remains over the ocean or mountains. The action arose from the 1984 discovery of human ashes on the rural Amador County property of B.J. Elkin, a pilot hired by the Neptune Society to scatter the human ashes. Elkin was fined $6,600 for commingling human remains on his 10-acre property east of Sutter Creek.