Unburied cremated remains found at Charleroi Cemetery
CHARLEROI – State police are investigating the discovery of cremated remains in an unlocked shed at Charleroi Cemetery eight months after the ashes were delivered there for burial.
Police gave a local funeral home permission Monday to remove from the cemetery the remains of a New Mexico woman who died Aug. 30, 2014, and store them at his funeral home until another decision is reached on the burial, said George A. Hogan, supervisor of Schrock-Hogan Funeral Home in Charleroi.
State police said Monday they would send investigators to the cemetery off Deanbroggi Road in Fallowfield Township after a volunteer working Saturday to cut grass at the rundown property found the box containing Barbara Ann Waggoner’s remains.
Hogan said police called the apparent owner of the cemetery, James Price, who gave investigators permission to hand the box of ashes over to him. A message left for Price, of Belle Vernon, was not returned Monday.
Washington County District Attorney Gene Vittone said last week he also was investigating how a nonprofit, tax-exempt cemetery had been sold several times without the deeds being recorded at the courthouse. Vittone said he was attempting to get permission for Washington County jail inmates to go to the property to trim grass that has grown knee-high in some places.
Hogan said the funeral home paid Price $400 to bury Waggoner’s remains after they were delivered to his funeral home in November.
“When we turn them over to the cemetery, we assume they are going to be buried,” Hogan said Monday. Such remains only need to be buried 2 feet deep, work that requires a shovel rather than heavy equipment, a spokeswoman for the funeral home said.
Waggoner, 73, of Alamogordo, was a graduate of California University of Pennsylvania whose relatives also were buried in the cemetery founded in 1901.
Pennsylvania Department of State records indicate the cemetery board was dissolved in 1987, only to be listed as continuing to exist again in 2001.