SANTA ANA — The already bizarre story of a homeless man who was misidentified as a dead transient, only to surprise his family by showing up very much alive, has taken another twist — a third body might be involved. 
 
 A lawsuit filed Tuesday accuses Orange County coroner officials of misidentifying a body found last year outside a Verizon store in Fountain Valley, and says they knowingly released the wrong body to a funeral home to conceal a mistaken identity blunder involving Frankie M. Kerrigan. 
 
 The suit, which seeks $5 million in damages, contends that Fountain Valley fire and police department reports gave descriptions of a body that looked nothing like Kerrigan, and that coroner officials ignored that description when they told Kerrigan’s relatives that he was dead. 
 
 The complaint also accuses the coroner’s office of knowingly passing off another corpse to Kerrigan’s family, hoping no one would notice. 
 
 Officials with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, which runs the coroners office, declined to comment, noting they do not discuss pending litigation. 
 
 In June, after the mix-up was revealed — and when Kerrigan turned out to be alive — the county exhumed a body that was identified as John Dickens, 54, of Kansas. Dickens’ body was cremated and his ashes shipped to his family. 
 
 The Orange County coroner’s office has said Dickens was identified through fingerprints. Reports also show that Dickens’ body, at about 5 feet 10 inches tall, 170 pounds, with light brown hair, generally matches the description of Kerrigan. 
 
 “He fit into the clothes the Kerrigan family bought for Frankie’s funeral and burial,” said V. James DeSimone, a Marina del Rey attorney who is representing Frankie Kerrigan’s family. 
 
 But the lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Orange County Superior Court, offers a possible new twist: The body found in Fountain Valley was neither Kerrigan nor Dickens. Instead, an official description of that body doesn’t match either man. 
 
 “There may be another family who doesn’t know about their deceased loved one,” said DeSimone. 
 
 DeSimone provided the Register with a Fountain Valley Fire Department report that describes the dead man as being about 65 years old and weighing about 250 pounds. A second report, from the Fountain Valley Police Department, says the body was discovered on the ground next to a wheelchair. 
 
 Kerrigan, a 57-year-old transient, is, like Dickens, about 170 pounds. He also has short, light-colored hair. And, like Dickens, Kerrigan does not use a wheelchair, DeSimone said. 
 
 The notion that a third body might be involved isn’t totally new to the Kerrigan story. 
 
 Robinson Ivory, a then 19-year-old Verizon employee who found the body behind the Fountain Valley store, said last year that the person he saw didn’t look like published photos of Frankie Kerrigan. 
 
 “He (the dead man) has long hair… And (he) was bigger than him (Frankie Kerrigan),” Ivory said. 
 
 The ordeal began May 6, 2017, when the Orange County coroner told Francis J. Kerrigan, 82, of Wildomar, that his son, Frankie, had been found dead. The elder Kerrigan says that when he asked coroner officials if he should identify his son’s body he was told it wasn’t necessary because the body had already been identified through fingerprints. 
 
 Meanwhile, Frankie Kerrigan’s sister, Carole Meikle, 56, of Silverado, went to the Fountain Valley location where she’d been told her brother died. Though she was told her brother died peacefully, she found a death scene covered in blood and dirty blankets, according to the lawsuit. 
 
 There were other inconsistencies as well, the Kerrigans claim. 
 
 Meikle, according to the lawsuit, was told that her brother had been found with a wallet that contained $56 and an identification card that confirmed his identity. But when his possessions were delivered to the family the wallet had no money or identification. What’s more, Frankie Kerrigan’s most prized possessions, which he carried with him at all times — a black attache case, a watch and a favorite writing pen — were missing. 
 
 Still, the Kerrigan family held a funeral. On May 12, at Holy Family Catholic Cathedral in Orange, about 50 people came from as far away as Washington state and Las Vegas to mourn Frankie Kerrigan. 
 
 Then, on May 23, Bill Shinker, of Stanton, a longtime family friend who had been a pallbearer at the funeral, called the elder Kerrigan to say that Frankie was alive and standing on the porch of his former home, also in Stanton. The younger Kerrigan soon got on the phone and said, “Hi, Dad, how are you doing?” 
 
 On June 7, the Orange County coroner’s office confirmed that the man erroneously identified and buried as Frankie Kerrigan was Dickens. 
 
 DeSimone believes Dickens’ body was not recovered outside of the Verizon store, and instead a third, unknown individual was found at the location. 
 
 “The coroner’s office realized the body recovered… looked nothing like Frankie sometime after informing (Francis) Kerrigan of Frankie’s death, but before releasing a body to (the funeral home),” DeSimone said, adding that the body they did release “looked close enough” to Kerrigan. 
 
 Chapman Funeral Home, named as a co-defendant in the lawsuit, also declined to comment. 
 
 No explanation has been provided from the Sheriff’s Department regarding how the mix-up occurred. 
 
 If the Kerrigans’ version of the mix-up is true, and a third body was found, it raises some questions: Where did the body found in Fountain Valley go? And who was he? 
 
 “It’s not that hard to keep track of dead people,” DeSimone said. “It’s not like they move around very much.” 
 
 RELATED: 
 
 Man believed dead is alive: Family buries wrong person after mix-up by coroner’s office 
 
 Wrong man buried? Coroner I.D.s body; wants to talk with family 
 
 Orange County Sheriff’s Department investigation into misidentified body may take up to a year 
 
 Body of man misidentified by Orange County coroner’s office removed from grave 

 "That was sacred ground to us. I had to tell 50 people who came to the funeral … and relive the shock of this 50 times over," Meikle said. "The death is still real to us. Now he's arrived back and we're still in the grieving process."
– "It's not that hard to keep track of dead people,” attorney James DeSimone tells the Orange County Register. “It’s not like they move around very much.” And yet, a California family who buried a stranger they believed to be their son and brother last May—who later turned up very much alive—after a mix-up by coroner officials now says an unidentified third body was also involved. "It's a horror show on top of a horror show," 82-year-old Francis Kerrigan tells the Los Angeles Times. It started when the Orange County coroner told Francis that his 57-year-old homeless son, Frankie Kerrigan, had been found dead outside a Verizon store. Francis was told Frankie had been identified by his fingerprints. Frankie's sister, Carole Meikle, says she was told by the coroner that a wallet found with the body contained Frankie's ID. But 11 days after Frankie's funeral, he turned up alive at the house of a family friend. The coroner admitted the mix-up, revealing the buried body belonged to 54-year-old homeless man John Dickens. But in a lawsuit filed Tuesday, Frankie's family claims the body found outside the Verizon store didn't belong to Dickens, either. The suit states that reports from police and fire departments, as well as statements from Verizon employees, describe the body of a man about 65 years old and 250 pounds with long, dark hair. Frankie and Dickens are approximately 170 pounds, and Frankie has short, light hair. The suit, which seeks $5 million in damages, claims officials released Dickens' body because it looked enough like Frankie and "no one would care because the deceased were homeless." The reason for the initial mix-up is unknown, as is the identity of the possible third body.