A well-known funeral home owner and a former funeral home manager in Aiken are under indictment in U.S. district court for enticing a senior customer to sign over her estate to them.
The indictment, unsealed this week in South Carolina U.S. District Court, contends Thomas Allen Bateman Jr. and Cody Lee Anderson devised a scheme to entice an Aiken widow to change her will in 2020.
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Rather than directing her assets to friends and charitable organizations, as her previous 2001 will designated, it left all her assets to Bateman and made Anderson the representative of her estate, according to the indictment.
The indictment says the victim lived in an assisted living community, Shadow Oaks, from 2018 until her death in 2022.
Anderson is owner of George Funeral Home in Aiken. He’s the prominent owner of Aiken’s historic Constantine House where he hosted the United Way of Aiken’s benefit for its county campaign earlier this year.
In 2019, Anderson ran for the S.C. House of Representatives in the GOP primary to replace House District 84 Rep. Ronnie Young, who died in office. Rep. Melissa Oremus won the seat.
The three-count indictment charging Anderson and Bateman with conspiracy and two counts of bank fraud says Bateman transported the victim to George Funeral home during 2020.
Remaining in the front seat of his car, she signed a new will crafted by Anderson and then witnessed by three funeral home employees, it says. The indictment contends Anderson and Bateman did not inform the employees what they were actually doing.
Upon her death in 2022, Anderson had another employee deliver the will to the Hull Barrett law firm to begin the probate process, it said.
The federal indictment doesn’t identify the victim or witnesses to the new will by name, but a prior civil action goes into great detail.
Alleged victim Margaret Crandall was the widow of Savannah River Site physicist Jack Crandall who died in 2012 at age 92. When she died at age 88 in 2022, Anderson and Bateman filed a claim to her estate, then valued at $8 million.
An Aiken attorney and accountant brought an action contesting the legality of the 2020 will within days. Witnesses testified Margaret Crandall was not in her right mind at the time it was signed. An avid genealogist, she would never have declined to have an obituary published at the time of her death, they said.
Jack and “Marge” Crandall took great care in devising a plan for their assets to go to specific relatives, friends and charities, a friend testified.
One of the witnesses to the will, Kenna Hale Conner, said in court fillings her name was not Kenna Conner on the date of the will, May 1, 2020, because she did not marry and take the name Conner until later.
She said Bateman had driven Margaret Crandall into the funeral home portico and asked her and two other employees to witness the signing of the document.
The employees did not know Crandall, who was introduced by name, or see her read the document, she said. It was during the height of COVID so they kept their distance, she said.
An Aiken County court voided the will a few months after Anderson and Bateman filed a claim to her estate. The court also agreed to dismiss other state causes of action filed against the two. The matter of Crandall’s estate was turned over to a special administrator.
