Page 14 - IAV Digital Magazine #555

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Man Caught Urinating, Defecating on Ex-Wife's Grave: 'Bad Breakup'
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BAaymAwDHwc
denied responsi- bility and remained absent from her life, according to Murphy.
He and his sister started finding deli bags filled with feces at their mother's grave in April, Murphy said. They figured the first one might have been dropped by a careless dog walker, but after the second bag, they got the police involved.
The cemetery allowed them per- mission to set up cameras. Earlier this month, the cameras revealed Eichler approach- ing the grave while his current wife waited in the car. The culprit continued to appear around 6:15 a.m. for three more days over the following week, but the images were not
totally clear.
On September 18, Murphy visit- ed the cemetery and captured the man on his cell phone. What he saw made him feel ill, he said on Facebook, where he posted the
incriminating vide o.
"This is breaking my [heart]," said his caption. "A man from Bergen county New Jersey has been leaving bags of poo and pissing on my mother's tombstone almost every morning like a normal rou- tine assisted by his wife. Also, we have weeks and months of evi- dence."
"At that moment, it was like my mother was dying again," Murphy told Newsweek. "No one should ever have to feel what I felt. When
the dead are dead, they can't defend them- selves."
The
Orangetown Polic e Department confirmed
to Newsweek that Eichler has been charged with pub- lic urination and an investigation is still ongoing.
Cemetery dese- cration, which may involve steal- ing from or van- dalizing a plot, grave or burial place, can be prosecuted in New York state if the damages exceed $250.
Murphy has met this threshold for damages after hiring a hazmat company to remove his moth- er's urine-soaked decorations, hav- ing her headstone professionally cleaned and replacing some of the surrounding grass, he said.
By Shira Li Bartov, Newsweek
A New Jersey man was caught urinating on his ex-wife's grave nearly five decades after their divorce.
Michael Andrew Murphy, 43, was horrified as he captured the des- ecration on September 18. The gravesite in the Tappan
Reformed Church Cemetery in Orangetown, New York, was the resting place of his mother, Linda Torello.
Murphy
told Newsweek th at his mother's ex-husband was leaving feces and urine at her head- stone for months, apparently hold- ing onto a grudge from the 1970s. The suspect, 68- year-old Dean
Eichler, was briefly married to Torello before they had a "bad breakup" in 1974.
"As long as I've been alive, I don't know of my moth- er having contact with him," said Murphy, who was born in 1979. His mother died in 2017.
Eichler is the father of Murphy's older sister but has always
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