Jennifer Duncan, former caretaker at Greenwood Cemetery, stands amid rows of surface burial vaults in this photograph taken in April 2014 at the Centralia cemetery.
A former caretaker for Greenwood Memorial Park in Centralia is in trouble again, having been arrested Thursday at the cemetery she used to oversee.
Jennifer L. Duncan, 61, was arrested Thursday evening by Centralia police at the cemetery in the 1900 block of Johnson Road for an alleged violation of a protection order issued by Lewis County Superior Court.
Centralia Police Sgt. Jim Shannon told The Chronicle Friday that Duncan was arrested for being on the cemetery property, which constituted a violation of a 1,000-foot protection order granted to a family who has a family member buried on the property. Police received a call just after 4 p.m. Thursday afternoon that Duncan had been chopping wood on the property, and the department sent an officer to investigate.
Duncan was arrested at about 4:11 p.m., according to an online Centralia incident report.
“We have to treat all protection orders the same,” Shannon said. “Protection orders are very strict orders for us because we have to follow the letter in enforcing them.”
According to jail records, Duncan posted bond and was released at 10:53 Thursday night.
Members of the state Funeral and Cemetery Board had charged Duncan in February 2014 with violations of state laws regarding use and care of cemetery funds and authorized investments. The charges stated that Duncan used $6,000 of the cemetery’s endowment money to buy a lawnmower in Oct. 2010, and that she also moved a granite base from one gravesite to another earlier that year.
Duncan most recently had come up on the losing end of a Superior Court ruling in a lawsuit brought forward by Elaine Clark, whose husband Robert is buried at the cemetery, and her son Ernie. The Clarks alleged that Duncan continued to defy a state-imposed order that prohibited her from operating the cemetery.
The lawsuit alleged that Duncan continued to oversee burials and collect fees, and that she was logging trees on the property “apparently in an effort to generate funds to pay the fines imposed on her by the Cemetery Board’s order,” according to the wording of the lawsuit filed in June 2014.
The lawsuit also alleged that Duncan had accused the Clarks of stealing a plaque on Robert Clark’s gravesite and that a granite stone had also been moved from the grave.
A Dec. 19 ruling issued by Judge James Lawler gave the Clarks permission to exhume Robert Clark’s remains and reinter them elsewhere. A confidentiality agreement prevents the Clarks from disclosing exactly how the costs will be covered.
Duncan was ordered during the court proceedings to surrender all the cemetery’s funds to the court, which would then be deposited with the Washington State Funeral and Cemetery Board for future needs at Greenwood Memorial Cemetery.
The board has since ordered Duncan from owning or operating the cemetery for 25 years, an order that was also previously issued to property owner John Baker. Baker and Duncan have a history of legal battles between them, which ended with Baker pleading guilty to stalking Duncan as well as criminal trespass and violation of an anti-harassment order.
