The public knows Robert B. Winston Jr. as the former funeral director at the center of a bizarre story involving the remains of 300 fetuses and 19 newborns found stockpiled in his McKeesport garage in August 2005.

But Mr. Winston's friends see him as a pillar of the community who served on numerous civic boards and virtually gave away his services to grieving families in need, until his own generosity bankrupted him and led to his downfall.

Mr. Winston, 64, pleaded no contest to 19 counts of abuse of a corpse and one count of theft, in relation to the remains of deceased newborns and fetuses found stockpiled in his garage in 2005. Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey A. Manning sentenced him to four years of probation plus court costs.

Mr. Winston has maintained public silence for more than three years as his case wended its way through the court system. But last September, as he was scheduled to plead guilty on several counts, including abuse of a corpse (he wound up withdrawing his plea instead), he contacted the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, wanting to explain how he had come to such a pass. At his request, the newspaper agreed not to publish his remarks until after his sentencing.

"It's not easy to be held up to ridicule and scorn," Mr. Winston said then, in the living room of his one-bedroom apartment in McKeesport, the first public housing he ever had to occupy.

"I never defended myself," he continued. "That's not like me. But I didn't want this to be a sound bite. I want people to understand the full story of what happened to me. I spent my life trying to do what's right, and I find myself in this predicament."

Before all this happened, Mr. Winston served on the boards of the McKeesport Housing Corp., YMCA and civil service commission, and was first vice president of the local NAACP. After the story broke, he said, he became persona non grata.

The downward spiral described by Mr. Winston began with his being a "poor businessman" who let too many clients slide without paying their bills. That led him to put the fees from Magee toward other expenses when he should have been paying a crematorium to dispose of the remains.

"I was robbing Peter to pay Paul," he said. "I wish I had put other creditors off and taken care of this first, but hindsight is 20/20. You don't realize what you're jeopardizing until it's too late."

Mr. Winston also said he was tripped up by an ambiguous state regulation regarding the sale of "pre-need" services. The rule allowed employees to meet with clients to explain the funeral home's services and merchandise, as his secretary, Pauline Kimber, had done for many years. But only licensed funeral directors were permitted to do the actual selling -- the precise definition of which is not completely clear.

In any case, a state board found him in violation of that rule, suspended his license for three years and levied a $3,000 fine.

Without his license, Mr. Winston couldn't legally dispose of the remains in storage, nor could he earn any income to keep his business going. In 2004, he was forced to close his funeral home.

He later lost the building and moved the remains to his garage.

If he were operating today, he might well be able to legally sell goods and services in the same way he and his secretary had done before he lost his license. The rule that tripped him up was clarified in 2004, after two large cemeteries in the state won a federal lawsuit to allow their sales staffs to sell goods and services.

By then it was too late for Mr. Winston.

That, he said, is the thing he can't get over. The state did him a terrible injustice, he said, taking his license for doing what funeral homes always did, and what they are doing now.

According to the state board of funeral directors' written order of Mr. Winston's case, he ignored multiple notices from September 2003 to January 2004 of the charges against him and never defended himself. He claims he never got the notices. State officials declined to discuss specifics of the case, saying they preferred to have the written order speak for itself.

"I kept the remains all that time because they took my license illegally and I always expected to get it back and fulfill my obligation," he said. "If I had buried them or gotten rid of them, that would have been abuse of a corpse. I didn't do that. That's why I withdrew my guilty plea [last year]."

Close friends say there was a third cause for Mr. Winston's downfall: A man who spent much of his life helping others was too proud to admit he needed help himself.

"At one time in McKeesport, all you had to do was mention the name Robert Winston and you could get food, housing, whatever you needed," said the Rev. Sidney B. Walker, pastor of First Baptist Church of Farrell. "There were times I was laid off from the mills. He made my car payment so I wouldn't lose it. He'd help you, but wouldn't let you help him."

Most people who go into the funeral business do so as part of a family tradition. Mr. Winston was an unusual entrant to the profession. A veteran of the 101st Airborne and a former electrician at U.S. Steel's Clairton Coke Works, he developed asbestosis and retired on disability in 1985. Five years later, he settled a lawsuit against the asbestos company for $305,000 and decided to pursue a new career that always fascinated him.

"To see someone sick for a long time, then see them laid out in the funeral home looking better than when they were alive, I always wondered how that was accomplished," he said.

He took courses at the University of Pittsburgh and Community College of Allegheny County, then enrolled at the Pittsburgh Institute of Mortuary Science. At age 49, he said, "I was older than most of the instructors."

He graduated 18 months later with an associate degree and did an internship at Odell Robinson Funeral Home on the North Side.

"When he came here, he was so dedicated to what he was doing that pay was not an issue," said Mr. Robinson. "He just wanted to learn."

Mr. Winston passed the state boards in 1991 and, license in hand, used some of his lawsuit settlement to purchase the Charles W. Newman Funeral Home on Spring Street in McKeesport. That building began to crumble within months, so he bought the former Gowaty Funeral Home at Jenny Lind and Federal streets. From there he operated the Newman-Winston Memorial Chapel from 1993 to 2004.

"In the beginning I had money to put into the business," he said. "People weren't always paying me. Some had hard times and some who could pay just didn't. They'd promise to and make an effort for a few months, then they'd stop, so I'd make up the difference.

"I should have struck a balance, but my heart overtook my head. The community was having hard times. I felt a responsibility to do as much as I could to help."

Too often, he said, the families of the deceased were content to let him absorb the loss. He estimates that 30 to 40 percent didn't pay.

"I stopped counting at $350,000 in bad paper."

Friends knew he was covering his clients' debts, but none realized the extent of his financial peril because he didn't tell them.

"Bobby was too nice of a guy," said the Rev. Walker.

"When my mother died, I went to him thinking we had $5,000 in burial insurance. That's what she thought she was buying all those years, but it turned out to be worth $1,200. Bobby buried her anyway. My dad had zero insurance, but Bobby still buried him. I paid him at a later date, but I was one of the few. If the people who owed him would have paid, he wouldn't be in this predicament."

It wasn't only unpaid funerals that put Mr. Winston in the hole.

"Bobby got the reputation of helping people with whatever they needed," said another friend, Phyllis Brown.

"Bobby is like a brother to me," she said, "but as close as we are, I didn't know his situation until I read it in the paper."

Dressed yesterday in a suit and tie with his hands laced behind his back, Mr. Winston told the judge, "This has been a long ordeal for both myself and these individuals that I let down. I accept responsibility for it and apologize to the hospital and especially to the people I was entrusted to take care of. I'm very sorry."

Later, he said he was still awash in mixed emotions. The one thing he hasn't come to terms with: "Out of all the people that I have helped, nobody ever came to me and said I know I owe you $5,000, here's $50 because I know you need it. That's where my anger lies right now.

"When you try to do your very best, sometimes things befall you that you can't control," he said. "You reach a point where you just have to make the best deal you can. For three years I have been held hostage by this. I haven't slept or eaten properly in all that time. It's time for me to move on."

Several families have filed civil lawsuits against Magee-Womens in connection with the handling of their deceased babies and fetuses by Mr. Winston. Those cases are pending.