Last month, NBC CT Responds reported on a cemetery accused of moving buried bodies without telling their loved ones. And since that investigation aired, our team has heard a similar story from yet another family.
Last month, NBC CT Responds reported on a cemetery accused of moving buried bodies without telling their loved ones.
And since that investigation aired, our team has heard a similar story from yet another family.
“I think the families who are going through the grieving process need to be able to have some closure,” said Adam David.
David, of Holyoke, Massachusetts, says he’s been trying to hold the Springfield Street Cemetery in Agawam, Massachusetts, accountable for months.
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And that fight only intensified when he saw our NBC CT Responds investigation about the same cemetery.
“I read your article and I said, ‘Well, there's a new cause. There's new life, new reason to continue fighting,’” David said.
Last December, a year and a half after his mother Louise David’s death, David says he too learned the unthinkable.
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“We found she had been relocated without telling anybody,” he said.
When he visited his mother's gravesite on Christmas Eve last year, he says it wasn’t just missing flowers that raised his suspicion.
“There was a field of dirt covering her grave and all the area around it, and there's no one buried near her, so it's kind of an alert that something was happening,” he said.
He says the contractor paid by the cemetery association to move her body later confirmed to him that his mom’s grave had been relocated.
“Dumfounded. Dumbfounded,” he said.
Under no circumstances would we imagine, a year and a half after Mom passed, they dug her up and moved her without telling us.
Adam David
NBC CT Responds found a permit was not filed to move David’s mother’s body, as is required by Massachusetts state law.
Now, Massachusetts State Police and the Hampden County District Attorney’s Office are investigating David’s case.
We reached out to Art Hastings, who runs the cemetery association with his brother.
Art says he has no further comment at this time.
In September he told us in part, “There was a transition of management a few years ago and we have had some difficulties with the transition.”
According to business filings, that transition happened five years ago.
“The people who are buried here need to be treated with respect and dignity,” David said.
