Six caskets inside a mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx were discovered to have been tampered with on Tuesday, a law enforcement source said.
Security personnel at the cemetery called police around 9:30 a.m. after they noticed the door to the mausoleum was ajar, the source said. When officers arrived, they found six caskets had been pulled from the mausoleum walls and left on the floor.
One of those caskets, entombed in 1978, no longer had remains inside, according to the police source. All of the other caskets showed significant damage, the source said, but it appeared the remains had been left untouched.
The mausoleum is believed to belong to a single family, according to the source. The dates of entombment on the remaining five caskets range from pre-1946 through 2016.
Despite growing controversy over Confederate memorials and other controversial statues around New York City, the police source said the incident has no connection to the Confederacy or anti-Semitism, and there was no graffiti found in or around the mausoleum.
The NYPD’s hate crimes unit is investigating along with the 47th Precinct.
Woodlawn Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark and one of the largest cemeteries in the city, is the final resting place for many luminaries, including Herman Melville, Miles Davis and Robert Moses.
A request for comment from Woodlawn Cemetery was not immediately returned.
