The Penasco mystery

[Arun Vajpey]

I kind of doubt this story that he would have been buried there if he was truly identified.

As the articles that I quoted in the other Penaco (couple) thread and Dave Gittins' post above say, the body of Victor Penasco was never found, let alone positively identified. However, that situation imposed certain....well, impediments on his widow and so Victor's mother, using her political connection, let it be known that they had identified her son's remains which were buried at Fairview Lawn Cemetery. Opinions seem to differ on whether they actually used an as yet unidentified body of a young man or simply claimed that they had done so; some reports even claim that Victor's mother "bought" th body of that unidentified victim and claimed that it was her son. In any case, a Death Certificate was soon issued and then formalities of the inheritence and the widow Maria Josefa's remarriage went through.

From what I understand the family of him was very well off

That could be an understatement. From what I have read, compared with the state of economy of Spain at the time, the Penasco y Castellanas could have been described as what some people call "filthy rich". I might be wrong, but were they not the couple who had 14 trunks in the Titanic's hold?

 

[Steven Christian]

I will have to read about them. I could see them doing what they had to do with a rule like that. I understand why they had a rule like that, (relatives have knocked each other off to get their wealth thru out history). But you think they would have had a mechanism to deal with something like Titanic. Guess they didn't.