Camden County Metro Police have identified a suspect in the vandalism of a Elks Rest memorial at Harleigh Cemetery in Camden City.
William Powell, 55, whose last address is unknown to police, has been charged with one count each of third-degree criminal mischief, theft, and burglary in connection with the incident.
Powell is not yet in police custody, according to Camden County Metro Police spokesman Dan Keashen.
Keashen said that the theft was first reported to the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office (CCPO) March 27 by the caretakers of Harleigh Cemetery; the incident was believed to have transpired March 3.
CCPO transferred the case to Camden Metro, who developed Powell as a suspect through investigation.
Apparently only the legs of the elk statue remain missing, Keashen said. The bulk of the monument remains in the care of the cemetery, which has declined to comment on the matter.
Neither has the New Jersey Cemetery Association returned messages, nor the New Jersey State Elks Association, nor Camden Elks Lodge #293.
The Elks Rest includes a stone monument near the Haddon Avenue entrance of the historic cemetery, and marks the graves of some 20 members of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks (BPOE).
BPOE Camden Lodge #293 was established in 1895. Some of its longest-tenured and founding members are interred in the memorial at Harleigh.
The Rest once featured a bronze statue of an elk atop a stone base inscribed with the word “FIDELITY,” and a placard that has since been removed. It now only holds the bolted-on hooves of the creature, which appear to have been sawn off.
Grave markers around the stone monument bear the names of once socially prominent city fathers, like Judge J. Harry Switzer (1870-1939), and immigrant businessmen, like Maurice Hertz (1856-1947).
Its ranks include servicemen, like World War II Naval veteran John G. Saliba (1928-1997), and public employees, like Camden City firefighter James F. Gallagher (1941-1996).
Harleigh Cemetery, which once billed itself as the “most exclusive gated community” in Camden County, is the final resting place for many prominent figures, perhaps most famously, transcendentalist poet Walt Whitman.
A line from Whitman’s poem “I Dream’d in a Dream” in Leaves of Grass, is the source of the Camden City branding motto “city invincible.”
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All persons charged with crimes are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. An arrest is not a conviction.
