Cemetery Becomes Target for Copper Thieves

With the price of copper and other metals high and rising, we've seen some pretty bold crooks stealing pipe from vacant buildings and construction sites, and even ripping copper downspouts off of homes and other buildings.

But last Tuesday, theives reached a new low when they invaded a Wauwatosa cemetery and stole 39 copper alloy vases from burial plots.

The cemetery director at Pinelawn Memorial Park, 10700 W. Capitol Dr., said he thought the vases had disappeared sometime between 2 p.m. last Monday and 8 a.m. Tuesday.

The theft was noticed quickly because the vases had held flowers, which were pulled out and dumped on the ground beside the headstones. Six more vases were found empty and lying on the ground, not taken for some unknown reason.

The vases are about 90 percent copper and weigh about 15 pounds each. They are valued at $150 to $200 apiece, for a total replacement value of $5,850 to $7,800 for the 39 of them.

The most recently quoted price of scrap copper in the United States is almost exactly $4 a pound, but that is for "bare bright" copper wire or tubing. The scrap value of weathered, alloyed metal could be expected to be somewhat lower.

The director said that the cemetery would not cover the cost of replacing any of the vases. That would be left to the owners of the plots, he said.