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Thieves dig up bones at cemetery

Witnesses say they saw two men digging days ago at Orange Hill Cemetery.

By SHANNON COLAVECCHIO-VAN SICKLER
Published August 27, 2005

	[Times photo: Melissa Lyttle]
	Hillsborough County sheriff's detectives, from left, Steve Young and Dale Bunten watch as Dr. Chetna Purohit, arms folded, and Hillsborough's chief medical examiner Vernard Adams examine the remains of a grave that thieves dug up at Orange Hill Cemetery in east Tampa.

TAMPA - Richard Cage drives from his Port Richey home to the Orange Hill Cemetery east of Tampa almost every day to visit his grandmother's grave.

During Thursday's visit, he said, he saw two men digging up the dirt in front of a 75-year-old tombstone. A dark-colored, four-door truck was parked nearby, and a woman sat inside, he recalled.

"I didn't think much of it," Cage, 34, said Friday afternoon. "I assumed they were with the cemetery."

They weren't, say Hillsborough County sheriff's investigators.

The gravediggers apparently dug up the unmarked resting place of a woman named Wonoma Hall, who died Christmas Eve in 1945. They broke open the vault containing her skeletal remains and took off with the bones, said Hillsborough sheriff's spokeswoman Debbie Carter.

They also dug up the grave of William J.M. Clark, who died May 12, 1930, at age 54. Clark's tombstone, which separates his grave from Hall's, was untouched. But the thieves removed some of Clark's bones, Carter said.

"That's crazy," said Orange Hill sexton Jim Rodgers. "Maybe they did it for a ritual or something. Who knows?"

Witnesses say they started digging days ago, yet no one called authorities until now.

Rodgers said he noticed late last week a small hole in front of Clark's tombstone.

"But I thought, maybe the grave just sunk a little bit."

Another man who frequently visits the 77-year-old cemetery later told Rodgers he saw two men in a pickup truck digging at the graves.

When Rodgers came back this week to the cemetery at 4900 E Chelsea St. and saw the tiny hole had been dug into a gaping hole, he alerted the cemetery manager. The manager called authorities Friday morning, according to a sheriff's report.

The Hillsborough County medical examiner removed what was left of Clark's remains Friday and took them into custody while sheriff's investigators look for relatives of Clark and Hall.

"If a family member comes forward," Carter said, "the remains can be placed back appropriately."

Rodgers said he can't recall anyone ever doing something like this at Orange Hill, which opened in 1928 and houses veterans of the Spanish-American War and generations of Tampa families.

"How can they do something like that?" he said. "Me, I couldn't sleep at night after taking somebody's bones."

Anyone with any information is asked to call the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office at (813) 247-8200.

Shannon Colavecchio-Van Sickler can be reached at 813 226-3373 or svansickler@sptimes.com

[Last modified August 27, 2005, 01:13:13]