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Featured: Matthew Fortner (West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation). Background: The Baylous Cemetery in Salt Rock, W. Va. (WSAZ/YouTube).
A cemetery worker in West Virginia has been taken into custody for reportedly desecrating an infant’s grave and leaving the child’s remains exposed at the cemetery where he was employed. The baby’s garments and coffin were allegedly “discarded down a slope” by this individual after he inadvertently disturbed the child’s burial site while excavating another grave, as stated by police and emergency callers.
“We were here placing decorations on graves for Easter,” a woman is heard saying on a 911 call acquired by local NBC station WSAZ. “It appears someone has unearthed a grave and there’s a baby,” a man adds. “The coffin is down the hill.”
Matthew Fortner, 49, was arrested Wednesday by the Cabell County Sheriff’s Office and booked on charges of displacement of a dead body and intentionally withholding information about the disturbance of “human, skeletal remains.” Online court records show he has pleaded not guilty and has a bond set of $5,000 for the March 27 incident.
“This is not what I expected to find,” the female caller said that day, per WSAZ. “We found baby clothes,” the woman added.
Cabell County Sheriff Doug Adams told WSAZ his office was shaken up by the discovery at Baylous Cemetery in Salt Rock and worked “tirelessly” to find out who was responsible after first reporting what happened last week.
“It’s bothered them and weighed on everyone’s minds,” Adams said.
When police first got the call and started investigating what happened, it was unclear whether the baby — described as an infant boy who was just a few days old at the time of his death — had been brought to the cemetery or dug up by someone.
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“We scoured that entire cemetery,” Adams said. “Looking to see if there were any graves that had been disturbed and we couldn’t find any. So [we were] wondering if that child was buried in that cemetery or if it was brought from somewhere else.”
According to WSAZ, the baby in question passed away in 1982 and was buried next to a plot that Fortner was digging up for another burial. The complaint states that he chose to dump the child over a hillside near his grave site instead of reburying him. The boy’s casket also appeared to have been allegedly broken by Fortner.
“It takes a sick individual, in my opinion, to desecrate a grave and mess with a corpse, period,” Adams said.
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