a day ago
Baby's body missing from Pittsburgh-area gravesite after burial 20 years ago
After 20 years of pain and torture, a Beaver County mother now has proof that the burial plot where her baby girl's headstone sits isn't where her daughter was buried.
Christine Berezanich has never recovered from the death of her 2-month-old daughter, Italia Laird.
"I loved her wish every being in my body," she said. "She was a very beautiful girl."
What happened after Italia died in 2005 from sudden infant death syndrome hasn't made it any easier.
"I would still go to the grave every year," Berezanich said. "I would still mourn her. I would take her flowers. I was talking to a ground that had no body."
The area where she remembers burying Italia is 25 feet from where the monument company put her headstone.
"I called there and she said she'd get back to me," Berezanich said. "She never called me. I felt betrayed by the church and by the company."
For years, the monument company and the association that currently manages Holy Name Cemetery in West Mifflin have insisted the gravestone was placed where Italia was buried, Berezanich said. Once the church closed a few years after Italia was buried, the Catholic Parish Charities Association, part of the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, took over.
The change in management created challenges as the association cited records that it did not create itself.
Berezanich found errors in the original church cemetery records, which show her 2-month-old daughter as having been born in 1904. Cemetery officials have since admitted to her that the pastor who managed the church was in the early stages of dementia.
"I would look down there, and I would see the ground, and it would just anger me to the point I quit going," she said.
She returned to the cemetery on Wednesday as the plot with the headstone was dug up with the help of a local funeral director.
"He came over and said that the ground looked like it was undisturbed, like nobody ever dug the ground up," Berezanich said.
KDKA's Ricky Sayer asked, "What are you feeling in your heart when you hear that?"
"I told you so, and pain and anger," Berezanich said. "I was very angry. As I was walking away, I screamed as loud as I could to get the frustration out. How do you lose a baby? I didn't lose this child once. I lost her twice, and no parent should ever have to feel that loss."
Probing is already underway to find the real location of Italia. Catholic Parish Cemeteries Association Regional Cemetery Coordinator Heidi Masterson provided KDKA-TV a brief statement:
"I am doing everything I can and so is the operations team of the cemetery to find where baby Italia was buried in 2005 before we owned and operated the establishment," Masterson said.
For now, Berezanich's pain and torture remain.
