Thieves Target Bronze Vases At Historic Kew Gardens Cemetery
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- A historic cemetery in Queens has a problem.
Over the past decade, thieves have been targeting something on the grave markers there.
As CBS2's Alice Gainer reported, headstone after headstone boasts the same empty hole. Bronze vases have been stolen from Maple Grove Cemetery in Kew Gardens and it's been happening for years.
"Off the top of my head I would say roughly 3,000 vases stolen in the course of 15 years," Superintendent, Phil Rash-Flynn said.
He said about a month ago 25 to 30 were stolen.
"The economy and the price of scrap metal has gone up," he said.
The vases are about 10 inches and are worth hundreds of dollars.
"It's inverted down into a recessed hole and when it stands up and is inverted. It locks in place," he explained.
A small chain holds the vase down, but it can be easily broken.
There are strategically placed hidden cameras around the cemetery and in recent years they have been successful in capturing images of the thieves.
CBS stopped by two local scrap metal shops, both said they wouldn't buy the vases.
"We send them away. We do not tolerate that stuff," Frank Conti of Liberty Scrap Metal said.
For a while the cemetery was replacing the vases at no cost to families, but it became too expensive. To replace a stolen one would cost a family $275, but they do have the option of using a plastic one for free.
Rash-Flynn had a message for would be robbers.
"Think about your own mom and your own dad and your grandmother, would you want someone doing this to them? You know just for a buck?" he said.
Rash-Flynn said many of the families have already been through enough.
He said the good news is that they're seeing fewer thefts of the vases as the years go by, but they still do happen.
