BERKELEY, Mo. — For the past three months, Sharon Webb has been on an agonizing search to find her grandmother's headstone at Washington Park Cemetery.
"All I know is this doesn't make any sense. Her headstone appears to be gone. I have not seen it and it hurts," Webb said.
Webb told 5 On Your Side that 52 years ago, her grandmother, Nancy Scales, was buried at the cemetery on James McDonnell Boulevard in Berkeley, Missouri.
Sharon said when she visited Washington Park two years ago, she took a picture of her grandmother's headstone.
However, when she went to the cemetery on Mother's Day and Thursday, she couldn't find it.
"No, it's not possible that we're in the wrong area. I've been coming here for years and I know where all my relatives are," Webb said.
"There needs to be more accountability from the owner because it's just unkempt. Burial after burial is disturbed," Aja Corrigan, president of the St. Louis Preservation Crew, said.
The nonprofit and other groups said hundreds, possibly even thousands of headstones at the North County cemetery have sunken, including military memorials and much of an infant section. The groups also said many headstones are buried by overgrown brush and grass.
"We need a holistic, multi-faceted solution," Robert Green, a member of Concerned Citizens of Metropolitan St. Louis, said.
"Every time I come out here and see these conditions it just makes me cry. The powers that be need to step up," Green said.
County records show Kevin Bailey's Amazing Graces LLC has owned the cemetery since 2009. On Thursday, Bailey declined to talk to 5 On Your Side on camera.
Bailey's lawyer, Craig Smith, said the cemetery currently does not have any staff, no financial base and no endowment. He called it "an abandoned cemetery."
Smith said Sharon Webb and others, looking for their loved ones' stones, must go to the Missouri Historical Society where all records are currently stored.
"It's just unkempt. I am seriously now thinking about having my grandmother moved to another cemetery. You just cannot get in contact with anyone at Washington Park," a frustrated Webb said.
Washington Park Cemetery is 103 years old and it has been more than 30 years since the last person was buried there.