JEFFERSONVILLE — Former Henryville and New Albany funeral home director Richard Pyke was sentenced in Clark County Circuit Court No. 4 Monday on 62 counts — 61 of which were felonies — of theft, fraud and for violating the state’s cremation statutes.

Pyke, 45, was sentenced to 16 years in prison, 10 years of which was suspended. He was credited with time served, which is 789 days, or about two years and two months while he awaited sentencing in the Michael L. Becher Adult Corrections Complex. He also was credited for time served for good behavior, which will reduce his prison term by three years.

“I believe in approximately nine to 10 months he could be released and begin his probation term,” said Niles Driskell, Pyke’s attorney, following the sentencing hearing Monday.

Clark County Prosecutor Steve Stewart said it is safe to say that Pyke will be serving less than a year in prison.

Pyke pled guilty to nine counts of insurance fraud, class C felonies; five counts of violating the state’s cremation statute, class D felonies; class A misdemeanors of check deception and conversion; and 45 counts of theft, class D felonies, following a multiagency investigation that began in January 2010 of Pyke-Calloway Funeral Home in New Albany and R.D. Pyke Funeral Home in Henryville.

Police arrested Pyke after authorities found five human bodies and 10 animal carcasses at his Henryville funeral home and some families learned the ashes they received after cremation were not the remains of their loved ones.

“All of us have had loved ones that have passed away and many of us have had the sad responsibility of dealing with funeral directors ... at a time when we are probably most vulnerable in our lives,” Stewart said. “We rely a lot on their expertise, on their honesty and their trust. Unquestionably, Mr. Pyke repeatedly violated that trust with many different people in our community.

“Probably most egregious of all was his cremation policies and procedures. In a few instances, people who had paid to have their loved ones cremated got a urn full of ashes back. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the ashes of their loved one, but it was ashes from God knows where that he scraped out of his furnace.”

Pyke also failed to provide gravestones and monuments people had purchased and collected insurance money by informing the companies a person that held a policy was dead, but they were still alive and he kept the money.

Before the sentence was read in court by Clark County Circuit Court No. 4 Judge Vicki Carmichael, one of the people Pyke defrauded, LaDonna Campbell, spoke.

“I was mostly disappointed,” she said of Pyke. “Basically, Rick’s a good person ... but the devil got in him.”

She added that he still deserved to spend some time in prison for what he had done.

A letter from Pyke’s sister, Marcy Calloway, also was read in court. It talked about the charitable person she knew, but that a bad support system at home affected his long-term ability to make good decisions.

“I believe my brother was a broken man,” she wrote in the letter.

But along with TC Baker, a pastor at Safe Harbor Christian Church, in Memphis, they spoke of Pyke’s history of being a good person that was lost when he committed the crimes for which he was sentenced.

Following the sentencing, Driskell repeated that the judge indicated that the balance of the time Pyke will serve in prison would be served in community corrections. He was uncertain whether or not that meant Pyke would be considered or eligible for the county’s work-release program.

Chief Deputy Prosecutor Jeremy Mull said that Pyke will also have to pay restitution to his victims, but he did not have a total amount of what he will have to pay only that it is “several thousand dollars.”

Pyke also pled guilty to two counts of class C felony insurance fraud in Floyd County, for which he was sentenced to two years in prison followed by two years of probation. He will also have to pay $817.27 restitution to one of the victims.

“All the time that he’s served counts toward this sentence in Clark County,” Driskell said.