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E-mail This StoryCemetery thefts leave Melissa family distraught, afraid, disturbed
BY DANNY GALLAGHER, McKinney Courier-Gazette
Dana Miller of Melissa has three generations of her family buried in Melissa Cemetery. She still visits the cemetery on holidays and weekends because her family has a lot of history there.
“We have people who moved here from Kentucky back when they settled in this area,” Miller said.
Part of that history was stolen recently when an unknown suspect pried one of the bronze plaques off of her mother’s headstone. It’s just one of a number of recent cemetery thefts that have occurred in the last two weeks.
So far, two plaques have turned up missing at the Melissa Cemetery and five plaques were stolen from the Highland Memorial Cemetery also in Melissa, Highland Cemetery Association President Diane Miller said on Monday.
Two suspects have been arrested in connection with the Highland Cemetery thefts. Collin County sheriff’s deputies arrested Randy Miller (no known relation to Dana or Diane) and Hazel Brown Tuesday and charged each with a state jail felony county of theft from a human corpse or grave. Both are being held at the Collin County Detention Center on a $5,000 bond, according to jail records.
Sgt. Michael Davis of the Collin County Sheriff’s office said deputies were able to recover some of the missing plaques that the couple tried to sell at a salvage store. As of Tuesday, no arrests or charges have been filed in connection with the Melissa Cemetery thefts.
Two Saturdays ago, Dana said she went to the cemetery to check on a headstone that was about to be delivered when she stopped to check on her parents’ gravesite. That’s when she first noticed her mother’s, Patricia “Mama Pat” Webster, bronze plaque missing from the headstone.
“Right away, I said it’s gone,” Dana said.
She reported the theft to sheriff’s deputies and then called her husband’s aunt, Diane Miller, to ask if anything had been reported missing from her cemetery.
Diane said the level of thefts have never been this high at the cemetery.
“We’ve had vandalism and some headstones stolen, but we’ve never had any metal taken,” Diane said. “It’s never happened before.”
Dana said she isn’t sure if she should replace her mother’s plaque. It cost $750 when her family purchased after her mother passed in 2000. These days, it could cost as much as $1,250.
“It’s very upsetting because now we don’t know whether to fix hers,” she said. “They might come back and get hers again.”
Dana’s sister, Patricia Erwin, said there is a greater cost for this type crime, far greater than any amount of money that it would cost to replace her mother’s plaque.
“I think one of the most important things about it is people are stealing it, but they are stealing it for a reason, and there are not only people stealing it but also people buying it and making it profitable for people to steal,” Erwin said. “That’s why I’d like to get everybody involved in it caught because this is an emotional crime. It’s your family and your history.”
Contact Danny Gallagher at dgallagher@acnpapers.com. To post comments online, access this story on the web at www.scntx.com.
