When Tracy Staadt watched her son — a snapshot of his family tucked inside the jacket of his black suit — being lowered into the ground, she hoped he would finally have some peace.
“He was a troubled soul. He had his demons, but his heart was amazing,” said Staadt, 46.
Four and half years after Aaron Sutherland died in a car crash in northwest suburban Bull Valley, the Staadt family received a phone call from the cemetery, McHenry County Memorial Park in Woodstock.
The man on the line explained there had been a mistake: Her son had been buried in a plot belonging to another family, and now he would have to be moved.
“He said they were preparing the spot next to Aaron for a funeral, when they realized that they had made a mistake and had double sold me Aaron’s plot,” said Staadt, who lives in Wonder Lake. “There was no, ‘I’m sorry to let you know this’ and ‘This is a very sensitive subject.’”
Staadt said the news brought sobs so hard “it literally felt like my ribs were broken.”
This week, Austin Bartlett, a Chicago attorney, filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Staadt family in Cook County Circuit Court, alleging both negligence and “deceptive business practices” on the part of the cemetery.
“The defendants falsely represented to plaintiff that they had legal title to burial plots at their cemetery, including the burial plot sold to the plaintiff, after they had already sold them and transferred title to that plot,” according to the lawsuit.
The cemetery’s actions, Bartlett said, are all the more alarming in light of the scandal uncovered in 2009 at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, where graves were double stacked and other graves trashed to resell the plots to unsuspecting families.
“It is stunning that after the Burr Oak Cemetery scandal and other well-publicized cemetery scandals, that citizens in Illinois are still being double sold burial plots at cemeteries,” Bartlett said in a statement.
A spokesman for the cemetery said in a statement: “McHenry County Memorial Park’s mission is to help families memorialize every life with dignity, including providing and maintaining a tranquil and beautiful place for memorialization. We are aware of the issue and are working to resolve the matter directly with the affected families. We want to reassure our families and the local community that we are committed to serving them and their loved ones.”
The lawsuit seeks monetary damages and a court order to prevent Sutherland’s body from being removed.
Sutherland, born in 1992, never quite got his life on track. Of the country music his mother listened to while he was growing up, Sutherland liked Johnny Cash — perhaps drawn to the singer’s rebellious streak, his mother said.
Like Cash, Sutherland used drugs; his mother kicked him out of her house because of it.
“He was so smart. He could have made something of himself, and I told him that. But he always wanted stuff — quick, quick, quick,” his mother said.
On Oct. 16, 2014, he got into an argument with his girlfriend at Wonder Lake, his mother said. The girlfriend drove away. He chased after her.
“At one point, he ended up hitting a tree and he went down 20 feet into a ditch. He wasn’t found for two days,” his mother said.
Staadt took some solace in the large crowd that showed up for her son’s funeral and in the place where the cemetery’s office staff said he would be buried.
“They even physically took us to the spot,” Staadt said. “We chose where it was because my husband’s grandmother is buried just two spots up from where my son is.”
Staadt doesn’t know the other family — the one that also has a claim to her son’s plot; but she said she bears no ill will toward them. They are not a part of the lawsuit.
But Staadt just wants her son’s remains left alone.
“He suffered so much in life and his death was so horrific,” she said “I wanted him to have a peaceful place. And now I have to disturb that?”
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