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Ted Williams' Family Fights Over His Remains

Associated Press
Published | Updated

BOSTON – The daughter of baseball great Ted Williams says she is fighting with her half brother to prevent her father's body from being preserved in a cryonics lab.

Bobby-Jo Ferrell, Williams' daughter with his first wife, said she plans to "rescue" her father's frozen body from an Arizona cryonics company and fulfill his wish to be cremated.

On Monday, her attorney said Williams' estate will ask a Florida judge this week to decide if the body should be frozen or cremated. Attorneys for the estate did not return a phone message seeking comment.

Ferrell said over the weekend that someone at Hooper's Funeral Home in Inverness, Fla., told her that Williams' body had been moved on Friday to Scottsdale, Ariz. She would not identify the person.

Ferrell said her half brother, John Henry Williams, had her father's body moved from the funeral home to Alcor Life Extension Foundation, where bodies are frozen after death. Ferrell accused her half brother of planning to freeze and preserve their father's DNA, perhaps to sell in the future.

"My dad's in a metal tube, on his head, so frozen that if I touched him it would crack him because of the warmth from my fingertips," Ferrell told Boston's WBZ-TV. "It makes me so sick."

John Henry Williams did not return repeated calls seeking comment. An Alcor spokeswoman said the cryonics company doesn't comment on its "patients."

Williams, the last major league hitter to bat better than .400 in a season, died Friday at the age of 83 near his west-central Florida home. No funeral will be held according to his wishes. Two memorial services are planned on July 22 at Fenway Park in Boston.

Hooper's Funeral Home vice president Dwight Hooper declined to comment on whether the body was still at the funeral home, saying the family has requested privacy.

Ferrell said her brother brought up the idea of freezing their father's body, or a part of it, after his health took a turn for the worse last year. She said she told him it was immoral and against her father's wishes.