Despite Cleanup, Scars of Julian Cemetery Desecration Remain : Vandalism: Residents put gravestones back, but silence of suspects keeps arrests from being made.

It took more than a month, but finally, last weekend, the townsfolk of Julian finished righting the turn-of-the-century grave markers toppled and scarred in a rampage by vandals. What they are still smarting from, though, is their certainty about who committed the crime and their inability to do anything about it.

It was a warm Saturday night in August when, according to police, a group of juveniles climbed the A Street hill and entered the Julian Cemetery gate with its “Haven of Rest” sign arched above.

“My guess is that they were downing a few brewskis and decided to have a strong-man contest,” Sheriff’s Deputy James Barker said. “Then things got out of hand.”

The damage, discovered by a Julian man walking his dog the next morning, was considerable:

* The 9-foot-tall monument that marked the grave of lifelong Julian resident Thomas Daley, who died April 2, 1890, at age 71, lay in pieces with ugly gashes in its red granite column. It has been reassembled, but the scars remain.

* The bricks that formed a wall around the family plot of the pioneer Hoskings family still lie on the ground, not yet returned to their places, but the mammoth headstones have been righted and set back in place.

* A gaping hole remains in the ironwork fence that guarded the Koehn and Price family resting places, but the granite markers have been righted.

* Chips and scratches mar many of the 10 to 12 gravestones dating from 1889 to 1911 that were tossed about.

The cleanup has been a volunteer effort conducted in working folks’ off hours, but now all the markers have been returned to their rightful owners.

“There has been vandalism in the cemetery before,” Jim Mazzone said, “but this was, by far, the worst. And they were mostly local boys. Everyone in town knows who they were.” Mazzone is president of the Julian Cemetery Assn., the owner of the burial grounds, and also serves as superintendent of the hilltop cemetery.

Deputy Barker agreed that the teen-agers involved are known to most of Julian. He has interviewed each youth without success. None is willing to admit that he participated in the desecration of the historic cemetery.

“I don’t believe that we will ever get a prosecution on any of them,” Barker said. “I’ve talked to them individually, and they each say, ‘No. Not me. It must have happened after I left there.

“This is a small, tight-knit community. If one of those boys informed on the others, there would be long-term repercussions for him.”

“Outraged,” is the word that Mabel Carlson, curator of the Julian Museum, chose to describe how the town feels about the cemetery vandalism.

“This wasn’t just any old place. This was a historic cemetery where the people who founded Julian are buried,” she said. “We don’t put up with such behavior in Julian.”

Mazzone said the damage to the cemetery is hard to judge in dollars.

One of the youths allegedly involved with the group that was drinking in the cemetery in August faces felony charges of burglary of the Mountain Spirits liquor store on Main Street.

According to clerk Anita Brown, one of the youths came into the store that Saturday night and walked out with two six-packs of beer without paying.

“It was an awful dumb thing for him to do,” she said. “I knew him. He had come in about 15 minutes before, and I had worked with his mom, and I asked him how his mom was doing.”

Barker said the liquor store owner, Cliff Stone, intends to press charges against the youth.

The boy has admitted the burglary, which is defined as entering a building with the intent to steal, Barker said, “and that is a felony offense. But he won’t admit to knocking over the gravestones. I can’t figure that.”

The day after the cemetery desecration, Mazzone found beer cans scattered about the cemetery when he was assessing the damage. Later, after he heard about the theft of beer from the community’s only liquor store, he went back up the hill and found that most of the empty beer cans had been removed from the cemetery.

“But we found a few left. The sheriff’s investigator said the fingerprints on them identified the suspects. But he said that it did not prove that the boys had done the damage, only that they had been drinking beer in the cemetery,” Mazzone said.

Barker said at least two of the youths would have to step forward and identify the others, “and I don’t think that will ever happen.”

Mountain justice works a little differently than the urban justice system, he said, “and those boys are marked men from now on.