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Walk along the quaint-yet busy-intersection of Baxter Avenue and Broadway in Louisville, and you will be greeted with a most beautiful gate. Standing tall with a clock tower and an ever-watchful statue of Jesus overlooking those who cross its threshold is the majestic Cave Hill Cemetery, a historic and well-known city of the dead for its many famous graves.
Go down the road towards downtown just a bit. The façade of a marvelous cemetery ends, and the bleak, rusted iron fences of a long neglected and forgotten one greets you. Small and unassuming, were it not for the awful state of the place.
Eastern Cemetery was never meant to be grand. Certainly not as grand as its neighboring burial grounds. That shouldn’t excuse its sorry state, of course. Beyond the cast iron bars lay headstones of a myriad of ages. Several have been broken, toppled, or simply overrun by nature. Vandals have desecrated numerous parts of the place. The original crematorium sits at the front, and to the far back lays the second, larger one. Both were the only crematoriums in Louisville for decades.
In a city that prides itself on its Victorian grandeur, the cemetery seems forgotten and neglected. But, why?
May, 1989. Bob Allen, gravedigger and maintenance at Eastern went to the Attorney General and told him that he believed it and its parent company, Louisville Crematory and Cemeteries, were hiding something. A terrible something. Assigning investigator James Caldwell, who in turn worked alongside UofL archaeology professor Philip DiBlasi, they wanted to know what that something was.
What they found was horrifying. Almost every grave had evidence of being used. It appeared at first glance that the cemetery held around 16,000 graves. According to regulation, a cemetery of its size should not exceed around 30,000 graves. In reality, evidence showed that it holds approximately 138,000 bodies. The exact number is unknown, and likely will never be. Grave markers were missing, some destroyed. From what was uncovered, the company would wait about twenty years between burials-long enough for people to have stopped visiting the deceased - mark it in the records as an “Old Grave” or “OG,” and then relist the plot. Worse still, bodies weren’t neatly stacked up on top of another. Instead, they simply had a backhoe dig into the grave, causing remains to disperse amidst the dirt and scatter throughout the grounds. Dirt for the burials often contained other bones, and were - according to witnesses - often covered by tarps so people wouldn’t see them. Bones were also strewn into other graves or…well…. “During the subsequent investigation, Caldwell found human bones throughout Eastern Cemetery - in a truck’s glove compartment, in a tool box, in a storage shed, in dirt piles, and even in a White Castle hamburger bag, his report said. And that wasn’t even the end of it. “In the crematory’s cellar, he found the remains of 244 cremated bodies, many unidentified. DiBlasi said he and Caldwell have also uncovered several buried gravestones while digging up graves.” (see Miller, Nov. 1989) Infant graves were found to be buried incredibly shallow, with some no deeper than under 10 inches of soil. Section 19, also called “Babyland,” saw stillborn babies buried not only improperly, but after having been solicited from grieving mothers for $75. The fund for perpetual care had over $100,000 missing, and surviving family members were charged with upkeep of the graves - money which never went towards maintenance of any kind.
DiBlasi and Caldwell would continue working on uncovering remains while the executive officers of the Louisville Crematory and Cemeteries Co. were charged with numerous crimes. In July of 1989, Charles Alexander, Jr., Clifford Amos, and Robert Copeland were indicted on charges including corpse abuse, grave desecration, theft, improper handling of burial payments, and failure in handling funds for perpetual care. (see Miller, Nov. 1989) All three resigned from the company board immediately and a receiver was put in place.
Under Kentucky law Ky. Rev. Stat. § 525.115, violation of graves is a class D felony, and states that the court shall order the defendant to restore the cemetery to the pre-damage state. According to Ky. Rev. Stat. § 525.130, abuse of a corpse is a class A misdemeanor. Perpetual care, via Ky. Rev. Stat. § 367.952 demands that cemeteries hold a portion of funds from the sale of plots, mausoleums, etc. for the future care and maintenance of the graves and grounds of the cemetery. The combination of the number of charges could have brought prison terms ranging from 188-268 years, alongside numerous fines.
Key phrase is “could have.” Simply put, evidence of wrongdoing by the cemetery going back to before the turn of the century isn’t very useful if the court throws it out. The reason? Major mistakes on the part of the Attorney General’s office. Caldwell had come on to the property without a proper search warrant, did not fully disclose why they were at the offices (claiming to be tax auditors instead), and were led onto cemetery grounds before hours.
Ultimately, there was only a pre-trial six-month diversion program with the stipulation that those on trial could no longer work at nor be part of the operations of the company. With the judge additionally citing the advanced age and lack of previous indictments of the defendants, the charges were dropped. No one ever faced a day of jail time. No justice for what happened. Then receiver Beth Campbell - who had married investigator Jim Caldwell - retired, the lights and gas were cut, no more funds to pay employees, and all remaining operations of Louisville Crematory and Cemeteries Co. ceased. Burials would continue, albeit heavily restricted and only for pre-bought plots that were inspected by an archaeologist to make sure no other bodies were in the plot. Professor DiBlasi was allowed to take what cremains were still there after numerous break-ins at the chapel and columbarium and held them for the families to claim. He was ultimately able to get nearly half to the surviving family members and have the records and documents that were left digitized before his retirement in 2018.
One must ponder, now, a new question: was the cemetery always like this? Did the executives of LCC just decide one day to do this? As we’ll see in the next part, the history of Eastern stretches far back, and so to do its crimes against the dead.
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