Not much is known about William Horrall, a Revolutionary War veteran who came to Indiana in the early 1800s and is buried in an old cemetery south of Washington, Ind. But for the past few days, Horrall, who has been dead for nearly 158 years, has been the talk of the town. On Feb. 2, the Washington township trustee, Pete Showalter, discovered Horrall's grave had been desecrated. Showalter said one or more people had dug a 73-foot deep by 3-foot diameter hole where Horrall's head-to-waist would have been located in the grave. "It's just a sad situation," said Thelma Lou Bingham, an 85-year-old genealogist who has researched her husband's family back to William Horrall. "There's just no rhyme or reason to it. I don't know what they could gain." Bingham has been married to her husband, Clifford, for 61 years. She has spent years researching her husband's family history. She discovered her husband's great-great-great grandfather, William Horrall, had helped found Daviess County's oldest church, Bethel United Methodist, around 1815. The former soldier's tombstone reveals Horrall was born Dec. 20, 1757, and died at the age of 84 on Feb. 15, 1842. "My husband's middle name is Horrall," said Bingham, whose husband is 84. "His mother was Edith Horrall Bingham, whose father was Thomas Gaines Horrall, whose father was Thomas, whose father was William." The Horrall family has a long military past, said Thelma Bingham, who noted that she and her husband live on 65 acres of land, much of which was given to William's son, Thomas, as a reward for his service in the War of 1812. But neither she nor her husband has a clue why anyone would disturb William Horrall's grave. "I guess they thought they might find some artifacts," said Bingham. "But my goodness, after all those years" Horrall's tombstone shows he served as a private in Higginbottoms Company, Mason, Va., Regiment, during the Revolutionary War, said Showalter. He is buried in what is referred to as Old Bethel Cemetery, a quarter of a mile west of Indiana 57 in a rural setting. It used to be next to the church, which has since moved. Showalter, who maintains 10 cemeteries as trustee, had last seen Horrall's grave undisturbed in October, the last time he mowed the property. Preparing to mow again this spring, Showalter visited the cemetery Feb. 2 and immediately noticed the desecration. "They had laid a couple of boards across the hole, put a piece of carpet over that, picked up brush and laid it on top of (the carpet), along with two piles of dirt," said Showalter, 64. "They had it camouflaged. There's no doubt in my mind they had intentions of coming back for some reason, but I don't know what the reason is." Once he discovered the desecration, Showalter said he called the Daviess County Sheriff's Department, which contacted the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. Daviess County Deputy Jeff Riker, the lead investigator in the case, said the alleged crime may be hard to solve unless someone comes forward with information. Stephen Sellers, the director of public information and education for DNR, said whoever desecrated Horrall's grave may face one of two charges: Disturbing ground in search of artifacts or human remains, a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail and a maximum fine of $5,000; or disturbing human remains, a Class D felony punishable up to two years in jail and a maximum $10,000 fine. Riker said an archeological team of four from DNR visited the grave Wednesday and sifted through the piles of dirt that had been dug from the grave in search of bone fragments or anything else left behind. Showalter said only a rusty nail, which may have been used in a coffin, was found. Riker said the archeology team doubts little, if any, of Horrall's remains will be found. "There's a possibility that there was nothing left in the grave to begin with," said Riker. "The (archeologist) said if there was anything buried there, it probably would not have been in any usable shape by now. They said it would have disintegrated by now."
Anyone with information regarding the grave disturbance is asked to call the sheriff's department at 812-254-1060.
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For 25 years, coin and stamp collectors in Pennsylvania and the Midwest were singled out, staked out and looted, according to the FBI. Thieves would repeatedly call the homes of collectors, investigators said, until they were certain no one was home. Then they would break in and steal valuable collections. One of the victims was a Mt. Lebanon stamp collector, and it was that case that helped investigators solve other heists. In July, a federal grand jury in Pittsburgh indicted brothers John M. Kennedy, 59, of Morgantown, W.Va., and James A. Kennedy, 60, of Wakeman, Ohio. The brothers were charged with conspiracy and interstate transportation of stolen property, and released on bond. On Friday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Kenneth Benson revoked their bonds after they were accused of committing another theft while awaiting trial here. The Kennedys are suspected of preying on stamp collectors in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa, according to Linn's Stamp News, which said they were convicted for similar crimes in the early 1980s. The local indictment concerns five cases. The brothers are accused of gleaning names from coin and stamp publications, such as the 1980 American Philatelic Society directory, which the society stopped publishing because of a spate of thefts. Authorities said the Kennedys called collectors, usually around a holiday, and if no one answered, they called the same house repeatedly for a few more days. If there still was no answer, they drove to the city, staked out the house and broke in when no one was home. The first case covered by the indictment involves an Etna collector. He and other victims interviewed for this story asked that their names not be used. For several years, the collector said, he got at least two phone calls a week in which the caller did not speak. In May 1996, while he and his wife were visiting their daughter in Hawaii, their house was broken into. The burglars cut the telephone and cable wires and ransacked the house. They took eight stamp albums and folders with sheets of stamps, worth $10,000 to $15,000, and left eight albums of less valuable stamps. Jewelry and commemorative coins also were taken. "What they took was top drawer," the collector said. "They had to have prior knowledge of stamps for them to take only the best ones." Fourteen months later, according to the indictment, the brothers broke into the Bethlehem home of a retired Lehigh University physics professor who was on vacation. They ransacked the house and took $60,000 in stamps and $40,000 in jewelry and silverware. "I've been collecting practically all my life," said the professor, now 82. Most of his collection was of stamps from Turkey and the Middle East. They were not insured. Investigators also linked the brothers to coin and stamp thefts in Mt. Lebanon in December 1997, Fort Wayne, Ind., in December 1998 and State College in March 1999.
Beginning tomorrow, the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum will take the unusual step of displaying in unrestored condition three 17th century Dutch paintings. They were stolen from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco on Christmas Eve 1978. The three pictures -- a portrait by a follower of Rembrandt's, a church interior by Anthonie de Lorme and a marine view ascribed to Aert van der Neer -- are not as highly regarded today as they were 22 years ago when they disappeared. As they stand now, they dramatically illustrate the effects of neglect on old master paintings. ``We know from their condition only that they've been kept in very adverse circumstances, probably someplace very damp,'' said Lynn Federle Orr, curator of European paintings at the Fine Arts Museums. The pictures are being shown in bad shape by staff consensus, Orr said yesterday. ``I very much wanted to do it this way because it gives the public a good idea of what we do by way of research and caring for works of art.'' The de Lorme, ``Interior of the Church of St. Lawrence,'' is in the worst condition, partly as a result of a bad restoration job done before the theft. Its surface is scratched, split and warped. ``Portrait of a Rabbi,'' once attributed to Rembrandt, has darkened considerably, although the thieves apparently tried to scrub some of the dark varnish away. The area they attacked is lighter than the rest of the picture. Van der Neer's ``River Scene at Night,'' which was done on a panel, has been broken into three pieces and also has a piece missing from one corner. The paintings will be shown in the crates in which they were shipped from New York, where they were recovered in November. The containers are designed to stabilize them in their fragile condition. The damaged works will be on view for six weeks before restoration begins. ``I feel fairly confident they can be returned to good and exhibitable condition,'' museum conservator Carl Grimm said at a press conference yesterday. FBI spokesmen also showed up at the museum yesterday. The FBI got involved because of the value of the work and the presumption that it would be taken across state lines in an attempt to sell it. Asked whether there was a link between this art theft and the one at Boston's Gardner Museum in 1990 or other thefts of artwork, agent George Grotz said, ``We're always looking at that. But there is no firm connection at this point.'' The thievery remains unsolved. The paintings materialized as abruptly as they had disappeared. They were simply left at the William Doyle Galleries in Manhattan and sat unexamined until an anonymous call brought them to the auctioneers' attention. A fourth Dutch picture stolen from the de Young in 1978, Willem van de Velde's ``Harbor Scene,'' is still missing. Beyond the physical insults the stolen paintings endured in the past 22 years, they have also suffered re-evaluation. The authenticity of ``Portrait of a Rabbi'' was already in question among Rembrandt scholars when it was stolen. It is now generally believed to be the work of another hand, probably a contemporary follower of the master. ``All that's been said about the missing pictures in the past 20 years has been said without the presence of the pictures themselves,'' Orr noted. But today's improved technical analysis is expected to confirm scholars' intuitive dismissal of Rembrandt as the painting's author. Considering the caliber of works exhibited in the Fine Arts Museums today, Orr said, ``these pictures would have a hard time finding their way onto the wall, except the de Lorme, which is an example of church interiors not otherwise represented in the collection.'' The recovered ``Portrait of a Rabbi'' may be exhibited in the future, though. ``Our intention is to show it alongside'' the museum's firmly au thenticated Rembrandt picture, Orr said, ``so people can have an idea why it was discredited as a genuine Rembrandt.'' Museum staff members insist that the 1978 heist, in which thieves entered and left through a skylight, would be impossible today. ``We have a very sophisticated security system now, many layers of protection,'' Orr said. ``That was part of the outcome of the theft, the embarrassment to the city that they didn't have more effective security.''