A 19-year-old man from Salisbury was supposed to be cleaning up a cemetery last week as part of court-ordered community work after he broke into an apartment building last fall.
Instead, officials said, Neil J. Goodwin Jr. invaded the tomb of a Civil War veteran, pulled apart the 142-year-old skeleton, and then played with the bones, balancing the skull on his shoulder and posing for pictures.
Apparently this type of thing isn’t an isolated incident:
David L. Smith, president of the Civil War Round Table of Greater Boston, said crypt vandalism is becoming more common. The historical society is lobbying the state to strengthen laws involving vandalism of gravesites.
”It’s a terrible thing, whether it is a Civil War soldier or not,” Smith said. ”In effect, what this is is hurting someone who is already dead. . . . And if it is a soldier, then this shows a tremendous amount of disrespect for the people who have gone off to war and died for this country.”
It’s pretty bad when you can’t trust people to behave in a graveyard.