Radio legend Casey Kasem’s determined daughter Kerri visited her father’s unmarked grave in Norway for the first time — a decade after his death — as she fights a desperate battle to bring his remains home, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
Kerri Kasem’s journey to the gravesite comes just days after the tenth anniversary of the tragic American Top 40 host’s June 15, 2014, demise at age 82.
It also marks the start of a renewed push to snatch her father’s remains from the controlling clutches of his widow, Jean Kasem, who had spirited his body away from his grieving children despite their vehement objections.
“We would like to bring my father’s body back home,” Kerri told RadarOnline.com. “This is his home. This is where he belongs.”
Kerri, 51, said she’s hired an attorney to investigate Norway’s exhumation laws — the country previously denied the children’s 2014 request to exhume Kasem — and to challenge American laws that give former Cheers star Jean, 70, complete control over the remains.
Casey — who famously voiced goofball Shaggy Rogers on the ’70s cartoon series Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? — was suffering from dementia when Jean was accused of virtually kidnapping him from his Santa Monica, Calif., nursing home bed in May 2014.
He eventually died at a Tacoma, Wash., hospital from a staph infection related to a gruesome bedsore on his back. For months, Casey’s corpse lay rotting in a Montreal, Canada, funeral home.
Jean, who had daughter Liberty with Casey, eventually whisked her husband’s body to far-off Oslo, where he was buried in the Vestre Gravlund cemetery after the sitcom alum told authorities that she’s part Norwegian and planned to move there.
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But Jean — who denies Kerri’s claims — still resides in an $11 million Beverly Hills mansion! Kerri told RadarOnline.com she plans to expose Jean’s negligence in Norway and help convince the government to release the remains to her and her siblings Mike and Julie.
“By law the remains go to Jean,” Kerri admitted. “But this doesn’t make any sense. She moved my father under false pretenses. Under lies. We’ve given Norway everything it needs to know that this was a complete fabrication of the truth. She’s not even Norwegian!”
For years, Casey’s three children from his first marriage to Linda Myers have insisted their beloved dad wanted to be buried at one of the celeb-packed Forest Lawn Memorial Parks.
“I still plan to bury my father at Forest Lawn in Los Angeles where he wanted to be buried all along,” Kerri declared. “I’m still doing everything in my power to make that happen. I have not given up!”