Mother sues Woodstock cemetery for 'double selling' son's gravesite

More than four years after burying her son, Tracy Staadt thought the worst was over.

The phone call during which she learned her 22-year-old son, Aaron Sutherland, had died in a car crash was a painful memory – one that kept her in a funk she was finally beginning to shake, she said.

One phone call last month, however, sent her right back to that place.

“It was a gentleman from the cemetery telling me that they were planning a burial next to where Aaron is. My first thought was ‘Oh my God, something happened to Aaron’s plot.’ You hear these horror stories,” Staadt said. “Then he proceeded to go on and say that it had come to his attention that “We had double sold you the plot for your son, so we are going to need to remove your son.’ ”

Now the Wonder Lake woman is suing the owners of the Woodstock cemetery accused of burying her son in a grave site that it previously had sold to another family.

Staadt’s attorney, Chicago-based Austin Bartlett, filed a civil lawsuit against Stonemor Partners LP, the owners of McHenry County Memorial Park, where Sutherland was buried Oct. 25, 2014.

“My client’s son has been buried in that grave for 4½ years, and obviously for any parents who have to bury their child, it is an incredibly challenging and horrific thing emotionally,” Bartlett said. “And now for her to have to relive all this has just been awful for her.”

The suit, filed Tuesday in Cook County, seeks damages for Staadt’s emotional distress, attorney fees and court costs, as well as injunctive relief to stop the cemetery from removing her son. A court date has been set for July 3 in Cook County.

Reached by phone Friday, Stone-mor spokesman John McNamara declined to comment, adding that the company hadn’t been served with the lawsuit.

A statement that McNamara sent on behalf of Stonemor on Friday said the company is aware of the situation and is working to resolve it.

“McHenry County Memorial Park’s mission is to help families memorialize every life with dignity, including providing and maintaining a tranquil and beautiful place for memorialization,” the statement read. “We are aware of the issue, and have been working to resolve the matter directly with the affected families. We want to reassure our families and the local community that we are committed to serving them and their loved ones.”

It’s unclear how long the gravesite had already been sold before Staadt purchased it, her attorney said. The cemetery has offered to relocate Sutherland’s body several feet over, or have him moved to a new plot near a lake on the property, Staadt said.

“It almost seems like they know they did wrong, but they’re not going to admit they had any wrongdoing in this,” she said.

The crash that killed Sutherland, known by his mother as “Boogie,” happened Oct. 16, 2014. The last message on his phone was a text message from his father at 8:23 p.m. – “Are you stopping by the house?” Staadt asked.

It would be another three days, however, until a passerby located the crash’s debris in a ditch off the 300 block of Ridge Road in Bull Valley, officials said at the time.

Police determined Sutherland’s 1997 Honda drove about 20 feet off the road into a ditch, striking a tree before coming to a stop. He was pronounced dead at the scene by the McHenry County Coroner’s Office.

On Oct. 22, 2014, it was decided that Sutherland would be buried two spots below his great-grandmother, and Staadt purchased a burial plot and headstone from McHenry County Memorial Cemetery in Woodstock.

“At the time the defendants sold the burial plot to the plaintiff, they had in fact already sold the plot to another family, but never disclosed the double sale to the plaintiff,” her attorney wrote in the lawsuit.

Staadt since has learned that other plots the cemetery offered also had been double sold, she said.

The owners of the cemetery are accused of breaching their duties, failing to maintain sales records and double selling the burial plot, among other allegations.

“There’s not a moment where I don’t feel like someone’s literally going inside my stomach and twisting it,” Staadt said. “It’s constant.”