Story Photos
 Bill Dolph, owner of Cowlitz View Memorial Gardens in Kelso, holds a bronze vase similar to ones that were stolen from grave sites Monday night. Roger Werth / The Daily News
|
Metal thieves steal from the dead
Friday, January 11, 2008 7:48 AM PST
By Leslie Slape
Printable version
E-mail this articleThere's something about a cemetery that attracts kids, lovers and thieves.
Denise Grendon said she can intimidate the kids by standing outside the office when they drive into Cowlitz View Memorial Gardens. Lovers drive off after a groundskeeper knocks on their car window.
But criminals, they're a craftier lot.
Sometime Monday night, thieves stole four bronze vases from headstones at the Kelso cemetery, said Grendon, the office manager. The total loss is more than $800.
The cemetery had a similar loss right before Memorial Day, when someone stole all the tiny bronze vases on the mausoleum niches, she said.
"We have to replace them," said Grendon, because the customers purchase the vases so they can place flowers on the graves. The vases retract into the ground when not in use, so the thieves must have scouted the cemetery in daylight, she said.
Two of the vases stolen Monday were special veterans vases with stars and a cross, which cost $350 each to replace.
Grendon alerted Metro Metals and Waste Control and made a report to the Cowlitz County Sheriff's Office.
"Mostly, people are very respectful of other folks and their personal properties," Sheriff's Capt. Mark Nelson said. "You can drive by cemeteries and see items people have left there, and nobody messes with them. On occasion, you get folks that are desperate. They literally would steal from a graveyard. They don't respect anything except their particular need."
Lack of respect for the cemetery includes doing drugs, making love or just goofing off. Grendon said during the recent snow, she saw someone sitting on the roof of a moving car.
Suspicious cars start arriving as soon as school is out for the day, she said.
"We've gotten to where we go up and just confront them," she said. "One groundskeeper goes up and knocks on their window, and they take off as fast as they can. One car I walked up to, apparently they were having sex."
She said the "no trespassing" sign gets ignored at night. The groundskeeper walks through every morning to remove condoms and needles and make sure nothing has been stolen.
"He's been here so long he knows where every grave is," she said.
Not every disappearance means a theft. Once she called a family to give them the bad news that their vase was stolen, only to learn that the family took it home for safekeeping. Now she keeps a list in her office of everyone who takes vases home. Monday night's stolen vases weren't on the list.
This is not the first time thieves have raided local cemeteries.
In 2003, sheriff's deputies arrested a Kelso woman when she scrapped a few of the 60 bronze vases that had been stolen from Longview Memorial Park. A Longview woman, who blamed an unidentified man for the theft, pleaded guilty to second-degree possession of stolen property.
In 2004, someone broke in to glass-fronted niches at Longview Memorial Park and stole mementoes. After that, the facilities manager installed a chain to block the access road at dusk.
Past Month's Most Commented Stories