“It is difficult to imagine that not alone would a fella go along to a graveyard and damage headstones but damage them for profit — making money by taking a statue from one place to another,” said Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin of Mark Howell of 6 Railway Cottages, McCurtain Hill, Clonakilty.
Cork Circuit Criminal Court heard that a 72-year-old widow who visited her husband’s grave in West Cork several times a day was distraught to find a bronze statue of the Virgin Mary smashed from a shelf on the headstone. The thief had left a bronze statue of Padre Pio in its place.
To make matters worse, the widow recognised the Padre Pio statue as being like the one on her sister-in-law’s grave in the same cemetery — St Mary’s in Clonakilty. The widow checked that grave and found the stone shelf for the Padre Pio statue had been forcibly removed and the statue was missing.
Garda Peter Nolan gave evidence of the extensive investigation mounted in West Cork last August when it was found that these two headstones had been desecrated.
Garda Nolan said that, as well as causing upset for the two families in Clonakilty, Howell, aged 39, also caused a lot of distress for the family who unwittingly paid him for their headstone in the cemetery of the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Enniskeane.
Howell was caught when gardaí searched local graveyards to see if any new headstones had been erected with the distinctive plinth-type shelf taken from one headstone and thestatue of the Virgin Mary taken from another. When they found both in the Enniskeane cemetery, they then noted that Howell was the one who had been paid for the items and the work done on the headstone there.
Howell had more than 100 previous convictions, many related to theft or deception.
The total sentence was two years, with the last six months suspended.