A 30-year-old Chicago mother says the disappearance of the headstone at her baby’s grave feels like going through the burial process all over again. Chris Hush reports.
A 30-year-old Chicago mother says the disappearance of the headstone at her baby’s grave feels like going through the burial process all over again.
Tiffany Cribbs’ 5-month-old, Tiffanique Slaton, would be 11 years old, she says. Her baby daughter died in 2006. She recently went to the burial site at Mount Hope Cemetery on what would have been Tiffanique’s birthday—but says she couldn’t find the headstone.
“From lot 36, to 35 to lot 29, I paced back and forth through the sections from front to back,” an emotional Cribbs said. “[I] couldn’t find baby’s gravesite anywhere.”
Desperate to find answers, Cribbs reached out to the Dempsey Burdick Foundation, which donated the headstone to her family to cover the costs. The founder told her there was little he could do since the foundation has shutdown, she said.
The foundation did not immediately respond to request for comment.
“I feel like my back is up against the wall right now,” Cribbs said.
But the cemetery told NBC 5 records for the infant show a stone was never placed. It also said if the stone didn’t meet certain requirements it could have been removed, or—what Cribbs fears most—stolen.
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“You’ve got to be heartless to do something like this,” she said. “You have to.”
Cribbs is adamant that a stone was in fact placed there because, she says, her family has visited the site before to see it.
The cemetery says it's looking into what might have happened.
