Crime & Safety

Elmhurst Cops Crack the Case of the Mystery Tombstone

It turns out the man whose name is on the tombstone apparently isn't even dead yet, police said, and he doesn't want the gravestone back.

The Elmhurst police unraveled the mystery surrounding a tombstone that appeared in a Sunnyside Avenue yard last week.

It took the cops six days to track down the owner of the stone. The police used "several databases including LEADS, JUST, RMS and different online sites in attempts to locate any records," but might have figured things out sooner if they just Googled the name inscribed on the stone.

When Googled, that name, Earl Patrick Tandy, turned up an account in the Oak Park Oak Leaves newspaper of the 1958 wedding of Patricia Catherine Tandy and Arnold Martin Mullen. Earl Patrick Tandy, the brother of the bride, was a "junior usher," the news story said.

Besides Tandy's name, the date Jan. 4, 1948, was inscribed on the stone.

The Elmhurst police eventually tracked down someone with information about the headstone and spoke to him on July 5. That someone seems to be Tandy himself but the police redacted the man's name from their report.

The man "stated he was born and raised in Oak Park Illinois and left the state in 1966 to join" the Marines, a police report said.

"He then moved to Utah shortly after his service and currently lives there," the report said.

"He advised when his father died some years ago, his mother got a discount on his headstone so she had one made for him," the report said. "He related he never lived in Elmhurst and has no family connection to Elmhurst. He also related he has no idea how the headstone ended up in Elmhurst other than his brother (redacted) worked in construction in the Chicago land area and he may have gotten rid of it somehow."

The man told police he "no longer needs the headstone and advised we could dispose of it."

Go take a look at our Facebook page.


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

To request removal of your name from an arrest report, submit these required items to arrestreports@patch.com.