An 89-year-old woman whose husband’s ashes were stolen from a Dundee graveyard says she would “give anything” for their safe return.
Janet McGregor Mozolf buried the ashes of her late spouse Jim in Eastern Cemetery on Arbroath Road in 2017.
The couple, who were married for 53 years, had always wanted to have their ashes buried or scattered together.
But the pensioner was left devastated last summer when a friend of Janet’s called her to say Jim’s resting place had been “disturbed”.
‘I started digging and digging and digging’
After rushing to the cemetery, Janet could see that a square patch of grass where her husband’s ashes were buried had been recently dug up.
She said: “I started digging and digging and digging, and there was nothing there -absolutely nothing.”
Recounting how she felt in that moment, Janet said: “I can’t really put it in words. I think I was numb.
“We had always wanted to be cremated and buried or scattered together and this I can’t have anymore because I don’t know where the ashes are.
“They’re probably in a dump, but they’re certainly not in the grave.”
Police said evidence needed to find thief who stole ashes
She later discovered more of Jim’s ashes, in an urn next to her sister’s resting place in Dunkeld, Perthshire, were also removed.
Her sister’s were untouched.
Janet reported the Dundee incident to police at the time, but was told that without fingerprints or video footage they would struggle to find the culprit.
Officers issued an appeal for information shortly after, displaying posters in local graveyards asking the public to get in touch if they had seen anything.
Janet has since attempted to seek legal advice, but lawyers have repeatedly turned her away, saying they don’t have the experience to deal with such a case.
Dundee-born Janet met and married Jim when she emigrated to the US in 1960 for work at the age of 27.
The couple lived for several decades in California where he worked as an aerospace engineer.
It was during a dream holiday to Puerto Rico in 2012 that Jim became ill.
Janet said: “For the first three weeks, he was marvellous, he was swimming every day and then the last week he couldn’t get out of bed.
“We took him to the hospital and it was heart failure.
“Four days later he was dead.”
Ashes were taken after a family dispute
Jim’s body was flown to the US where he was cremated, before his ashes were buried in his family’s burial plot in his home city of Buffalo in New York State.
Janet, believing her own ashes would be buried with his after she died, moved back to Dundee to be closer to her relatives.
But during a visit to the US in 2017, she was told Jim’s family grave was full and it would be impossible for her to join him.
She made the difficult decision to exhume his remains, take them with her to Scotland, and bury them next to her mother and father in Eastern Cemetery.
It was following a family dispute last year she discovered they had been taken but the culprit remains unknown.
She said: “I did the wrong thing coming back to Scotland but I’m too old to go back to the USA.
“I would give anything to get his ashes back.”
‘Once a thief, always a thief’
When Janet decided to tell her story, she added a line to her family headstone that reads: “Once a thief, always a thief…What next? Murder?”
She told us: “I was left on my own and there is no ashes belonging to my husband in the grave – who knows where they are?
“I hope somebody out there knows something or anything at all, I would appreciate that.”
A spokesperson for Police Scotland said: “The matter was reported to police and fully investigated.
“No one has been arrested in connection with the incident.”
