CABELL COUNTY, W.Va. (WOWK) — A gravedigger has been arrested after a baby’s corpse, buried in 1982, and a busted casket were found on the grounds of a West Virginia cemetery.
A person decorating graves at the Baylous Cemetery in Salt Rock called authorities shortly after 7 p.m. on March 27 after finding the corpse and casket.
On Wednesday, the Cabell County Sheriff’s Office said Matthew Fortner, 49, was arrested in connection to the alleged incident. A criminal complaint said he was employed as a gravedigger at Baylous Cemetery.
The complaint said Fortner was digging a plot for the burial of someone else when he hit and dug up the baby’s casket.
“At some point by unknown means, the baby was removed from the casket and his remains were found in the middle of the Cemetery and his right arm and right foot had been removed,” the complaint continues. The partially-broken casket, which had the bottom “busted out,” was found along a nearby hillside.
A piece of the damaged casket was found inside the grave site Fortner had been digging up, according to the investigating detective.
Fortner had no relation to the child, investigators determined. He has been charged with disinterment or displacement of a dead body or part thereof; damage to cemetery or graveyard, and violating protection of human skeletal remains, grave artifacts and grave markers.
He is currently being held in jail on a $105,000 bond and faces up to five years in prison, if convicted.
