Two Half-Ton Burial Vaults Stolen From Cemetery

Paul Hazelgrove is a veteran of the funeral business, and the case of the missing vaults confounds him.

Two of the concrete chambers went missing from a cemetery over Labor Day weekend. They were last seen Friday stored behind a warehouse at Meadowbrook Memorial Gardens on Shoulders Hill Road along with a third, older vault, a city spokeswoman said. No one noticed they were gone until Tuesday, when just the older one remained.

Hazelgrove, market manager for Dignity Memorial, of which the Suffolk cemetery is part, can’t imagine who would steal such a thing.

“I’ve been in this business over 20 years,” and this is a first, he said.

The vaults weigh about 1,000 pounds each, he said.

“Somebody would need the right type of equipment and a heavy-duty-type truck” to move them, he said.

They’re worth about $300 each, according to a police report. Hazelgrove isn’t aware of a black market for vaults. “We sell them at cemeteries, and funeral homes sell them,” he said.

Source: PilotOnline.com