Woman says Buckeye cemetery buried another body in her grave site

Nancy Marshall had her own burial plot all picked out.

When her time came, the Buckeye resident would be interred at the city-owned Louis B. Hazelton Memorial Cemetery — Section B, Block 29, Lot 3, Plot 7. On one side of that spot rests her husband, Gerald, who died in 2023. On the other is her mother, Nina Phillips, who died in 2008.

But last year, the cemetery called Marshall to inform her of a problem with her burial plot she’d purchased. Someone else was buried in it already — and, according to a lawsuit Marshall filed against Buckeye earlier this month, the cemetery wouldn’t tell her whose corpse is squatting in her eternal resting place.

Marshall filed the suit Aug. 4 in Maricopa County Superior Court, alleging that the town breached its contract with her and committed negligence when it allowed someone else to be buried in the plot she purchased for herself. She is asking a judge to rule that Buckeye “is allowing a continuing trespass to be made” on her property and to order the city “to take all action necessary to remove the body” from her burial plot.

Buckeye officials did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit. Marshall’s attorney, Curtis Ensign, told Phoenix New Times that Marshall was away until after Labor Day and was unable to speak before then.

Per Marshall’s lawsuit, she and her husband bought two adjoining plots in the cemetery in 2008, the year Marshall’s mother was buried there. At the same time, the suit says, Marshall had her mother’s plot changed so “that there would be three plots in a row” for the family.

Last September, Marshall says, the cemetery called her to say there “might be a problem” with her plot, the lawsuit says, and she made an appointment to speak with town officials in person. In an in-person meeting on Sept. 10, they told her that “a body had apparently been interred” in the plot she purchased between her deceased mother and late husband. The suit says that the cemetery either withheld or was not privy to that body’s identity.

“At the time, she was not informed of the identity of the body that was interred, who caused or allowed the body to be interred in Plot 7, or when or why the body was interred,” the lawsuit says.

It is not clear if Marshall has learned the body’s identity since. However, her suit claims that “there may be 80 or so persons who have been interred” at the cemetery whose identities are unknown to the cemetery, as well as “who interred them, or why or when they were interred.”

The Louis B. Hazelton Memorial Cemetery was founded in 1938 by the American Legion Hazelton-Butler Post 53 and transferred to Buckeye’s ownership in 1947. According to its website, the cemetery is “reaching capacity in the original sections of the cemetery” and plots in four sections — including Section B, where Marshall purchased her family’s plots — “are no longer available for purchase by the general public.”

The cost of one full plot at the cemetery is $2,000, according to its website. While the cemetery has a burial search feature that allows someone to pull up a grave location by name — the graves of Nina Phillips and Gerald Marshall indeed can be found in the same area of the cemetery — it does not provide a public listing of gravesites by section and plot number.

The lawsuit says that Ensign, Marshall’s lawyer, tried to find out who was buried in her plot and what the city and the cemetery would do to resolve the problem. It notes that “even though (Marshall) has not deceased and cannot presently be interred in Plot 7, it became obvious that the situation involving Plot 7 would eventually become a problem that presently needed resolution.”

According to the suit, the cemetery said it “was unable to provide any information” about the body buried there. In February, the suit says, the city “refused to do anything to resolve the problem except offer a new plot” to Marshall, which the lawsuit says is “unsatisfactory.”

On March 4, Marshall filed a notice of claim notifying the city that she intended to sue if the situation wasn’t resolved. Per the suit, the city denied that claim in May.