Inspectors Find Remains Are Missing From Troubled Cemetery : Investigation: Officials examine records at Lincoln Memorial Park in Carson as worried families gather.

The state’s top cemetery official inspected a weed-choked cemetery in Carson on Wednesday as the first look inside its mausoleum appeared to confirm the fears of many: at least a dozen chambers, each able to hold several coffins, were empty.

The grim discovery came as Raymond Giunta, the state Cemetery Board’s executive director, made a sudden visit to Lincoln Memorial Park, a 20-acre cemetery on South Central Avenue, hoping to determine whether a host of alleged problems were the result of sloppy record-keeping or an effort to mask a darker secret.

As hundreds of families combed the overgrown grounds to see if their loved ones’ burial sites had been desecrated, Cemetery Board examiners pored over Lincoln’s records. Their inquiry, prompted by complaints about Lincoln’s operation, began a week ago today. But officials, including Giunta, have been reluctant to discuss their findings other than to say the cemetery’s books seemed in disarray.

“I know they have a real poor record-keeping system,” one source close to the investigation said Wednesday.

Like many others this week, the official could not help comparing the suspected problems at Lincoln with those already uncovered at Paradise Memorial Park in Santa Fe Springs, a cemetery taken over by the state earlier this summer. “If I had to compare the two, Paradise had poor, poor records. But . . . the records at Lincoln were worse,” the source said.

While state examiners searched for records, people stood in line for more than two hours to get into the cemetery’s small office to locate the spots where friends or family members were buried. Even with directions from cemetery workers, however, many were unable to find the burial sites. And that led some despairing visitors to conclude that loved ones either had been moved or never were buried there.

Relatives also sorted through piled-up headstones, looking for loved ones’ missing tombstones.

At the cemetery’s vast mausoleum, where plaques bear the names of about 200 who are supposed to be buried inside, the marble panels on about a fifth of the chambers were removed, revealing hollow spaces where there should have been entombed remains. Cemetery workers refused comment about the discovery, but some of those with friends or relatives buried at Lincoln said the walls were taken off by angry visitors who wondered if their loved ones were still inside.

“I buried my baby in there,” one shaken woman, who declined to give her name, said softly. “But I don’t think he’s in there anymore.”

Surveying the run-down property and the numerous sad faces, the Rev. John L. Hunt, pastor of the Greater Berean Baptist Church in Los Angeles, echoed the thoughts of many at the site.

“I’ve been to cemeteries all over Los Angeles County,” said Hunt, who has been to Lincoln both to bury relatives and to conduct funeral services. “And this is the worst. The worst.”

Cemetery owners declined Wednesday to make any statements. Lincoln is owned by Hollywood Memorial Assn., which also owns the famous Hollywood Memorial Cemetery. Jules F. Roth, listed in secretary of state records as company president, also refused to comment Wednesday, according to a staff member.

A state Cemetery Board official said Wednesday that his agency also had received complaints about Hollywood Memorial--where celebrities from Rudolph Valentino to gangster Bugsy Siegel are buried--and would not rule out an investigation of that cemetery as well.

Meanwhile, Beverly Hills attorney Jeffrey Steinberger, who already is suing over conditions at Paradise Memorial Park, said he will file another class-action lawsuit today on behalf of about 250 families with relatives interred at Lincoln.

As thousands of people poured through a single gate Wednesday, the mood at the cemetery changed from quiet bewilderment to increasing anger.

“This is not just a place for the dead,” said Wilbert Morgan of Los Angeles. “This is a place of living memories. I still talk to my grandmother here.”