FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - A niece of the late Tom Carvel, who ran the Carvel ice cream company, has filed a complaint in Fort Lauderdale alleging her uncle was murdered.

Pamela Carvel is not convinced her uncle died of natural causes 17 years ago in upstate New York. She believes he was killed because he found out employees had been stealing millions from his company, Newsday reported Monday.

Carvel also began the legal process to have her uncle's body raised from the Westchester County cemetery to have an autopsy conducted.

"If my uncle was murdered and I walk away from this case without doing the obvious -- getting an autopsy done -- then I really couldn't live with myself for the rest of my life," Carvel, 58, said in a telephone interview. "I need to know if he died from problems with his heart or if it was murder, and everything after that was people profiting from that."

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