A West Virginia gravedigger was arrested in connection to a gruesome discovery made by volunteers decorating graves for Easter on March 27.
Cabell County Sheriff’s deputies responded to Baylous Cemetery in Salt Rock after receiving multiple calls about “human, skeletal remains”, baby clothes, and a broken casket thrown over a hill.
“We scoured that entire cemetery, looking to see if there were any graves that had been disturbed, and we couldn’t find any,” Sheriff Doug Adams said.
Investigators determined that Matthew Fortner, 49, was digging up a new grave when he accidentally broke the infant’s casket.
Instead of reburying the child’s corpse, he chose to dump the remains over a hillside near the grave site.
Police said the baby boy died in 1982 and was only a few days old when he passed away. Sheriff Adams said his office worked “tirelessly” to find the culprit.
“It takes a sick individual, in my opinion, to desecrate a grave and mess with a corpse, period,” Adams said.
