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+--- Thread: The Ted Williams battle draws to a close (/showthread.php?tid=275)
The Ted Williams battle draws to a close - Enchantress - 06-16-2004
From Yahoo!
INVERNESS, Fla. - The daughter and son-in-law of the late Ted Williams have ended their two-year fight to have the baseball great's remains removed from an Arizona cryonics lab.
Bobby-Jo and Mark Ferrell spent close to $100,000 battling Williams' estate and his son, John Henry Williams. But when the money ran out, so did their will to keep trying, and a settlement was signed Tuesday.
"It's over," their attorney, John Heer said Wednesday. "There's just no way they could've afforded to litigate this thing."
Heer said the end was apparent last month after Mike Piazza of the New York Mets (news) offered to help the Ferrells get Williams' remains removed from the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz. When the attorney for Williams' estate warned that intervention could result in legal action, Piazza quickly backed away.
"That was a crushing blow for us," Heer said.
When Williams died in Inverness, Fla., on July 5, 2002, a dispute over his body immediately broke out between Bobby-Jo Ferrell and her half brother.
She said her father's last will detailed his request to be cremated and his ashes scattered in his favorite fishing waters off the Florida coast. But John Henry Williams later produced a scrawled note, allegedly written by his father from a hospital bed, in which the Hall of Famer agreed to cryonics preservation.
Alcor stores human bodies and severed heads in vats of liquid nitrogen in the hope that someday science will be able to bring the dead to life.
John Henry Williams died of leukemia in March and his body reportedly is also being stored at Alcor's facility.
The settlement also ends a lawsuit against the Ferrells. Williams' estate sued in May after they sued Alcor, demanding the company produce paperwork showing that Williams wanted his remains stored at the facility.
Heer said two nephews of Williams are continuing the suit against Alcor.