Grieving Family Seeks to Close a Painful Chapter

Keith Lindauer and daughter Jaynne Lindauer-Woods buried two loved ones Wednesday, both for the second time, ending a bizarre chain of events at a Garden Grove cemetery that has distressed and preoccupied them for 17 months.

“I’d like to get some closure,” Keith Lindauer, 71, said of the exhumation of his wife and son from Magnolia Memorial Park and the reinterment at El Toro Memorial Park in Lake Forest.

Such reburials are rare, cemetery officials said. This one was the result of a lawsuit filed in March 1999 alleging that a cemetery plot had been sold twice and a headstone moved to cover up the error.

“It’s been a struggle,” Lindauer-Woods said Wednesday with tears in her eyes. “I still have a lot of anger, but I’m going to try the best I can to put it behind me.”

Sixteen years ago, Keith and Bertial Lindauer bought a burial plot in a quiet corner of Magnolia Memorial Park, which at the time was operated by the Orange County Cemetery District. The plot lay next to the grave of their son, Tim, who had died of cancer at the age of 27. Twice the size of a regular plot, it was big enough that both parents could be buried there.

“We just wanted to know that we would someday rest next to our son,” said Lindauer, a retired sales engineer who lives in Long Beach.

Two years ago, when Bertial Lindauer died of heart failure, however, her widower was shocked to learn that their space had been used to bury someone else. Disappointed but desperate, he accepted another plot about 40 yards away for his wife. But he kept asking questions and, dissatisfied with the answers, filed the lawsuit alleging that the plot had been sold twice and that his son’s headstone had been relocated to cover up the mistake.

Omega Society Inc. bought Magnolia from the cemetery district in 1994, the first such sale in California of a public cemetery to a private operator. Janet de Michaelis, manager of the cemetery and an officer of Omega Society, adamantly denies that any plots were sold twice. Bertial’s grave site, she said, was indeed misidentified and used for another burial because of faulty records inherited from the county cemetery district. And Tim Lindauer’s headstone was temporarily moved, she said, at the instruction of a district employee.

“It has always been Magnolia’s goal and interest to do the right thing for the Lindauer family,” de Michaelis said in a statement issued Wednesday. “An unfortunate series of events occurred which we believe was ultimately caused by the previous owners.”

Andrew Lichtman, the county cemetery district’s attorney, also denied that his client was responsible. “The district has not operated the cemetery since selling it . . . in 1994,” Lichtman said. “The board was shocked to learn of the Lindauers’ ordeal and extends its heartfelt sympathies to them for the pain and anguish they have experienced.”

Nonetheless, the cemetery district participated in a recent settlement of Lindauer’s claim under which he received $100,000 for emotional distress. More important, Lindauer said, the district agreed to relocate the bodies of his wife and their son to its Lake Forest facility, where the graves will be cared for by district employees.

After the mix-up at Magnolia Memorial Park, said Mark B. Plummer, the family’s attorney, “I don’t see how the Lindauers could rest in peace here.”

Under clear skies, the two graves were opened early Wednesday by earthmoving equipment as church bells chimed nearby and large yellow butterflies fluttered through the park. Reburial was completed a few hours later and 30 miles away.

“We can’t bring anyone back, and we can’t change anything,” Lindauer said, “but we don’t want other people to ever experience anything like this.”