MEMPHIS, Tenn. – Sherry McIntyre-Howard says she loves her deceased mother and wants her in the “right place.”
That place, she says, isn’t only in her heart, but — for the past 11 years — in the New Park Cemetery on Horn Lake Road.
But when she went to visit her mother’s grave on what would have been her birthday Tuesday, she said the headstone was in a different place.
“I get up here and I said, ‘Oh, it’s some graves missing right here,’” said McIntyre-Howard.
She found her mother’s headstone yards away, in what she said is a completely different spot.
“You moved my mother’s headstone. Did you move my mother or are you putting people on top of people?” she said.
New Park Cemetery employee Calvin Taylor said the cemetery didn’t move any graves.
Asked if McIntyre-Howard was imagining things, he said, “I don’t know what she doing. I know her mother hasn’t been moved, though.”
WREG found multiple graves surrounded by fresh dirt Wednesday, including one from October 2017 and another from 2007.
“We’ve been burying a lot of people lately,” said Taylor.
McIntyre-Howard’s mother was buried in 2006 and she insists her grave has been tampered with.
“She couldn’t find her momma yesterday, and so when I showed her where the grave was, she said her momma wasn’t there,” said Taylor
“You’ll never forget that. You’ll never forget where your parents (are) buried,” said McIntyre-Howard.
Last November, WREG reported on another woman who claimed her daughter’s headstone had been moved at New Park Cemetery.
A public records request filed then showed multiple complaints against the cemetery dating back to the 1990s.