Family worries son will be 'nobody' after grave marker goes missing

STAFFORD, Texas (KTRK) -- Virginia Johnson still remembers the last time she saw her son.

"He was walking away from my house and turned away. I never knew that would be the last time I would see him," Johnson said.

Her 44-year-old son, Michael Johnson, died in 2002 after being hit by a drunk driver.

Now, more than 20 years later, Johnson said she's worried she may never be able to visit her son again at his exact resting place.

Michael was buried in 2002 at what was then-called Craven Cemetery. The plot was free and his burial site was marked with a metal plaque instead of a tombstone.

Johnson said she had financial problems and was only recently able to purchase a $700 headstone to place on Michael's grave. But during a recent visit to the cemetery, she learned the metal plaque is gone and now she doesn't know with 100% certainty where her son is buried and where to put his headstone.

"It was like he was a nobody," Johnson said.

Solving Johnson's problem should be easy because under Texas law, cemetery owners must keep "records of interment" that include the "name and age" of each person buried and "the identity of the plot" where everyone is laid to rest.

But 13 Investigates found when the City of Stafford took control of the cemetery in 2011, it never received records on who and where everyone is buried.

Johnson's granddaughter, Carly, thought city hall would have a plot map for the cemetery, but the City's Public Works Director emailed her saying "we do not have any records of gravesites."

That's when she reached out to 13 Investigates.

After the Johnson family reached out to us, we wanted to know who was in charge of this cemetery when Michael died 20 years ago so we started digging.

We found a 2005 document in the Fort Bend County Clerk of Court's records that lists the manager of the cemetery as the "City of Stafford."

The Fort Bend Central Appraisal District told us records show the "City of Stafford" as being "in care of" the cemetery since September 1986.

13 Investigates also sent several emails and made phone calls and an in-person visit to the City of Stafford's mayor and public works director to track down who owned the cemetery before the city took it over in 2011, but we were unable to meet with them.

When we requested all records connected to the cemetery, the city sent us a $3,187.75 invoice.

Eventually, the city let us speak with Lawrence Vaccaro, who was Stafford's Public Works Director up until 2011. He told us he "drew the short straw" and was asked to meet with us after we sent email after email asking city leaders for an interview.

"Everybody's scared. I mean, everybody's suing everybody. Everybody's scared to say anything because nobody really knows," Vaccaro told 13 Investigates' Kevin Ozebek. "Nobody really knows what the story was because they weren't here."

Vaccaro said that prior to 2011, the city was not legally in charge of the cemetery. He said he doesn't know why appraisal district paperwork shows the city was "in care of" the cemetery prior to officially taking it over in 2011.

He said before taking over, city crews would mow the grass, but that was only because the cemetery was abandoned.

"The funeral homes would just go out there and bury people," Vaccaro said. "We did not own it and we did not have any regulations on it."

After the city took over, there were no new burials.

"The city has no records at all and we feel for the family that can't find their loved ones, but the city had no dealings with any burials that were in there and we had no records at all of anybody that was buried there," Vaccaro said. "I checked with some other people that were informed about the cemetery and had some burials there and they didn't know."

He said when the city took over the cemetery, it also didn't have any expertise in plot maps.

"Council at that time did not want to spend public money. It was costly to go through there," Vaccaro said. "When nobody's got records, you can't find anybody with any records, how are you going to find who's buried where. I mean, other than the makers on the gravesite, and so it was just kind of an impossible task at that time."

An attorney for the City of Stafford sent us a document from 2010 talking about its plans to take possession of the cemetery. The document they shared lists the previous owner as the Missouri City Cemetery Company, with a deed of ownership dating back to 1899.

13 Investigates didn't find that company in Texas business records, so we have no clue when they folded and for how long people were being buried in that cemetery while it was abandoned.

The city did provide us with a plot map, but couldn't tell us with certainty when it was created. The map did not include Michael Johnson, so it still leaves his family without an exact location of where he was buried.

But 13 Investigates may have gotten them a lead. A picture of the metal plaque marking Michael's gravesite was taken in 2011 and posted online at FindAGrave.com.

We reached out to the person who took the photo and she told us she documented all of the markers at the cemetery, row by row.

Based on her file order, she believes Michael's marker was near a tombstone that 13 Investigates found buried under a brush. Next to it appears to be an unmarked grave, that's only about 15 feet away from where Johnson thinks she laid her son to rest.

"He was important to me. He was my first son," Johnson said. "I wanted him to be recognized with a marker like everyone else."

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