Two individuals were arrested in August for stealing brass doors from cemeteries in Forest Park and surrounding municipalities. Police departments in Forest Park, Hillside, LaGrange, Westchester and Justice collaborated to locate John Kozeluh, 49, and Lana Grey, 38, both of Westchester, and charge them for the crimes.
Several mausoleum door thefts have occurred in the western suburbs this summer, and Forest Park police have reported four such cases since the start of July. Following Forest Park’s first mausoleum door theft of the year on July 6, a police report dated July 19 said another pair of solid bronze mausoleum doors, as well as bronze window bars, were observed missing in a Forest Park area cemetery. According to the police report, each door weighed between 150 and 200 pounds. They would cost around $30,000 to replace. Another report dated Aug. 6 estimated that each door was worth over $1,000, and an Aug. 8 report values a stolen 300-pound door at $7,000.
“It definitely doesn’t seem like that [stealing mausoleum doors] was a regular crime. It has happened over the years, and I know it’s typically for scrap metal,” Forest Park Police Chief Kenneth Gross told the Review in July.
Ben Stickle, a criminal justice professor at Middle Tennessee State University and expert in metal theft, said an increase in the price of copper may contribute to an increase in thefts. Brass and bronze are both metal alloys made primarily of copper, so their scrap price tends to increase with the price of scrap copper.
“Pure copper right now is trading at like $6.50 per pound, which is really high,” Stickle said. “Metals like copper, brass, bronze, etcetera — they’re more valuable per pound than almost any other metal that people can get a hold of.”
Stickle said the trade of illegal scrap metal can take multiple forms. Some people may try to cut up or melt down stolen metal themselves. Other times, stolen metal is trafficked “quasi-legally” by people who gather together scrap metal from multiple sources and sell it.
Scrap metal theft can be one-off or highly organized. Stickle compared metal theft to other kinds of crime, saying it could be conducted on an individual “street level” or at a very organized, high level. For some people, the illegal scrap metal trade is their career.
“I met people who all they did was steal metal. They called it their job,” Stickle said.
Stickle added that, in his experience, almost everyone who becomes involved in metal theft has worked with metals at some point in their life.
According to Stickle, cemetery theft has appeared to be on the rise for a few reasons. First, he said the price of copper is the highest it has been in over a decade. Stickle, who conducted fieldwork with metal scrappers and thieves for his book on the topic, said thieves may take greater risks when the price of scrap metal is particularly high. Some cemeteries may also have less security or surveillance, particularly at night, making them more attractive to metal thieves.
“Not only is the price higher, but the opportunity is higher,” he said.
Finally, cemetery theft is more likely to draw public attention than other forms of metal theft because of the sensitive nature of the crime scenes. The theft of copper and brass fixtures at a cemetery in Peoria and the theft of mausoleum doors in Benton Harbor, Michigan, are other cemetery metal thefts that received public attention this summer.