Peter Biscontini never met his great-grandmother, but grew up hearing “wonderful stories” about her life and penchant for Sunday night family dinners.
The latest chapter in Mary Cappellini Piga's story is one Biscontini and other loved ones never could have imagined.
The Plains Township woman's remains were one of two bodies stolen from the decrepit Good Shepherd Memorial Park mausoleum earlier this month in what police said is a burglary that remains under investigation.
The crime hits home on multiple levels for Biscontini, a member of the township's elected Board of Commissioners.
“Not only am I taking it seriously from a job or … [a] commissioner’s standpoint, but also for personal reasons … it's just a tragedy and very sad to think about,” a visibly shaken Biscontini said in an interview Thursday night following a regularly scheduled township meeting.
Biscontini said police told him they found partial remains of Piga's body, but he could not comment further, including on what may have been removed from her crypt.
The name of the second body has not been released. Plains Twp. police have not made any new information public following a brief Nov. 10 social media post that described the incident, which is believed to have taken place between Nov. 1 and Nov. 6, as a burglary.
Another relative, quoted in a Newsweek story about the incident, said he was told the second body, an unrelated male, was recovered.
Plains Township Police Chief Dave Binker did not respond to messages from WVIA News seeking comment and did not address the issue at Thursday's commissioners meeting.
Biscontini said during the commissioners meeting that township and state police are working on the case.
Biscontini told WVIA News after Thursday’s meeting that “there are some potential suspects” he thinks “are being looked at,” but couldn’t provide details.
Police also will add increased surveillance near the cemetery, but Biscontini said trail cameras are often stolen “within weeks, if not days.”
Cemetery in dire state, but local officials unable to help
Good Shepherd Memorial Park has been in disrepair for at least two decades.
Volunteers have come in over the years to mow the lawn and improve the state of the property — one who was there Thursday declined to speak on the record — but the crumbling mausoleum poses a greater challenge.
Its roof is sagging and missing large sections. Marble cladding covering graves on the outside walls is damaged or missing. Local news reports in recent years suggest the interior is damp and moldy and also crumbling.
News stories from 2015 indicated that relatives were concerned about the state of the Westminster Road cemetery and mausoleum then, and that the issues extended back at least a dozen years.
But then, as now, a major issue stood in the way: The cemetery is privately owned, limiting what steps municipal officials can take.
Township officials condemned the mausoleum in 2015, but the decaying building still stands.
In 2006, the site had been purchased by Viktoria Evstafieva and Lawrence Lee, who residents and township officials say have not taken care of the property, and moved to Florida several years ago.
WVIA News' calls to numbers listed online for Evstafieva and Lee went unanswered.
Biscontini said the township has tried to reach Evstafieva and Lee several times throughout the decades, but after repeated failed attempts to work with the couple, the community resorted to filing for court documents to move each individual still housed at Good Shepherd. However, that process takes years to complete, and all the while, the mausoleum continues to deteriorate.
Taking the fight to state Attorney General’s office
Others are stepping in, including funeral directors like Chris Yanaitis and the greater Luzerne County Funeral Directors Association, who are bringing Good Shepherd’s case to the Attorney General’s office.
Yanaitis, a Plains Township native, hopes the state will grant the community a blanket court order to move all remaining 38 people from the mausoleum to the ground surrounding the cemetery.
While that sounds simple enough, Yanaitis said the reason why he needs the court order is because he said the cemetery owners have not signed disinterment forms and other authorization forms to move bodies as the owners have not paid taxes on the property.
Yanaitis said he hopes to hear from the Attorney General’s office in the next few days.
Yanaitis: 'We are running out of time'
He also said the county funeral association is investigating whether there are unused burial plots available for that purpose.
However, Yanaitis said the situation is further complicated by difficulties in locating residents’ next of kin. Many have either died or moved away. The funeral association has shouldered much of the cost to rebury or cremate the remaining bodies.
“We are running out of time because a lot of the decedents, they don't have any families anymore, because they themselves are gone. And this is why it's falling into the responsibility of those that are left — us, the caretakers, the funeral directors. I mean, we are trying our best,” Yanaitis said at Thursday’s meeting.
He addressed the additional emotional toll that reinterment has on families and the greater community.
“Everybody in the Luzerne County Funeral Directors Association has been trying their best to do and get the word out to families … I know [lawyers] have been helping us … but at the same time, it's still a cost, and it's going through a second funeral all over again,” Yanaitis said.
Crime surrounding Good Shepherd is also growing as the site falls further into disrepair.
“What we've been seeing up there has been escalating,” Yanaitis said. “It's the little things that I've noticed … It's from the screws being taken out of the crib plates to now … somebody's hammering and taking out the bricks … But, the hard thing is that the police department can't be up there 24/7 and the neighbors can't be up there watching all the time. My concern is this is going to [become] something [worse] and that scares me.”
He asks the public to reach out to their local funeral director if their loved ones are at Good Shepherd Memorial Park for assistance in relocating them to a safer place at the cost to the funeral director.
For Biscontini and his family, the incident is a tragic turn in their loved one's proud story.
Piga was born on Jan. 31, 1898, in Perugia, Italy, according to her memorial page on Find a Grave, and she died in July 1979 at Wilkes-Barre General Hospital.
Her obituary says Piga "came to this country as a young girl" and settled in the Hilldale section of Plains Township. She was survived by two sons, three sisters, four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, the obituary said.
After a funeral Mass at St. Anthony of Padua Church in Exeter, Piga was laid to rest at Good Shepherd.
Decades later, Piga's great-grandson could only speculate on why someone would desecrate her grave and others.
"There are a lot of sick people out there," he said.
“I don't think that [this is] a high school kid trying to do mischief. I could see [a kid] spray-painting or toilet papering a mausoleum,” Biscontini said.
“But I think for somebody to go to that extent, to … the premeditated work that goes into opening up a crypt and removing corpses, I think you have to have a couple screws loose, both psychologically and morally.”
