ST AUGUSTINE RECORD
St Augustine, Florida
Tuesday, February 3, 1970
Mrs. Kersey, Long-Time local Resident, Dies
Mrs. Lillie Mae Kersey, 68, of SR 204, died Monday evening at her home. She was born in Clay County and had resided in St. Johns for 51 years.
Survivors include her husband, George O. Kersey; four daughters, Mrs. William Hughey of East Palatka; Mrs. Stanley Stevens, Hialeah; Mrs. Jack Mesuita, Hastings; and Miss Loretta Kersey, St. Augustine; two sons, Harold and Clyde Kersey, both of Hastings; two sisters, Mrs. William Miller of Chattanooga, Tenn., and Mrs. Roy Sappingten, Jacksonville; two brothers, John Brosky and Sam Brosky, both of Jacksonville; and 12 grandchildren.
Funeral arrangements will be announced later by Craig Funeral Home.
ST AUGUSTINE RECORD
St Augustine, Florida
Friday, February 6, 1970
Mrs. Lillie Kersey
Funeral services for Mrs. Lillie Mae Kersey, 68, State Road 204 who died Thursday evening, were held at 10 a.m., Thursday, at the chapel of the Craig Funeral Home with the Rev. Willard Smith, pastor of Mt. Olive Baptist Church, officiating. Burial was in Pellicer Cemetery. Pallbearers were Bill Turner, Jo1m P. Sikes, William F. Harris, Billie R. Hobbs, Cecil White and Albert Brooks.
Survivors include her husband, George O. Kersey, State Road 204; four daughters, Mrs. William Hughey, East Palatka, Mrs. Stanley Stevens, Hialeah, Mrs. Jack Mesuita, Hastings, Miss Loretta Kersey, St. Augustine; two sons, Harold and Clyde Kersey, both of Hastings; two sisters, Mrs. William Miller, Chattanooga, Tenn., Mrs. Roy Sappington, Jacksonville; two brothers, John and Sam Brosky, both of Jacksonville; and 12 grandchildren.
Craig Funeral Home was in charge of arrangements.
ORLANDO SENTINEL
Orlando, Florida
Tuesday, February 10, 1970
Woman's Violated Body Put To Rest Again
By Peggy Poor, Sentinel Bureau
HASTINGS - She rests again peacefully now in the quiet piney woods where she spent all her 69 years, a simple country woman whose contentment was in the homey task of wife and mother.
In death, Lillie Mae Kersey knew more violence and notoriety than she could have imagined in life.
PRELIMINARY autopsy reports indicate her body, stolen from its newly dug grave in Pellicer Creek Cemetery last Thursday .night or early Friday, may have been sexually violated after death.
Flagler State Atty. Stephen Boyles said officials are awaiting results of further pathology tests being conducted in Jacksonville.
Boyles and spokesmen for St. Johns County Sheriff L. O. Davis said the twocounty investigation of the macabre case is continuing.
BOTH Officials were chary of information, partly because the dead woman's .family is striving desperately to keep word of the grisly happenings from her grief stricken husband of more than 50 years.
Over 70, he is suffering from a heart condition and might not survive another shock.
Newspapers have been discontinued and relatives are trying to shield the elderly widower from TV and radio reports.
ACCORDING to her daughter, Mrs. Jack Mesuita, Mrs. Kersey died Tuesday night of a heart attack. She was a diabetic and that day had a routine medical checkup.
Boyles said there was no indication in the preliminary autopsy reports that death had not been from natural causes.
She was buried at 11 a.m. Thursday in the family plot in the cemetery, a lonely clearing in a slash pine area. The cloth-covered casket was incased in a concrete vault, so heavy it had to be lowered by a power windlass.
LATER that afternoon the grieving family returned "to see the flowers." Sometime between then and the next morning the ghoul struck.
Two women from St. Francis Flower Shop in St. Augustine delivered a late order at about 11 a.m. Friday and found the grave open.
"The flora1 offerings were scattered all over," one of them, who refused to give her name, told The Orlando Sentinel.
“The grave was torn up and the casket lid was open, part way like it is for viewing. We didn't stop to look inside. We were scared and took off."
HOWEVER, they left the floral tribute - a potted plant of daffodils in a wicker basket with a yellow ribbon - then sped to the Craig Funeral Parlor in St. Augustine, which notified the sheriff.
That day about 2 p.m., two employees of Levitt Construction Co. found the body more than 12 miles from the cemetery.
The company is building a model city and daily patrols its vast property by waterway.
That morning the patrol boat concentrated on the east bank and returning that afternoon searched the west.
THE MEN aboard spotted the body on the edge of a canal along the St. Joe graded road and notified the sheriff's office in Bunnell.
A witness who accompanied law enforcement officials to the site said the body, still dressed in the blue long-sleeved, high-neck cotton burial gown supplied by the mortuary, was "rolled over" as if it had been "dumped" from a vehicle which swung off the road and circled the small clearing by the canal.
The dead woman still wore a gold wedding band. Her daughter said she had not worn or even owned any other jewelry and nothing had been taken from the casket.
ORLANDO SENTINEL
Orlando, Florida
Friday, February 13, 1970
Body Not Violated
HASTINGS – A laboratory report shows no medical evidence of sexual abuse of the body of 69-year-old Mrs. Lillie Mae Kersey, leaving law enforcement officials more baffled than ever about the case of the stolen corpse.
State Attorney Stephen Boyles said Thursday physical evidence had seemed to point to sexual abuse of the body after it was stolen from remote Pellicer Creek Cemetery a week ago.
Mrs. Kersey, mother of six, died Feb. 3 of natural causes. She was buried Feb. 5 in the cemetery less than a mile from her St. Johns County home.
A florist visiting the cemetery the morning of Feb. 6 discovered the grave had been opened and the body removed. A few hours later the body was discovered on the muddy bank of a canal in nearby Flagler County about 12 miles from the grave.
“IT HAD to be someone who knew the area well,” said the witness, who reported that the dirt roads through the construction area, being cleared by bulldozers, are "dirty and messy" and almost impassable from recent rains.
Except for the small clearing, most of the area is underbrush and palmetto thickets.
"The body would never have been spotted from land," he said.
SHERIFF'S spokesmen said there are some "definite leads" and some "physical evidence" has been found at the grave site.
On the piano in Mrs. Mesuita's home is a framed photo of Mr. and Mrs. Kersey which she refused to release to the newspaper.
It shows a smiling sweet faced elderly couple. The woman's straight gray hair is smoothed back from a kindly face, the sort of face Madison Avenue might choose to advertise grandma's borne-baked apple pie.
Mrs. Mesuita, who apparently has not been informed of official suspicions, said her parents were an exceptionally devoted couple.
HER MOTHER had no enemies and didn't even know anyone much except her family.
She said her parents rarely left their home in the piney woods except when one of their children came to take them to market every two weeks.
Boyles said it is now believed only one person was involved in the grave robbery. Some kind of winch equipment might have been used to lift the concrete lid off the box. Morticians worked overtime to cover, reopen and again cover the violated grave.
FRIDAY afternoon before the family, especially the husband, could make another visit, the flowers and sand were hastily put in order over the empty casket. Then Saturday, according to a sheriff's spokesman , it was reopened to replace the body and once more tidied.
So now she rests in peace at last, beneath a mound of the sandy soil familiar to her since childhood. Real flowers are wilting, the ferns turning brown, but the wax roses of most of the offerings have not begun to fade in the warm Florida sun.
It is a. quiet place, disturbed now only by the sighing wind and the occasional cry of a bird or the buzzing of bees among the flowers.
BUT THE community is in shock. "The children can't sleep," said Mrs. Mesuita.
Her husband, pastor of the Evangelistic Church, said he had ordered new lights for his home and will keep them burning all night.
"You don't know if this is just the first or if it is some new kick like hearing about them setting fire to people in the park just' to watch them 'burn," said Mrs. Mesuita. "You don't know when you might open your door and find (the body of) a loved one out there in the road."
