Former employee allowed at cemetery

LOS ANGELES — A judge on Wednesday ordered attorneys to escort a former Grand View Memorial Park employee onto the cemetery grounds today so he can collect personal belongings that have been locked up at the site for more than a year.

Burbank resident Richard Beaudoin had been storing a collection of personal items at the site, including his 1963 Chevrolet Corvair convertible, when former cemetery owner Marsha Lee Howard died in November 2006. An evidence-preservation order related to lawsuits now targeting the cemetery has since barred Beaudoin from retrieving his belongings, which he said also include his general equivalency diploma, tools and pictures of his children.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Anthony Mohr ordered attorneys for Howard’s brother Thomas Trimble, who is the administrator of her estate, to escort Beaudoin onto the premises today to collect his possessions.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Beaudoin said.

The decision marked what Beaudoin hoped would be the end of his frustrating battle for cemetery access, but for the hundreds of people waiting to visit loved ones interred there, the fight seems far from over.

The park has been tangled in a series of lawsuits ever since a state inspector in October 2005 discovered some 4,000 bodies that were not properly interred.

In November 2005, the state removed Howard as operator and prohibited the cemetery from conducting any new business.

Cemetery co-owner and operator Moshe Goldsman, who took over for Howard, closed the park in June 2006, citing financial woes, but in response to a public outcry, the city of Glendale stepped in within months and opened the site for limited visitations. But in June 2007 the city fire officials deemed the unwatered, overgrown park a fire safety hazard, and the city canceled the visits.

The city later filed a public nuisance abatement action against the cemetery, which prompted Goldsman to spend $105,400 for installation of a new irrigation system and the pruning or removal of more than 200 dead trees. The work is nearly completed, and once it is, the city plans to drop its complaint, city attorneys said.

With that work expected to be done in the coming weeks, Mohr ordered Goldsman’s attorney, David Baum, to return to court in a month with a financial plan to reopen the park. Such a plan will have to involve assistance from other parties, like the city of Glendale or attorneys representing people who are suing the cemetery, Baum said.