For nearly 25 years, Debbie Redmon has grieved for her son. The five-day-old infant died in 1977 and was buried in Northside's Wesleyan Cemetery.

        Mrs. Redmon says her sustained grief is not from the initial shock of the boy's death. Rather, it stems from financial problems and poor maintenance at the cemetery, which became so bad that the family exhumed the boy's body themselves to bury in another cemetery.

        Today, after months of legal wrangling, trial begins for the cemetery administrator, Robert Merkle. The 62-year-old unordained Methodist minister is accused of stealing nearly $100,000 from an endowment fund for upkeep.

        The jury trial will be heard before Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge David P. Davis.

        The once-beautiful burial grounds, dating to the mid-1800s, are overgrown and trash-strewn. Vandals have either stolen or toppled numerous tombstones, graves have become sunken, and there are questions about whether some bodies are even buried in the plots purchased for them.

        Mr. Merkle, who took over administration of the Northside cemetery in 1995, is accused of using the money from Wesley an's maintenance fund to pay for his or his family's personal expenses.

        His attorney, Richard Magnus, contends that Mr. Merkle did not steal the money and that this is merely a case about poor book-keeping.

        The prosecution, however, intends to use bank records to prove Mr. Merkle knew what he was doing. They say he continued to sell burial plots but failed to turn the proceeds over to the endowment fund.

        Prosecutors claim Mr. Merkle used the money instead to pay credit-card and veterinarian bills, private school tuition for his grandchildren, and buy toy trains and satellite television.

        Mrs. Redmon and dozens of others who have relatives buried at the cemetery plan to protest outside the courthouse prior to today's proceedings. “I want him in jail and I want him to pay restitution,” she said.

        Last week, after nearly a decade of fear that her son's body wasn't even in the grave purchased for him, Mrs. Redmon and other family members exhumed the infant's remains themselves and had the boy reburied in Spring Grove Cemetery.

        Because of the Wesleyan's legal problems, no other cemetery or professional company would enter the grounds to dig up the body, she said.

        Now, her son rests in a section of Spring Grove Cemetery for infants.

        “I still own four plots at (Wesleyan). My son is buried alone in a completely different cemetery,” she said. “How could someone do this?”

        In 1992, Mrs. Redmon filed a civil class-action lawsuit against Wesleyan and its then-owner, the Rev. Joseph Garr, contending mismanagement and poor upkeep.

        A year earlier, human bones had been found in a dirt pile by children playing in the cemetery. A review of the cemetery's books found that “abysmal” record-keeping dating back to 1843 had left the cemetery's employees with little idea of who was buried where.

        No criminal charges were filed at that time and eventually the civil suit was dismissed.

        However, accusations of mismanagement persisted, as did the cemetery's continued decay.

        Once this case is resolved, family members of those buried at Wesleyan, hope to find another administrator who will restore Wesleyan Cemetery to the respectable and beautiful final resting place it once had been.

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