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RICH HILL, Mo. — One Missouri woman says a cemetery owes her an apology.

Dorothy Welch said her mother’s remains were moved from one resting spot to another, and nobody notified her of the move. She said she discovered it for herself on Mother’s Day, when she visited the Greenlawn Cemetery in Rich Hill, Missouri. 

Welch, who has since moved away from Rich Hill, said her mother asked not to be interred in a traditional in-ground gravesite, preferring instead to be interred in a mausoleum. Welch said she discovered remains of her mother, Neoma McConnell, had been moved to a nearby gravesite. McConnell was interred there in 1973.

“My mother didn’t want to be buried in the ground. That’s why they bought this vault,” Welch said. “They didn’t contact us or nothing.”

Greenlawn Cemetery is maintained by Rich Hill city leaders, who said they’d received complaints about the mausoleum’s crumbling masonry. The stone building has a number of visible cracks and one large hole. Jason Rich, Rich Hill’s mayor, said eight bodies were moved from that mausoleum, and city leaders contacted as many of their next-of-kin by mail as possible. Mayor Rich said none of the letters were returned by the U.S. Postal Service as being sent to the wrong addresses, and no one responded or objected.

“How do we know this? We weren’t there. We could have been there if they’d have let us know,” Welch said.

“We went above and beyond what we were required to do,” Rich said. “We felt that was the correct and proper actions to take. I feel bad that she feels she was slighted. That was never our intentions.”

“It was disturbing,” Welch’s friend, Rina Burke, said on Wednesday. “What caught my attention the most was when she said — it’s hard to lose my mom once, but I had to lose her twice when I didn’t know where to go find her.”

Rich said the mausoleum will be torn down soon. Welch said she can’t decide what will make this better for her, but she feels her mother’s memory deserves better. Welch has filed a complaint with the Missouri Attorney General’s Office.