Cemetery Investigation : Scandal: Wilmington graveyard is plagued by charges of improper burials, undelivered headstones and lack of deeds. Police probe complaints against former caretaker.

When Betty Shanklin kneels beside the grave of her father in Wilmington Cemetery, the anguish over his death last December is heightened by months of frustrating dealings with the cemetery’s operators.

The grave of Cleophos Gordon, who died at the age of 89 after living in the harbor area for 50 years, remains unmarked despite the $250 Shanklin paid for a headstone that was supposed to be erected by May 5. Shanklin is not even sure that her father’s body is buried legally because she still has not received a deed for the plots sold to her nine months ago.

“This is about respect,” she said. “It’s taken everything out of me. My father worked too long and hard to say he can’t have a headstone.”

Shanklin is not the only person despairing over burials at the publicly owned, 137-year-old Wilmington Cemetery.

The Los Angeles Police Department’s Harbor Division is investigating 16 complaints that a caretaker at the cemetery accepted money from grieving families in exchange for plots and headstones that do not exist or have not been delivered.

No charges have yet been filed against the caretaker, Je-Rome Poland, who was fired this summer after nearly three years at the facility, officials of the Wilmington Cemetery District said.

But Detective Robert Contreras said the case will be turned over to county prosecutors next month for consideration of grand theft charges.

Dade Albright, the cemetery district’s president, said Poland was contracted in October, 1991, to do landscaping and handle burials at the cemetery. But he soon expanded his role--without the board’s knowledge--to sell plots and headstones from an office at the cemetery and later from an office on Avalon Boulevard, Albright said.

“People were asking questions and we started checking it out,” he said. “We dismissed his services in July.”

Poland, who is working in the Pomona area, said he has been in recent contact with the LAPD and the cemetery board.

“My intention is to work with the board and resolve who owns what, and to work with the families to resolve the matters, whatever they are, as soon as possible,” he said.

He declined to comment further.

Contreras said new complaints are being received by police almost every day. “Some of (the victims) are out $300, some are out thousands of dollars,” the detective said. He declined to specify how much Poland had received, but estimated the sum at tens of thousands of dollars.

The State Cemetery Board, which oversees maintenance funds and audits the trusts of California’s crematories and nearly 200 privately owned cemeteries, has no jurisdiction over the public Wilmington Cemetery.

But the board is about to hand over to prosecutors the results of its own investigation into similar complaints about Poland at the Sunnyside Cemetery in Long Beach, according to Executive Director Raymond Giunta. Poland owned that cemetery for a few days in June before selling it to the state when he could not meet license requirements for a financial plan, Giunta said.

Wilmington Cemetery has been at the center of controversy at least since 1991, when 12 families filed suits against the cemetery district, the board of trustees and a former caretaker, alleging improper burials. The case is scheduled to go to trial Oct. 24.

Poland was also a defendant in the civil action for allegedly reinterring bodies without relatives’ written consent, but that part of the case was recently settled, according to Scott E. Schutzman, the attorney representing 11 of the families.

Schutzman said Poland discovered that 190 caskets were buried only inches deep by the previous caretaker, so he had them reburied deeper.

“We settled with Je-Rome because whatever acts he did go back to the cemetery district,” he said. “They told him what to do.”

But Albright said the cemetery district will not accept responsibility for Poland’s actions because he was an independent contractor. The board has filed its own complaint with police over the former caretaker’s practices, he said.

Shanklin, who bought four plots for $1,450, said she now believes only one grave exists--and laments her decision to bury her father at the cemetery.

“Poland came to my home and he picked up the cashier’s check. I had it made out to Wilmington Cemetery, but he said the check had to be to Down to Earth Maintenance (Poland’s company),” she said.

“I would never suspect that someone would be doing that to you when you’re going through (a death).”