Bx. cemetery tomb raiders
A CREW OF GHOULS broke into a Bronx mausoleum, where they removed six caskets from their not-so-final final resting place and lined them up on the floor, authorities said Tuesday.
Groundskeepers discovered the desecration about 1:30 p.m. at Woodlawn Cemetery on Webster Ave. near E. 233rd St.
Cops were trying to determine how the creeps got into the mausoleum and if anything was taken from the caskets, which were pulled out of their sleeves on the wall.
Authorities said it would take at least two people to move the caskets. They did not disclose which mausoleum was vandalized, but police tape at one point Tuesday marked a crypt belonging to the George family.
The 400-acre cemetery opened in 1863 and became a national landmark in 2011.
Its hallowed grounds are also a tourist destination, due to the number of famous people buried there. Among the cemetery’s entertainers, writers and prestigious New Yorkers are the city’s 99th and possibly most famous mayor, Fiorello LaGuardia, composer Irving Berlin, urban planner Robert Moses, suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “Moby Dick” writer Herman Melville, journalist Elizabeth (Nellie Bly) Seaman and jazz musician Duke Ellington.
A call to the cemetery offices for comment was not immediately returned.
Woodlawn Cemetery has familyowned mausoleums and community mausoleums, according to its website.
On Aug. 15 in Queens, three teenage boys vandalized Cypress Hills Cemetery, knocking over headstones and breaking the marble off burial vaults, cops said.
The teen goons also spray-painted racist and anti-cop graffiti on the desecrated graves.
No arrests have been made in either case.