The family of Cleveland Butler, 85, were horrified when they saw a decaying foot from a 1969 grave sitting on top of their patriarch's casket. Photo / Butler family handout
The family of Cleveland Butler, 85, were horrified when they saw a decaying foot from a 1969 grave sitting on top of their patriarch's casket. Photo / Butler family handout
WARNING: Disturbing content.
A grieving family has been devastated all over again after they spotted a decaying foot sticking into their grandfather's open grave during his New Jersey funeral.
Sandra Butler was burying her father Cleveland Butler, 85, at Mount Holiness Memorial Park when she spotted the rotting limb ontop of his beautiful casket.
One relative snapped a picture of the ghoulish scene, which shows a leg wrapped in plastic and cloth and toes sticking into the casket's blue and white flowers.
"This was a very traumatizing situation, first dealing with losing my father and then this," Sandra told the New York Daily News.
But the family said they were even more shocked when the cemetery workers kept working, unfazed by the leg, during the funeral last Friday.
"No one said anything to us,' Sandra continued. "It was like business as usual for them. They just dumped the dirt in the plot like it was normal, like it's nothing to them."
The family of Cleveland Butler, 85, were horrified when they saw a decaying foot from a 1969 grave sitting on top of their patriarch's casket. Photo / Butler family handout
Relatives told the paper that one worker even accidentally dropped his phone and a pack of cigarettes into the open grave.
Sandra's brother Alonzo said he is angry the workers didn't try to investigate the leg, and the family revealed they may now pursue legal action.
"We were shocked. All we could say was "Wow", because that was a human, someone else's loved one," he told the paper.
"I feel guilty seeing someone else's family member like that."
But both Mount Holiness owner James Shmergel and caretaker Bill Plog believe the incident is par for course in a cemetery.
"That grave is from 1969. It's unfortunate that this happened, but this is a graveyard," Plog said.
Plog added that the cemetery workers carried on with burying the grave because they thought it would be best to "get it over with as soon as possible".
"People are grieving," he said. 'The last thing you want to do is get into an argument." Cleveland Butler died after suffering a fatal stroke in his Brooklyn nursing home. He is survived by four children, nine grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.
