Cemetery mayhem
A VANDAL knocked over and damaged 63 headstones and monuments at a historic Catholic cemetery in Brooklyn, police said Tuesday.
A field manager discovered the toppled and broken statues in Holy Cross Cemetery on Tilden Ave. in East Flatbush at 8:30 a.m. on Friday, authorities.
The damaged markers included a 6-foot-tall shrine statue of St. Joseph and 13 monuments with statues on top, according to the Brooklyn Diocese.
Holy Cross Cemetery staff is working to restore all the memorials and notify families.
“But the shrine statue, owned by the cemetery, was broken into several pieces and cannot be reset,” the diocese said in a press release.
Police believe the vandalism occurred between 4 p.m. and 7 a.m. Friday. No suspect has been identified. The cemetery dates back to 1849 when Bishop John Hughes bought a portion of the Van Brunt farm during a cholera outbreak in Manhattan.
After years of expansion, it now covers 96 acres and is the final resting place for “some of the pioneer priests of the diocese and . . . some of Brooklyn’s oldest Catholic families,” according to the Catholic Church.
Among the notables buried there are Murder Inc. mobster Louis Capone, Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers first baseman and Mets manager Gil Hodges, as well as former New York City Mayors William Russell Grace and Ardolph Loges Kline.