03-07-2025
Family stunned after desecration of loved one's grave at Kansas City cemetery
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Kansas City family is stunned after finding the ground dug up and the casket open at their loved one's grave.
Family members tell FOX4 they don't know why anyone would want to disturb the site 27 years after their loved one's death.
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Kansas City Police Department (KCPD) officers arrived at the Forest Hills Cavalry Cemetery just after 9:30 on Tuesday morning. They found the grave of Delshon Dupriest had been completely dug up, the concrete crypt or vault had been destroyed, and the casket had been opened.
'What did I feel? My heart sunk because I couldn't believe it,' said Shonterra Dupriest, Delshon's daughter. 'They were at the casket. We could see the sheets, and everything that would have been inside his casket.'
His family says that Delshon was a father to nine children, and he was the victim of a homicide in 1998. He was only 25 years old at the time of his death, and at the time of the disturbance to his grave, it had been more than 27 years since his death.
'Oh my God, it was like a horror scene in a horror movie,' said Jamesetta Bland Hood, his mother. 'I've never seen anything like it in my life.' Delshon was her only son.' I don't know how it was, how they did it, but what they did was tore my son's grave up.'
Shonterra says that it's reopening old wounds for her and her siblings. She was only 6 years old when her father was laid to rest.
'So those wounds for me were closed; I'm opening them up again,' she said. 'Now that I'm an adult, it's actually serious. I'm reliving this all over again.'
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Neither Delshon's daughter or mother can understand why anyone would do this to his grave.
'How could you sleep at night?' Shonterra asked. 'Like what was the significance 27 years later? Was it a mockery? What did you get? He's been dead and gone. There's nothing. So, what was the point?'
She said when she arrived at the site on Tuesday, the smell of it is something she couldn't deal with, and she's wondering how anyone, including those responsible, could deal with it either.
'How could you stomach it? How could you stomach this smell? Because the smell that I smelled, how could you? It smelled like death,' she said.
Bland Hood said it's hard for her to understand what someone would be looking for after so long.
'It ain't like [it was] retaliation against him,' she said. 'Like he did something to somebody maybe a year, five years ago or something, but 27 years? And you decide to come, and you want to dig him up for something and we don't know what?'
Both family members say they hope whoever is responsible is held accountable.
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'I just hope they find out who did this. It was a horrific act that you did to, my baby. That's my only son. My only son,' she said. 'How could you sleep at night know that you caused a family so much pain? Now here it is then. Now I have this empty feeling inside of me now.'
KCPD said they are continuing to investigate the incident.
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