Atlanta

Cemetery that allegedly misplaced body files for bankruptcy

Greenwood Cemetery Greenwood Cemetery has filed for bankruptcy. (Source: WSBTV)

ATLANTA — Attorney Ortavia Simons says Greenwood Cemetery sort of dug itself in deeper as it sought to fix problems with where Vera Blount’s late husband Edson Blount Sr. was buried, problems that are at the focus of a lawsuit in which Simon represents the Blount family.

Atlanta cemetery files for bankruptcy. A widow’s quest for justice, LIVE on Channel 2 at 6 p.m.

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“They dug up the grave where he was supposed to be. It was someone else in that grave, Lord have mercy,” Vera Blount told Channel 2 investigative reporter Mark Winne. “They dug up the wrong grave.”

“They disinterred the wrong body in front of us in a case about them burying bodies in the wrong place,” Simon said.

Simon says the cemetery called Vera Blount in 2022 to tell her her husband’s headstone was in the wrong place, and they moved the headstone to the plot she’d bought years earlier.

But the attorney alleges, Greenwood didn’t move the body until the lawsuit was underway, and even then a cemetery worker had apparently marked the wrong grave for contractors to open.

Vera Blount is concerned the cemetery’s bankruptcy filing might interfere with her quest for justice.

Greenwood has filed a “notice of stay in bankruptcy“ in the Blount case, and Simon says a stay would put the lawsuit on pause. But he believes the Blount’s legal team can get the stay lifted and the case moving again.

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