Part 3: The Collapse Files – Leadership at the Breaking Point
The Texas Funeral Service Commission did not just lose its way. They put someone with a trail of lawsuits in charge and acted shocked when the whole thing went off the rails.
An $8 million verdict for a lost body. A bill to make the next disaster cheaper. A board that sat silent while the agency’s credibility went up in smoke and nobody inside seemed interested in putting the fire out.
I am speaking here as someone who has worked every corner of this business: embalmer, funeral director, consultant, and as an industrial and organizational psychologist who has spent years studying what happens when leadership sells out its own mission. The patterns here are not bad luck. They are exactly what you get when ethics rot from the top down and no one in the room has the backbone to stop it.
1) A Business Bleeding Credibility
Before we even get to her TFSC role, look at the wreckage under her watch at Mission Park.
2015 Lost Body: Julie Mott’s remains vanish into thin air. Jury awards $8 million for mental anguish.
2020 Wrong Body Buried: A grieving family lays a stranger to rest by mistake.
2021 Ashes Destroyed: A backhoe crushes an urn, scattering a mother’s ashes into the dirt. Jury awards over $1 million.
My expert analysis: In IO psychology, this is called a systemic reliability collapse, meaning repeated catastrophic errors happen because leadership either cannot or will not fix the processes. In funeral service, your product is trust. When you lose a body, bury the wrong one, and grind someone’s ashes into the mud, you are not just making mistakes. You are telling the world your standards are negotiable.
2) The Fox in the Henhouse
While still knee deep in lawsuits, Tips was chairing the TFSC and pushing Senate Bill 2238, a 2025 proposal to cap non-economic damages in funeral lawsuits at $500,000.
Who supports a bill like that? A funeral home that just got hit with an $8 million verdict for losing a young woman’s body. Half a million would not even cover the legal bills, but it would make the next disaster a lot cheaper.
My expert analysis: This is ethical fading in real time, when the line between public duty and personal gain disappears and leaders convince themselves self-protection is the mission. In regulator terms, that is putting the fox in charge of the henhouse and handing it a spice rub.
3) Retaliation as a Management Strategy
Executive Director Scott Bingaman sounded the alarm, calling TFSC a “listless ship.” He was fired.
The board sat silent.
Staff attorneys and a deputy director who backed him were fired too.
Then came cease and desist letters from the Texas Attorney General’s office, the bureaucratic equivalent of duct taping mouths shut.
My expert analysis: This is the death of psychological safety, the belief you can tell the truth without committing career suicide. When that is gone, people stop speaking up, misconduct hides in plain sight, and the only currency left is loyalty to whoever is holding the axe.
4) The Cowardice of Silence
Tips did not burn this place down alone. The board was right there, holding the matches.
Every purge, every conflict of interest, every blow to the agency’s credibility happened in plain sight. And the people charged with oversight sat on their hands.
My expert analysis: Well, it might be the bystander effect, or something close to it, but let’s be honest. They did not mind if looking the other way also padded their own bottom line. The more people shared the responsibility, the less likely anyone was to step up. Add groupthink, and you have a board that mistakes inaction for neutrality. In reality, it is enabling.
5) The Public Trust Bill Comes Due
Funeral service runs on one thing: trust. Families hand us their dead believing we will treat them with dignity and accuracy.
When leadership betrays that trust and the board covers for it, the damage does not stop at one company. It poisons the well for the entire profession.
My expert analysis: This is the erosion of social capital, the invisible currency that lets this profession operate without constant suspicion. Once it is gone, every regulation gets tighter, every client second guesses you, and the whole industry pays for the sins of the few.
6) A Pattern You Cannot Ignore
The lawsuits against Mission Park are not isolated mistakes. They follow a pattern of cutting corners, dodging accountability, and sidestepping transparency. From disappearing remains to botched burials to destroyed ashes, the story is the same. It is a willingness to gamble with the trust of grieving families and to fight harder to protect the brand than to fix the cause.
Now add the reports of missing or misplaced files during critical moments at TFSC. Records that should have been available were suddenly unavailable. Complaint files went missing. Key documents could not be located when needed most.
My expert analysis: In organizational psychology, repeated unethical outcomes under the same leadership are rarely accidents. They grow from a climate where the rules bend for convenience and where the fear of admitting fault outweighs the duty to make things right. When disappearing paperwork joins the list, you are no longer talking about bad luck. You are looking at an intentional system of concealment.
Bottom Line
This was not a bad week at the office. This was a slow-motion collapse powered by conflicted leadership, a board allergic to accountability, and a culture that punished truth tellers.
From where I stand as a funeral professional, embalmer, and industrial and organizational psychologist, the TFSC is now a living case study in how ethical drift, group cowardice, and retaliatory leadership can dismantle an agency from the inside out.
The fix is simple to say and hard to do: strip the conflicts, replace the enablers, protect the whistleblowers, and rebuild the trust you set on fire before the public decides you cannot be trusted with their dead.
Travis Newman, Founder, HCHO Resources: Consulting, expert witness, and organizational crisis management for the funeral profession
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