By EMILY CUTTS

NORTHAMPTON —  Former South Hadley funeral director William W. Ryder pleaded guilty to embezzling more than $400,000 in prepaid funeral arrangements in Hampshire Superior Court Friday morning and was sentenced to jail, two-and-half years after authorities shut down his funeral home and launched an investigation into its business affairs.

Meantime, Ryders’s defense attorney said in court that the state Attorney General’s Office has worked out a settlement agreement that will compensate the nearly six dozens clients who lost thousands of dollars making funeral arrangements with Ryder.

Ryder, 55, operated the former Ryder Funeral Home in South Hadley. He admitted to embezzling about $431,625 from 69 clients between 2001 and 2014 by pleading guilty to 69 counts of larceny greater than $250. He also pleaded guilty to five charges of improper disposition of a human body and one charge of life insurance fraud.

Ryder originally pleaded not guilty to the charges in August 2015.

Judge Richard Carey sentenced Ryder to two years in the Hampshire County Jail and House of Correction on a larceny charge with one of those years stayed during a five-year probation period. He also received six months of jail time on each of the improper disposition charges, time to be served concurrently with the year in jail.

“It’s a case that I think is cloaked with sadness on all sides,” Carey said.

It took First Assistant Northwestern District Attorney Steven Gagne more than 10 minutes to read through the dozens of larceny charges brought against Ryder. During that time, Ryder sat with his eyes downcast on the stand.

As Gagne went through the victims’ names and the amounts of money they had lost, one person in the courtroom galley said quietly, “That’s me.”

In the more than 20 victim statements provided in court, Carey said most of the elderly citizens involved talked about the anxiety and worry Ryder’s conduct caused them.

“These concerns weren’t the least bit self-centered,” Carey said. “They thought that they had put their affairs in order.”

In court, Ryder’s defense attorney Alan Rubin, of the Committee for Public Counsel Services, gave the judge an explanation of his client’s actions, saying that on the surface Ryder presents as an easy-going, happy person but it was “a mask and cover for a deep seated depression and sense of failure.”

“What I think we have here, fundamentally, is a person who tried to follow in the footsteps of a strong father,” Rubin continued.

The Ryder Funeral Home had operated in the Falls section of South Hadley since the 1950s and had been founded by Ryder’s parents, the late Ruth E. and Myron W. Ryder Jr.

Rubin said that William Ryder had a substance-abuse problem, primarily alcohol, and that added to his downward spiral.

“He clearly lost control and he acknowledges it,” Rubin said. As a result, Rubin said, the business closed and Ryder lost everything — his business, his pride and his prestige.

Speaking outside the courtroom later, Gagne said Ryder’s embezzling of funds was not “a one-time lapse or somebody down on their luck acting out of desperation.”

“This was his business practice,” Gagne said. “At first perhaps he thought it would just be temporary, kind of plugging up of the crack in the dam, but it went on and on to the tune of $450,000.”

“At a point, it must have became clear to him that he’d never catch up but he just kept digging the hole deeper and deeper,” Gagne continued.

All parties agreed that Ryder’s actions were not done maliciously.

Karen Eaton, of Granby, and her husband were among several of Ryder’s victims in the courtroom.

“We put our trust in Mr. Ryder,” Eaton said. “We knew him as Willie.”

Eaton said the couple did not want their two sons to have to deal with their funeral arrangements and had paid around $5,000 to Ryder.

“What he did to our trust, that hurt more than taking our money,” Eaton said.

After this experience, Eaton said she didn’t want to trust any funeral director and was unsure whether the jail sentence was enough.

The Ryder Funeral Home was shut down in May 2014 by local and state officials after regulators found several bodies improperly stored and in various states of decomposition. Investigators were tipped off to the decomposing bodies by a former employee who worked as an embalmer. An investigation into the handling of clients’ money ensued.

According to prosecutors, Ryder deposited funds from the prepaid funeral arraignments directly into his own business account and used them for his own personal and professional benefit.

Gagne did not ask the judge to order restitution because of the settlement ironed out by the state Attorney General’s Office.

In the aftermath of the funeral home’s closure, the AG’s office received injunctions against Ryder and froze over $200,000 of his assets, Gagne explained.

Rubin told the court an agreement was reached with the Attorney General’s office Thursday night which would “hopefully make whole all those involved.”

“It is expected that all of the victims of Ryder’s fraud will be compensated,” Mary Carey, a spokeswoman for the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office, wrote in a statement later Friday.

Ryder was escorted from the courtroom in handcuffs after a request by Rubin to stay the sentence for the weekend was denied.

Outside the courthouse, Rubin said very little about the case. He said Ryder’s family members who attended the court hearing were doing “as you would expect.”

There are still pending civil cases against Ryder.

In October 2016, a jury awarded $150,000 in damages to three siblings in the first of eight lawsuits in which Ryder is named as a defendant.

Lincoln E. White Jr. of Granby, Ann Marie Sapowsky of Ware and Kimberlee Felper of Grafton had sued Ryder following their veteran father’s botched burial. Each of the siblings was awarded $50,000.

Ryder’s former wife, Susan M. Ryder, also faced criminal charges following the closure of the funeral home.

Her case was settled with a $106,533 restitution payment to an insurance company.

Emily Cutts can be reached at ecutts@gazettenet.com

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