The Cole County Sheriff's Department is seeking charges for the removal of a pioneer-era cemetery in Apache Flats.
The department has submitted charges to the prosecuting attorney's office for review.
The News Tribune reported in February that a roundabout now sits at the site of the Dixon Cemetery on Pioneer Trail Drive, near the Pioneer Trail Elementary School.
Hundreds of citizens shared their frustration about the loss, some researched the matter themselves and a few approached the sheriff's department.
People said the act was disrespectful to the dead, was criminal and was ironic naming the street and school for those who had been dishonored.
Written records, former owner accounts, oral history and aerial photography show the cemetery stood on the highest point surrounded by a cedar-post fence underneath a mature cedar tree.
The site is not inside the city limits, and the county has no zoning laws or regulations.
The road development to make way for the school, access to Rainbow Drive and the eventual subdivision was conducted by a private developer.
However, state statute says "every person who shall knowingly destroy ... remove any tomb, monument or gravestone, or other structure placed in any abandoned family cemetery or private burying ground, or any fence, railing ... of any place of burial of any human being ... is guilty of a Class A Misdemeanor ... shall include those cemeteries or burying grounds which have not been deeded to the public ... and in which no body has been interred for at least 25 years."
When former owner Steve Erhart sold the land in 2004, he said about seven thick limestone headstones were still there.
Russ Bodenstab, a laborer at the time the roundabout was being installed, said he had seen the gravestones nearby. Then he heard coworkers say they were told to bury them under the roundabout.
"I wasn't happy about it, but I was doing what I was told," Bodenstab said.
Ed Meyer, chairman of the city's Historic Preservation Commission, said he hoped the contractor would restore the cemetery.
"I think what the county allowed is a travesty," Meyer said in an emailed response. "Cemeteries must be treated with utmost respect. It is sad that the gentleman involved waited so long to tell the story. Maybe it was outside (the commission's) jurisdiction, but there are many groups in and around Jefferson City and Cole County that likely would have taken an interest in preserving Dixon Cemetery."
Former property owner Lloyd Klosterman also agreed, saying he would like to see the headstones restored "with an additional monument stating the history of the Dixon family, who were the pioneers that settled here in Cole County."
If prosecution moves forward, Klosterman said he would like to see "a much stronger review by the county and land surveyors prior to a permit being issued, to prevent a similar situation from happening in the future."
A federally-required historic resources review, conducted recently for the future school sidewalk project, did not record the cemetery location. Neither did surveyors contracted later by the county.
Cliff Keeler was the first area resident to bring up the matter in a public setting early this year.
In a recent email to the News Tribune, he wrote, "If consequences for this crime do not involve appropriate punishment to those responsible, anything less, not only empowers those responsible for the decisions that desecrated this hallow ground, but it also sends the wrong message to our youth witnessing our response to the discovery of this terrible desecration and what is expected of them in matters such as will confront them in the future."
The Dixon family immigrated to Mid-Missouri from North Carolina before 1838. Catherine Dixon, who was about 70 at the time, moved with at least four of her children after the death of her husband, Edmund. Her son Levi eventually built a 2,200-acre tobacco plantation operated with slaves, according to a 1997 State Museum interview with Nellie Schroer, descendant of a later property owner.
Schroer said at least two non-family members were buried there - "a stranger from Virginia" and a gypsy child. FindAGrave.com lists burials there for Catherine Dixon, age 81; Phoebe Dixon, age 12; William Harris, died 1845; and James Lobban, age 33.