Man, 73, Charged With Digging Up His Grandmother

Two men are facing charges in Missouri after trying to dig up one of their long-dead grandmothers. Police found the 73-year-olds covered in dirt at Washington Park Cemetery in the St. Louis suburb of Berkeley on Aug. 22. Zebulun Nash of Houston, Texas—who formerly sat on the board of trustees of the University of Missouri S&T, per the Riverfront Times—told police he was digging up his grandmother's grave with help from Jimmie Allen of St. Louis so as to relocate her remains, police said, per KMOV. Witnesses said the men had been digging for days at the cemetery, which has suffered what WJBK describes as "decades of neglect." "I was amazed when I first heard the call," Berkeley Police Chief Art Jackson said at the time, per KSDK. "In 29 years of doing this work, we've never had any issues or incidents like that."

A witness told KDSK that one of the men "said that they paid somebody to dig up the body, but they got ripped off, so they took it upon themselves." A cemetery official said the man from Texas owned the plot and "can do whatever he wants to it." But Jackson, who claimed Nash wanted to move his grandmother's body "to a different, local cemetery," noted that one must have a state order to exhume a body from a grave under Missouri law, and the men did not. "They sure had some mental toughness about them," the police chief said in August. "It's really sad that it has come to this." They were each charged Wednesday with attempting to destroy or deface cemetery property, a misdemeanor. Jackson previously said they could've faced felony charges if they'd touched human remains. (More exhumation stories.)