Grave Robbers Stealing Artifacts With ‘Cemetery Chic’

Cracks line the Virgin Mary’s weathered granite face as she gazes down, scarred arms at her side and grainy palms up. She is guarding a grave, as she has done since the late 1800s.

Nearby, two-foot stone sculptures depicting Christ or a winged cherub stand sentinel for families entombed in eight-foot vaults, built above ground because New Orleans lies below sea level, too wet for traditional graves.

Walk a little farther, however, and the landscape changes.

An iron cross is missing from atop a marble vault. Gone also are urns, angels and fancy iron fences that adorned other tombs in New Orleans’ historic cemeteries, known as “The Cities of the Dead.”

The artifacts have been stolen, and the crimes are not minor. About $500,000 worth of stolen property has been recovered just since May. Three men accused of stealing are in custody, and more arrests are expected.

Cemetery thefts have been reported from Philadelphia to Savannah, Ga. A flea market in California offered goods described as coming from New Orleans tombs.

“I don’t know any cemetery art that’s legitimately for sale,” says Meg Winslow, curator of a Cambridge, Mass., cemetery robbed of its gates last year.

Carved in elaborate architectural detail and laid out along twisting lanes, the New Orleans tombs form whitewashed neighborhoods. In some cases, stairs and doors lead visitors into the vaults.

Lucille Prima still remembers the rush of grief that struck her on a rainy day when she visited her family tomb on the first anniversary of her 14-year-old grandson’s death.

The two pink and white Italian marble statues were missing. For almost a century the nearly life-size sculptures of women holding a garland of roses had stood at the grave.

“I’ll never forget that day,” Prima says, her voice cracking. “It was already so sad. My husband and I were going to the cemetery to visit Michael and then we were going to go to church. I just stood in the rain in shock when I saw it.”

More than in many cities, cemeteries in New Orleans have become tourist attractions.

“They’re truly outdoor museums,” says Patty Lee St. Martin of New Orleans. She and her husband, Armand, along with friend Tom Bate, founded the National Cemetery Conservation Foundation and pushed for a probe into the thefts.

She adds: “Because of their uniqueness, they’re vulnerable.”

The thieves’ targets, religious-theme objects, have become known as “cemetery chic.” They are coveted for private gardens and swimming pool patios.

“Cemetery imagery is very popular. People love the old, weathered statues. They love the metal crosses to hang on a wall,” says Steven Hale, a designer with Ashley Hall Interiors Ltd. in New Orleans. The firm does not deal in such objects, he says.

Antiques dealers say some of the works are fakes made in Mexico, but more often they’re real.

“The thieves, the addicts . . . they take vases all the time, but we’re also losing iron benches and gates,” says Mike Giglio, whose family plot in New Orleans was stripped of a 150-year-old statue of the Virgin Mary.

Last year, he says, thieves trying to steal two firmly cemented urns snapped them off at their bases instead.

“This is our heritage. There’s no difference between someone going into the French Quarter or Garden District and stealing some of the gingerbread off of a house than someone going into a cemetery and taking pieces of our graves,” says New Orleans councilwoman Suzanne Haik-Terrell, whose district includes a majority of the city’s grave sites.

“Our history’s being torn apart for people’s enhancements.”

Bate, a New Orleans native living in Los Angeles, walked through a California flea market earlier this year and noticed marble sculptures and urns with price tags in the thousands. They were being hawked as goods from historic New Orleans cemeteries.

Bate suspected the items were stolen and alerted Los Angeles police, who are investigating. Then, with the help of the St. Martins, he got an investigation going in Louisiana.

New Orleans police arrested three men and recovered $500,000 worth of cemetery ornaments.

The owner of a French Quarter antiques gallery also is under investigation: Stolen items were discovered in his shop. Other items were recovered from private residences and from Missippi shops.

Patty Lee St. Martin praises New Orleans police for a quick response. “Before we got involved, they told us they didn’t even know this was a problem.”

Now, according to Detective Lawrence Green, some dealers and private citizens are surrendering cemetery pieces.

Recovered artifacts are stored in a warehouse as evidence, and Green says police plan an open house for people to reclaim their property.

“If they say it’s theirs, we’ll take the process a step further, probably bring the item to the tomb, measure the base and do other things to make sure,” he says.

Police found some of the statues that had been removed from plots owned by Prima and Giglio.

Besides going after thieves, the St. Martins’ group plans public service ‘announcements on radio aimed at potential sellers and customers.

“If merchants won’t sell it, there won’t be any buyers. If buyers don’t think it’s cool to have a cemetery item, then they won’t seek it. They need to realize that this stuff belongs to someone’s grave and doesn’t belong in someone’s garden,” Patty Lee St. Martin says.

Photographing and videotaping grave sites is another new effort, sometimes done by volunteer high school and university students.

Finally, Armand St. Martin says, those who own plots need to regularly inspecting tombs. “New Orleans is a national treasure,” he says. “We need to act like it.”