Natomas woman exhumes daughter's remains after Sacramento cemetery moved grave without telling family | Call Kurtis Investigates
SACRAMENTO – A Natomas mother demanded that her daughter be exhumed and cremated after a Sacramento cemetery moved her grave without telling the family.
CBS13 and the Call Kurtis consumer investigative team began looking into this a month ago. Now, there is a new development.
When Sonia Rodriguez buried her 17-year-old daughter, Jessica Fraire, in St. Mary Cemetery in Sacramento 16 years ago after a drunk driver took her life, she thought that would be her final resting place.
"Of course, of course, yes, I thought that's where she was going to be," Rodriguez said.
But, Rodriguez noticed during a September visit to St. Mary Cemetery that her daughter's headstone had been moved inches to the left of where it had been.
"As soon as I got out of the car, I saw, because she was directly centered in front of that bench and she's way over to the left," Rodriguez explained.
A green temporary marker shows a man, who died in April, is freshly buried there.
"His marker is exactly where my daughter's used to be," she said.
Rodriguez said a staff person in the cemetery office denied it. "The lady giggled and said 'we don't do that here'."
We asked Valarie Rose, a death care expert at American River College, if she had ever heard of cemeteries just moving graves.
"Yes," Rose said.
Why would cemeteries do that? Rose explained that sometimes, mistakes are made when measuring plots.
"Because sometimes they've buried somebody in the wrong grave," she said. "Ethically, a cemetery is going to always tell the family members what's happened regardless of what the outcome is."
However, no one told Rodriguez that her daughter's remains were moved.
"Nobody," she said.
The cemetery, owned by the Diocese of Sacramento, later admitted that they did move Fraire's grave over inches to make room for the man who had just died. The cemetery apologized for not telling the family.
"Well, that's pretty egregious," Rose said. "It's, it's incredibly unethical."
California has a funeral and cemetery bureau that oversees cemeteries. But not in this case, as we have learned, because the state has no jurisdiction over religious cemeteries.
If it was any other cemetery, and not a religious cemetery, the state would have the ability to go after them.
"Yes," Rose said.
However, because St. Mary Cemetery is a religious cemetery, the answer is no, she said.
Rodriguez told us that she no longer trusted St. Mary Cemetery and wanted them to pay to have her daughter exhumed – and cremated – so she could keep her daughter's ashes at home.
CBS13 has stayed on this case, and in Rodriguez's last response to us, she wrote, "Both parties are working on a resolution and I cannot comment any further."
When we contacted St. Mary Cemetery management, Jerry Del Core, its chief executive officer, told us that "The matter has been resolved to the satisfaction of all involved. We won't be offering any comments beyond that."
In early November, we obtained a photograph that shows Fraire's headstone is no longer there, and a fresh outline of sod now marks the spot where her grave was.
"And that's what I want people to know," Rodriguez said.
In our initial interview with Rodriguez before the apparent settlement, she expressed her thoughts about California's lack of oversight of religious cemeteries in the Golden State.
"But had I known that, I would've buried her somewhere different," she said. "I would've made sure it wasn't a religious cemetery, 100 percent."
While California doesn't oversee religious cemeteries, people can sue a cemetery in civil court.
We do know that Rodriguez consulted with an attorney.
The language used in both statements – from Rodriguez and from the cemetery – are standard non-disclosure agreements.