Meticulous grave robbery vexes N.H. police

Clues sought as theories abound

This headstone marks the location of Sarah Symonds's grave in Bible Hill Cemetery. Grave robbers dug up her coffin and her remains sometime between Oct. 30 and Nov. 2. (Gilman Shattuck)

After she died in 1824 at the age of 30, Sarah Symonds rested in an out-of-the-way cemetery in the small town of Hillsborough, N.H., for more than 180 years.

"It was dug in a very strange manner. It's perfect," said Hillsborough Police Chief Brian Brown. "You'd have to see it. The sides are all squared. The bottom's level."

"We just don't have any answers right now," he said.

The grave robbers hit the Bible Hill Cemetery sometime between Oct. 30 and Nov. 2, Brown said. He said police were considering a number of theories, including the possibility that the body was unearthed by members of a Satanic cult.

Symonds was born March 29, 1794, and died June 18, 1824. She never married. Little else is known about her, said Gilman Shattuck, 80, a resident active in the local historical society who researched Symonds's life after the news broke.

The cemetery is a small plot in an isolated area with a stone wall around it. It contains about 40 graves, the oldest of which dates to the late 18th century.

Most of the graves are from the first or second decade of the 19th century, and a few are from the late 19th century, Shattuck said.

Brown said police in the town of about 6,000 people are puzzled because grave robbers looking for valuables wouldn't have any reason to dig so neatly and would likely try to fill the grave to cover up their crime.

"You're not going to waste time to square the corners," he said. "Why leave it open? Why dig it so meticulously? . . . Somebody obviously wanted us to find it at some point."

Police hope someone will step forward to shed some light on the case, he said.