RALEIGH, N.C. — Several additional families have come forward claiming mistaken burial mix-ups at Montlawn Memorial Park in Raleigh, according to a follow-up investigation published this week.
The new contacts came after an earlier report in which a Wake County family — Beth, Sarah and Lydia Greene — said they discovered a stranger was buried in a cemetery plot they purchased at Montlawn.
That account was described as the second instance of its kind, following a case several years earlier in which Kizzie Sewell’s husband was exhumed after a plot at the cemetery off South Wilmington Street was sold twice.
Joel Anthony Johnson Jr. said his parents had bought plots so they could be buried next to his grandmother, then learned after his father’s death that someone else was already buried in the purchased spot and that his father was buried farther away.
Scott Jones said his family bought four adjoining plots decades ago and later discovered someone was buried in a plot deeded to him, without notice that the space was already occupied.
A spokesperson for Everstory Partners, which owns Montlawn, said the company is committed to treating families with care and respect and does not publicly discuss individual family matters. The North Carolina Cemetery Commission, responding to questions about overlapping complaints, said such issues can show mistakes in record-keeping or mapping and may reflect management problems at the time a mistake was made.
Raleigh Mayor Janet Cowell’s city government and Wake County offices often field resident concerns that spill from private cemetery disputes into consumer complaints. Montlawn sits in the capital’s south corridor, where families continue pressing for clearer plot records after the latest wave of reports.
