PUTNAM COUNTY, Fla. – Families said they feel violated after a Putnam County woman was arrested for stealing items from gravesites.
Katherine Taylor, 61, was charged with two counts of criminal mischief for damaging property and removing items from graves.
Nadine Cribbs, who didn’t want her face shown, pointed out items the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office returned to her this week.
They were taken from her mom, whom she’s named after and her stepdad’s gravesites in the Etoniah Cemetery.
“Back in December of 23, I put my mom out here, and then within four months of having her here, stuff started going missing,” Cribbs said. “Losing my momma was the hardest thing on me, and coming here gives me peace.”
She said that peace kept getting stripped away every time something went missing from the resting place for the people she loved.
“It was a different type of pain that I don’t know I can’t describe, what it was but yeah, it just devastates you that someone would come and do that,” Cribbs said.
That’s why she installed a camera and caught a woman who the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office identified as Taylor stealing items from a gravesite.
Back in 2020, she was arrested for a similar incident at Oak Hill Cemetery when she was caught stealing from the gravesite of 13-year-old Tanner Wall. She pleaded guilty to petty theft and served six months of probation.
News4JAX spoke with Wall’s parents in 2020 after he died from a brain-eating amoeba.
Alicia Whitehill, his mother, said knowing Taylor stole from another family is not right.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Whitehill said. “I know what it feels like. When I talked to her the last time she did it, I caught her coming out of the cemetery, and she promised that she would never do this again.”
Whitehill and Cribbs said they don’t want another family to go through what they went through.
“None of us deserves to have to have all that done to us. It’s not right and she needs to be punished,” Cribbs said.
It’s why Cribbs said if anyone is missing anything from the Etoniah Cemetery, contact the sheriff’s office with photos of the missing items.
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