#9 - Maria Elizabeth Pena-Echeverria Teenager Maria Elizabeth Pena-Echeverria was
arrested by North Carolina law enforcement in May of 2021, in connection to a man’s brutal killing
at Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Raleigh. According to an official press release, 69-year-old James Lacy
Taylor had been found critically injured on the cemetery’s grounds on the night of May the 28th.
He was officially pronounced dead upon being transported to a nearby hospital. People who’d
been present at the graveyard around the time of the incident told investigators that they’d seen
2 men and a woman fleeing the scene in 2 separate vehicles, a dark-colored pickup truck and a sedan
that was either brown or blue. A state worker subsequently came upon a pile of clothes, shoes,
and latex gloves positioned near a splatter of blood on the ground, prompting them to dial
9-1-1. Officers found Taylor, gravely wounded, a short distance from the rest of the articles of
evidence. The day after Pena-Echeverria’s arrest, the authorities announced that 2
additional teenage suspects, one of whom was named as Johnathan Dan Villanueva-Galer, had been taken
into custody on suspicion of being involved in Taylor’s murder. When the shooting occurred,
Villanueva-Galer was reportedly out on parole for previous convictions that included driving while
impaired and felony breaking and entering. #8 - Yolanda N’Gaojia
Police in Killeen, Texas, received reports of a shooting at the Calvary Baptist Church Garden of
Memories Cemetery, shortly after 5 pm on March the 22nd of 2022. When officers arrived at the scene,
they found a pair of gunshot victims, one of whom was treated for minor injuries by emergency
responders and released a short time later. The other victim, 52-year-old Yolanda N’Gaojia,
had sustained far more severe injuries and she was ultimately pronounced dead about 2 hours later.
In the incident’s aftermath, it was detailed how, on the day of her death, N’Gaojia had gone to the
cemetery to visit her deceased son’s gravesite on what would’ve been his 22nd birthday. Although the
cause of death for N’Gaojia’s son wasn’t specified in subsequent reports, Facebook posts from the
young man’s father indicated that he’d passed away on New Year’s Day 2022. Killeen Police immediately
launched an investigation into the fatal shooting but, as of the case’s most recent updates,
a suspect hadn’t yet been identified. #7 - Elvira Navarro
New York woman Elvira Navarro was tending to graves at Baron Hirsch Cemetery in Staten Island,
on October the 28th of 2021, when a massive headstone toppled to the ground. According
to the Navarro family’s attorney, the 2,000-pound monument fell directly on top of the 53-year-old
woman while she was working next to her son, Anthony Rosales. Navarro was taken to Richmond
University Medical Center, where she ultimately died as a result of her crushing injuries. On the
day of the tragic accident, Navarro and her son had been dispatched to the Graniteville
burial grounds to perform some work at the site on behalf of their third party employer.
In the incident’s aftermath, the family filed a negligence lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court
against the Baron Hirsch Cemetery Association. The civil litigation alleged that Navarro’s death had
been directly caused by the organization’s failure to properly maintain the grounds.
#6 - Shamus Burcham On the morning of Christmas Eve 2021,
the Meridian Police Department in Mississippi received a call about 2 men roaming through
McLemore Cemetery with metal detectors. Officers were dispatched to the scene a short time later
and came upon a man, later identified as Shamus Burcham, as he was in the process of
digging up a grave. In a statement released by the department’s Police Patrol Sergeant,
the suspect hadn’t dug very deep by the time he was found by law enforcement, who immediately
took him into custody. Burcham was consequently charged with desecration of a cemetery or corpses,
a misdemeanor in the state of Mississippi. #5 - Da'Shontay King Sr.'s Funeral
On June the 2nd of 2022, gunfire broke out during an afternoon funeral at the Graceland
Cemetery in Racine, Wisconsin. The memorial service, as was detailed in subsequent reports,
was being held in honor of Da'Shontay King Sr., a local man who’d been killed by the
police during a shootout precipitated by a contentious traffic stop. The Racine Chief
of Police indicated that officers had initially pulled King over to execute a search warrant for
a felon in possession of a gun. The situation abruptly escalated after King had got out of his
vehicle and started fleeing on foot. Officers gave chase and eventually resorted to shooting
the man because he’d reportedly refused to drop his weapon. In the wake of the funeral shooting,
investigators gathered from witness testimony that there’d been between 20 and 30 gunshots fired in
total. It subsequently emerged that as many as 5 mourners had been injured in the incident, some of
whom were identified as members of King’s family. Fortunately, no one was killed in the attack. As
of the latest updates on the matter, Racine Police were still working to identify the individual or
group responsible for the incident. #4 - Dale LaPrade
In September of 2018, the authorities in Bridgeport, Connecticut, received reports
that more than 100 graves at Park City Cemetery had been “disturbed, stacked or desecrated”. City
officials launched an investigation to ascertain the reason for the dilapidated condition of the
grounds. Officers sent to inspect the area reportedly found “disturbed dirt,
garbage and overturned headstones” haphazardly strewn across the graveyard. Detectives also
discovered “bone fragments and pieces of caskets that dated back more than 100 years”. Some of
the detritus had been discarded on the ground of the cemetery, while other bits of debris
were found in the woods nearby. In December of 2018, it was announced during a news conference
that the police had arrested Dale LaPrade, the operator of the Park City Cemetery. She
was accused of intentionally disturbing plots in the cemetery, some of which reportedly belonged
to Civil War veterans, in order to create space for new graves. In the wake of LaPrade’s arrest,
it also emerged that the 64-year-old had allegedly embezzled more than $60,000 of the cemetery’s
money during her tenure as the historic site’s manager. While awaiting her trial on charges
of first-degree larceny, second-degree larceny, and interfering with a cemetery,
LaPrade reportedly passed away from complications stemming from cardiovascular disease.
#3 - Jose Luis Torres Garcia On February the 17th of 2020, several
people were gunned down at the Perris Valley Cemetery in Perris, California. The Riverside
County Sheriff’s Department soon identified 33-year-old Jose Luis Torres Garcia as the prime
suspect in what was a triple murder investigation. Garcia, a twice-deported Mexican national,
was reportedly with the victims all night leading up to their violent deaths. While investigators
didn’t disclose a specific motive for the killings, suspicions arose that they were somehow
connected to cartel violence south of the border. After reports surfaced that Garcia was wanted in
connection to the incident, he fled California, triggering an extensive manhunt that extended into
neighboring states. Law enforcement in Cheyenne, Wyoming, eventually spotted him driving a 2007 GMC
Yukon on Interstate 80 and detained him without further incident. He was jailed at the Laramie
County Detention Center pending his extradition back to California to stand trial for murder.
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#2 - Brian Montalvo Tolentino and Juan Burgos Lopez
The Lake County Sheriff’s Office, in Florida, received reports of vandalism at Edgewood
Cemetery in early December of 2020. Deputies who’d been dispatched to inspect the scene reportedly
discovered that grave robbers had dug up four separate graves and stolen human remains from
each of the burial sites. It was also determined that the vandals had damaged a fifth grave,
which they’d ultimately abandoned without gaining access to it. In January of the following year,
police announced that they’d identified a pair of suspects, named as Brian Montalvo Tolentino and
Juan Burgos Lopez. During a news conference, local authorities detailed how the men had allegedly
performed the grave robbery for “ritualistic purposes”. Prior to vandalizing the burial sites,
Tolentino and Lopez had reportedly spit Bacardi rum on the ground and exhaled cigar smoke near
the headstones, which was done in order to protect them from evil spirits. In doing so
they inadvertently provided law enforcement with evidence as investigators subsequently used the
DNA found on cigars left at the crime scene to identify them. It was further revealed that the
vandals had targeted the burial sites of military veterans, whom they’d believed to have stronger
spirits. Tolentino and Lopez were booked into the Polk County Jail on four counts each of disturbing
the contents of a grave and abuse of a dead body. #1 - Mujera Benjamin Lungaho
Arkansas police was made aware of a vandalism incident at Oakland Cemetery Park, in Little Rock,
in the summer of 2020. As it was subsequently reported, an individual had spray-painted
various phrases on a Confederate memorial obelisk and several other gravesites on the
night of July the 9th. Investigators determined that the suspect had intended the graffiti to
be a form of protest against the controversial structures erected in honor of key figures of
the Confederate South during the American Civil War. The 20-foot stone monument was
covered in politically-charged phrases such as “black lives matter”, “no justice, no peace”,
as well as derogatory statements directed toward then President Donald Trump. The police were able
to use surveillance footage from the cemetery to identify the perpetrator as 30-year-old Mujera
Benjamin Lungaho. He was taken into custody on charges of first-degree criminal mischief and
desecration or removal of a cemetery or grave marker. Officials publicly announced that the
man had further been charged with conspiracy and use of explosive materials for malicious
damage to federal property. The accusations were connected to an incident in which he’d allegedly
thrown firebombs at police vehicles. Lungaho pleaded not guilty to each of the offenses,
and his attorney filed a motion to have all his federal charges dismissed.
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