Cemetery workers digging new grave find unknown human remains, Massachusetts cops say

Workers digging a new grave found human remains of an unknown origin at a cemetery in Massachusetts — prompting an investigation, authorities said.

The discovery was called “unusual and concerning” in a statement by the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office shared by the Stoughton Police Department on March 24.

The human remains were not inside a coffin when they were found buried at the Dry Pond Cemetery in Stoughton on March 22, the statement said.

Now the chief medical examiner in Boston is analyzing the remains, according to authorities.

Currently, the person’s identity, their cause of death and how their body ended up at the Dry Pond Cemetery is a mystery, according to the statement.

The district attorney’s office will release more information on the investigation when it’s ”appropriate,” the statement said.

The Dry Pond Cemetery is a small cemetery with the earliest marked gravestone dating to 1749, according to the Sharon Historical Society in Sharon, Massachusetts. The site is home to the final resting places of several Revolutionary War and Civil War veterans.

Stoughton is about 20 miles south of Boston.

Julia Marnin

McClatchy DC

Julia Marnin covers courts for McClatchy News, writing about criminal and civil affairs, including cases involving policing, corrections, civil liberties, fraud, and abuses of power. As a reporter on McClatchy’s National Real-Time Team, she’s also covered the COVID-19 pandemic and a variety of other topics since joining in 2021, following a fellowship with Newsweek. Born in Biloxi, Mississippi, she was raised in South Jersey and is now based in New York State.