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Tombstone theft a dead giveaway
03/02/2007 13:30 - (SA)
Lincoln, Nebraska - A dead man's storage locker has yielded dozens of tombstones, a macabre collection that police believe represents "a lifetime of stealing".
Some of the 47 gravestones date to the late 1800s; others are relatively recent. Police say they probably came from different cemeteries and were stolen at different times.
The markers were found in the rented storage unit by the family of Clarence Horner, 54, after he died last year.
Police chief Tom Casady said the tombstone collection "probably came from a lifetime of stealing headstones".
Horner had a criminal record that included convictions for drunken driving and failing to appear at a hearing on a vandalism charge.
Two of the tombstones have been matched to graves.
On Thursday, Casady found the mother named on a stone that said only "Infant son of Charles & Janice Schmidt 1965".
Janice Schmidt said she and her husband had always thought of their stillborn baby as Michael Shawn Schmidt, so in 2000 they had put in a new stone with the name.
She was shocked that the original gravestone had turned up in a storage unit.
"To think that it was stolen from wherever it was stolen from, you feel kind of hurt or violated," she said.
The second matched tombstone was a temporary marker for a Shelly Wright-Lair, who died on October 5, 1981.
Someone from a Lincoln cemetery saw the marker on a police website and matched the name to cemetery records.
"We don't know how long it had been missing," said police spokesperson Katherine Finnell, "but a larger one had been put back on the grave."
United States authorities believe Horner died on March 10.
"He had been dead in his apartment for several weeks when maintenance found him, so I don't think he had much contact with family," said Finnell.
- AP
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