Families seek answers in search for grave markers at Chesapeake cemetery
CHESAPEAKE, Va. (WAVY) — Imagine if you went to a loved one’s gravesite and the grave marker was moved, and possibly the body too. That happened to a local man, and now the cemetery cannot even tell him where his mother is buried.
“Where is my mother,” said Todd Belton, who lives in Norfolk, at the Roosevelt Memorial Park cemetery in Chesapeake. “I’ve been coming here since 2008, where is she now?”
He not only wants to know where his mother is, he wants to know where the grave marker is that is now missing.
“Eleanor Carlies was my grandmother, and my mother Barbara De Marco was right beside her,” Belton said, unsure whether his mother is buried there.
What is he certain about?
That his mother’s grave marker is missing.
The grave marker is gone, but Belton knows it was at the graveyard because he was sent a photo of the grave marker by a cemetery worker.
“He called me and said he found it, and for me to come out,” Belton said. “When I came out here to see it, he could not find it, so he pulled off, and left me. … I was so angry, like where did he go? He just ran.”
Belton called that suspicious and worse, a cover-up.
“Something shady is going on around here, and I want to get to the bottom of it, man,” Belton said. “That’s my mama. That’s all I had, and I’m an only child.”
10 On Your Side tried to get answers from cemetery workers, asking them what is being done about it. One worker said that “you got to go up to the front office. Go up there.”
At the front office, another person was found complaining that a gold vase was missing, and replaced with a cheap plastic one.
There, no one answered questions about the headstone.
A worker in the office, when asked, said “OK, I get it.”
Notified that Belton was in the office, a supervisor came out and asked 10 On Your Side to leave.
“No filming,” the supervisor said. “This is private property. We would like for you to leave the building.”
She then turned and closed a door down the hall.
But when one door shuts, another one opens.
Outside, Claud White was also looking for his wife’s grave marker.
“They told me they put up a temporary one because they couldn’t find it,” White said. “I actually called 10 On Your Side about mine.”
Said Belton: “I’m glad I called. I know there’s something shady going on around here. Anytime you see them running away that means something is going wrong around here.”
Repeated requests for comment from the cemetery owners were not returned.
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