Monday, June 10, 1996

Cemetery objects in Texas finding a thriving black market

By Associated Press

TERRELL (AP) - The theft of cemetery ornaments in Northeast Texas is fueling a thriving black market across the state, authorities say.

"A lot of people want that kind of stuff and are willing to pay for it. A dealer can buy a piece for $200 or $300, or even go to a cemetery and get it himself for nothing, and then turn around and sell it for $1,700-$1,800 or more," said Terrell police Detective Richard Peavey, who has been investigating the thefts there. "This is happening all over Texas."

Terrell police say they want to question two Dallas-area antique dealers about the removal of statues, marble urns and wrought-iron fences in Terrell as well the disappearances of similar angel statues from cemeteries in Paris and Forney.

A warrant was issued late last month for the theft of an angel statue from Evergreen Cemetery in Paris, but police say they fear that the dealer named in the warrant and his business partner may both have left Texas after a spate of publicity about the cemetery heists.

Similar thefts have been reported elsewhere in northeast Texas, but officials say the snatching of cemetery gravestones and art is not unique to the Terrell case or to any region of the state.

Karen Thompson, president of Save Texas Cemeteries, a state preservation group founded in 1994, said her organization receives reports of thefts and vandalism each month.

She said her group is trying to encourage inventories of each of the state's 50,000 cemeteries and burial ground and already has found an "amazing" number of missing grave items in the few surveys already completed.

"I'm constantly stopping in antique places where not only can you buy headstones that the dealers claim were 'just dropped off' by someone, but also the ornate iron fences," she told The Dallas Morning News.

In the Austin area alone, she said, cemeteries have suffered a rash of thefts from people who apparently want gravestones to top with Plexiglas for unusual coffee tables.

In the East Texas case, police first learned about the thefts from Davis Griffith-Cox, a one-time art professor, dedicated cemetery buff and sixth-generation Terrell resident.

Griffith-Cox said he noticed the first theft - a bronze birdbath sitting beside a statue of St. Francis - about a year ago in Oakwood Memorial Park, where generations of his family are buried.

Through the winter and spring of 1996, he said, other significant items disappeared, a wrought iron bench from beside the grave of the town's first mayor, a 3-foot-high statue carved in the likeness of a six-year-old child buried in 1888. In one of the most recent thefts, a marble statue of an angel in flight was hacked off the grave of another child, buried in 1896, and then taken despite Griffin-Cox's efforts to rescue and save it, he said.

Police said Griffith-Cox carefully documented each theft, and kept up with their investigation - maybe too well.

Ultimately, investigators said, finding and prosecuting whoever took the grave markers may be difficult because Griffith-Cox won't quit trying to draw attention to the case and the suspects.
"That's the reason these guys have fled the state," Peavey said.