Kink in the Cemetery

I was doing a newspaper search earlier today at Old Fulton Post Cards. Levi Parsons Grover 1825-1882 was my 1st cousin, 4x removed. I was actually looking for his obituary but instead found this reference almost a 100 years after his death to his cemetery monument. I think what actually shocked me the most was that the officer actually recorded the name from the monument! I wish I had a photo of the monument to share.

Livingston County Leader, Geneseo, NY, Wednesday, August 8, 1973, page 2

Girl Wanted to be Tied to Gravestone

David J. Rouse, 22, who was arrested by Livingstone County Sheriff's Authorities on July 28 on a charge of endangering the welfare of a child, appeared before Justice Harold Hennessy of Lima on July 31 where he entered a plea of guilty and received a sentence of a $100.00 fine which was paid and was placed on probation for six months.

Sheriff's Deputy Salvatore NiCastro, at 1:57 a.m. spotted a car parked in Oak Ridage Cemetery.

Rouse approached him from the cemetery and told the deputy he had come to the cemetery for some "peace and quiet."

Ni Castro said his flashlight beam then picked out a pillar moniment over the grave of Levi Grover which had a blanket fraped over its top.

Ni Castro immediately took Rouse into custody, and as he turned toward his patrol car, the deputy reported, a voice from behind the blanket said, "Let me explain."

When Ni Castro took the blanket off the monument, he reported, he found a 15 year=old Rochester girl standing on its pedestal, her wrists and ankles tighly bound to the monument.

She was wearing only underpants and a nightgown which had been lifted to her shoulders, Ni Castro reported.

Rouse told the deputy the incident was the result of a barroom bet that he could persuade a girl to go to the cemetery with him and be tied up.

The girl said Rouse has asked her to let herself be tied up "to play a joke on a buddy's girl friend," Ni Castro reported.

The girl was participating volumtarily in the incident, said the sheriff's department.