Westvale Coroner's Officer Sentenced After Looting £180,000 From the Dead

On 24 February 2026, Howard Tremaine — a senior coroner's officer at the Westvale Coroner's Service in Bristol, England, having held the role since 2008 — was sentenced at Bristol Crown Court to 8 years and 2 months' imprisonment after pleading guilty on 11 December 2025 to 134 counts of theft contrary to section 1 of the Theft Act 1968, one count of misconduct in public office at common law, and four counts of false accounting under section 17 of the Theft Act 1968, following an investigation by Avon and Somerset Police into the systematic looting of deceased persons' effects across eight years. Between 2016 and mid-2024, Tremaine attended sudden-death scenes across Bristol, North Somerset, and South Gloucestershire and removed cash, jewellery, and valuables before completing the official PF-2 property forms required to log and seal a deceased person's effects, ensuring stolen items never appeared in the coroner's records. Across 134 deaths — primarily elderly residents living alone — he took an estimated £181,400 in total, including £41,000 in cash from a Clifton flat and 19 inherited gold sovereigns from a Bristol bungalow. A search of his home in Henleaze recovered 73 unsold items stored in a padlocked Howdens kitchen unit in his garage, each sealed in a ziplock bag and tagged in Tremaine's own handwriting with the name and date of the deceased from whom it was taken. The investigation was triggered when the niece of a Bristol man reported that her late uncle's wife's engagement ring — a 1.2-carat solitaire he had promised her for a decade — was missing from the property handed over after his death. That ring was found on the second tray of Tremaine's garage unit, tagged in his handwriting: Bedingham, 14/3/24. Disclaimer: This video is a dramatization based on real events. Some visual content was created with artificial intelligence assistance. Some details have been fictionalized and all names have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved.