After Perth Amboy Graverobbing, Another Body was Stolen from a Fords Cemetery

Graverobbers stole the remains of a 72-year-old man from a Fords cemetery crypt a little over a week ago. 

The discovery that the body of the man had been disinterred from a granite mausoleum at Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary Cemetery was discovered on Feb. 15, according to Jim O'Neill, spokesman for the Middlesex County prosecutor's office. 

The theft aligned with another graverobbing from last year in Perth Amboy. Back in November, a cemetery visitor discovered an opened grave at St. Mary's Cemetery at the intersection of Amboy and Eagle avenues. Police determined that the body, which was missing, belonged to a two-year-old boy. 

Police from both Woodbridge and Perth Amboy, as well as the prosecutor's office, are investigating the graverobbing and theft of both bodies.

No one would speculate as to why someone would want to break into a grave and steal the bodies. 

Officials from the two police departments and prosecutor's office said in a press release that they believed the thefts might be "the work of individuals involved in a non-traditional religious practice."

The families of the deceased victims have been notified, O'Neill said.

"It's absolutely detestable," said Louis Panigrosso, who rushed from his home in Brick to check on the mausoleum of his parents at the Most Holy Rosary cemetery after he saw a story on a local TV news program about the graverobbing.

The mausoleum with a shatterproof glass door was intact, but that gave Panigrosso little comfort. "It was broken into before" in the late 1970s, he said. That time, brass fittings were removed, and a statue of St. Anne de Beaupres Panigrosso had gotten on his honeymoon and placed in the vault in his parents' memory was stolen. 

"There is something wrong with these people," said Panigrosso, who was a prominent member of the church as well as president of the Holy Name Society. His parents had lived in Perth Amboy their entire lives until his mother died in 1965 and his father in 1989.

The cemetery is on Oregon Ave., right off busy Ford Ave., and it's the home to several cemeteries from churches of various denominations, as well as a synagogue. 

The church itself is on Florida Grove Road in Hopelawn, but the Most Holy Rosary cemetery area in Fords is small, by the standards of nearby Roman Catholic cemeteries such as St. Gertrude's in Colonia. There are about a dozen above-ground mausoleums there, some very ornate, such as the one that holds at least 8 bodies of members of the Sinatra family.

Some of the mausoleums are bricked up with no door; a few are sealed with chains and padlocks.The cemetery was founded in 1917.

The Metuchen diocese, which encompasses both cemeteries, said in a statement that they were "deeply saddened by the desecration of a grave and a crypt," and urged cooperation with authorities.

Neither police nor the prosecutor's office would reveal the names of the disinterred victims, and at first glance, none of the mausoleums seemed to have been recently disturbed. 

But one of the newer granite crypts bore evidence of having been broken into. An above ground mausoleum, which bore the name of Lamela, was designed to hold four bodies, but only two of the vaults were used. One of them held the remains of Joseph Lamela, who was born in 1905 and died at the age of 72 in 1977.

According to a source, the man and the boy whose bodies were stolen had died decades ago. 

The seal at the top of the Joseph Lamela crypt was apparently broken, while the neighboring one was undisturbed. Chunks of the marble were cracked off and broken, as if by a crowbar, and piled at the foot of the mausoleum. Dirt at the base of the crypt was also disturbed.

"It's horrible anyone would do such a thing," Panigrosso said. "I hope this is an isolated incident."

Anyone with information on the Perth Amboy or Fords graverobbings is urged to contact Detective Yanak of the Woodbridge Police Department at 732-634-7700; Detective Rivera of the Perth Amboy Police Department at 732-442-4400; or Sgt. Dacey of the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office at 732-745-3300.