Grave Robbing - An Old Business, With New Life

Didn't I see a gold wedding band and a diamond matching engagement ring on Grandma's fingers, as she lay in her open coffin, at her funeral?

Didn't she have that blood red ruby pendant attached to her lapel? 

And wasn't that her black pearl necklace she was wearing around her neck. Yes it was! 

Remember Uncle George, slipping a thousand dollar bill in the casket pushing it under her pillow, in case she needed it in the after life. Just before they nailed the coffin lid down. 

Oh, yes and her watch, a Rolex, from the Oyster Lady series, the Oyster Perpetual, wasn't she wearing it? I'm sure she had it on her wrist. I saw the sparkle. 

It matched the tear drop diamonds ear-rings you remember the ones, where the star sapphire was surrounded by a cluster burst of step cut baguette diamonds. 

Believe it or not people do go in the grave with treasures like these. 

The new grave robbers of the 21st Century aren't interested in these trinkets. 

They want metal. 


Any kind; iron, steel, aluminum, brass, copper. In this case bronze plaques and markers and urns.

A Bronze Plaque starting at $370 some weighting over 90 lbs.
About $1.65 per lb. in brass metal.

They don't have to dig for it.


The memorial plaques are laying on the ground, on top of the grave, commemorating someone buried beneath it. Estimated guesses are that there are hundreds of thousands of dollars worth plaques stolen from graves every year.

Then there's the urns, sitting on shelves waiting for someone to take. A Surrey graveyard has had fifty stolen this year, alone.

Makes you think twice about getting cremated. Doesn't it? Someone stealing the urn you're in. Dumping you down some sewer drain, and taking the urn down to the recycle depot. 

I've come to this conclusion:

Just take the skin you're in, when you leave this earth, leave nothing, except a small carbon footprint. Leave nothing for a thief to steal, especially when you can't do a damn thing about it.  

Wait!  Maybe you could haunt them. After one urn was sold to a metal recycling business in Surrey. They called police and a woman in Langley was arrested after watching the surveillance tapes. They found 20 more at her place of residence. The other 30 or so are sure to show up soon. 

She was trying to fence them for drug money, eh?