April 1999 - 19th Century Covington Cemetery Relocated for Roadwork

Roadwork relocates 17 graves
Peggy Kreimer - The Kentucky Post (Northern KY~Metro Cincy) ~ 4/21/1999

The occupants of a little 19th century cemetery at Ky. 17 and Hands Pike in Covington got a new address this week - the 15 graves were moved to Independence Cemetery, about four miles south on Ky. 17.

The property near Hands Pike is being developed, and part of the land was sold to the state to make room for widening Ky. 17.

"With the new road plan, the graves were going to wind up being right next to the highway," said Herbert Moore Jr., who is developing the land with his brother, Charlie Moore.

The Moores contacted the relatives of people buried in the cemetery and arranged to move the entire cemetery to Independence Cemetery, retaining its configuration and the graves' relationships to each other.

The process was two years in the making, including state permits and required pubic notices that had to run repeatedly in local newspapers, said Herbert Moore. They hired a New York-based company that specializes in moving cemeteries to exhume the bodies and move them to the new cemetery.

"They were very professional and thorough and very sensitive to the family members who were there," said Tom Honebrink, general manager of Highland Cemetery and Independence Cemetery.

"We wanted to maintain the absolute dignity of these people," said Moore. The Moores paid for the new cemetery plots, concrete vaults and burial services. All the headstones are being cleaned and will be replaced over the graves in a few weeks. Some new headstones will be carved for graves that were not marked in the old cemetery.

"They did this very respectfully," said Honebrink. "They didn't cut any corners on expense."

The cemetery held graves of people who died from 1830 through 1900, and included several infants. Moore said descendants of those reburied were at the gravesites on Monday.

June 1999 - Fetus Taken & Grave Disturbed at KY-WV Family Cemetery

Fetus taken when graves disturbed near Inez
Greg Kocher ~ Lexington Herald-Leader ~ 6/18/1998

Martin County police are investigating the apparent removal of a fetus from one grave and the disturbance of another plot in a family cemetery on the Kentucky -West Virginia border.

"It's sick," said Martin County Sheriff Darriel Young. "I don't know why anybody would want to do something like that."

Young said the grave of "Baby Evans," a 41/2-month-old fetus who was miscarried in March, was dug up in the Dempsey family cemetery in Warfield, a small community about 10 miles east of Inez.

The parents, Jerry and Margaret Evans of Lovely, had placed the fetus in a shoebox and buried it about 18 inches in the ground, Young said.

They could not be reached yesterday.

A visitor to the cemetery discovered June 28 that the grave had been dug up.

"It's empty. The dirt is out of it and everything," Young said.

In addition, earth on the grave of Carl Fitzpatrick, who died during surgery at age 19 in 1941, appears to have been dug up and then replaced, Young said.

It is not known whether Fitzpatrick's remains are intact.

"I'd say it's just a bunch of kids doing a prank, but you can never be too sure about these things until you do a full investigation," said Martin County Coroner Rex Endicott.

Young said no arrests have been made, but his office is treating the incident as a criminal investigation. Fitzpatrick's family wants to exhume his body and move it to a Martin County location where they can keep a closer eye on the plot, said Anna Francis Perry, 74, one of four surviving sisters.

"I tell you, I can't put it into words," Perry said, her voice breaking. "It's a hard thing to deal with."

Bill Phelps of Phelps Funeral Home in Inez said he has sought permits from the state Department of Vital Statistics that would allow him to disinter, transport and re-inter Fitzpatrick's remains in the new location next week.

Some Martin Countians wonder whether the occult is involved. Young said a discarded couch in the cemetery was spray-painted with a pentagram, a five-pointed satanic symbol. In addition, the phrases "Turn your back on God" and "Anton lives" - an apparent reference to Church of Satan founder Anton Szandor LeVay, who died last year - were spray-painted on the couch.

Rick Roberts, a Paintsville paralegal who monitors occult activity, said a different grave near Warfield was robbed in 1992. Several of those buried in that cemetery were Hungarian miners who had come to work in the Kentucky coalfields, Roberts said. Phelps said the Dempsey cemetery has about 120 graves, some a century old.

He couldn't say what the motive for grave robbery would be.

"Who would know?" Phelps said. "How could you get into somebody's mind?"