A Massachusetts family is looking for answers after their late mother’s grave was allegedly moved without their knowledge.
Cassandra Mador and her siblings lost their mother, Laura Howard, in an unsolved homicide in 2013,according to WLKY. She was 53 years old. Since then, her grieving children have visited her grave at Evergreen Cemetery in Kingston often, finding comfort in its presence.
But during one trip to the plot, they noticed their mother’s headstone was gone, WLKY reported.
“They called me and said, ‘Cass, did mom move?’ ”Mador told WCVB. “I thought they were insane and that they’d lost their minds. How could her plot move?”
But sure enough, their mother’s headstone had been moved back one row and over, according to WCVB. Mador said officials with the private cemetery told her Howard was initially buried in the wrong plot and “they had to make their records right and relocate her.”
She said that the officials never told her family this would be happening, and did not apologize for the mistake.
Paul Gallagher, Kingston town clerk and burial agent, tells PEOPLE he had no knowledge of the move because Evergreen Cemetery is privately owned.
“They are required to obtain a burial permit if they exhume a body and move it within the cemetery. They didn’t do that,” Gallagher tells PEOPLE.
He says the family told him that they were visiting their mother’s plot over the holidays when they found that her headstone had been moved to another area. In their mother’s place, they saw a new headstone with someone else’s name.
“I have yet to confirm whether or not the body has actually been moved,” Gallagher says.
Evergreen Cemetery officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment from PEOPLE.
Howard was found dead in her Florida home more than five years ago. Mador says the moving of her plot has only added to the family’s grief.
source: people.com
