Tampering with Grave nets Jail Time!
From: is4817@fastmail.fm
Last June, 2008, I advised about the tampering of the local grave of CSA Major Joseph E. Gillette. This was especially abhorrent to the Courtland, VA Urquhart-Gillette SCV Chapter #1471, named for Major Gillette.
In the July 5, 2009 issue of the Tidewater News (Franklin/Southampton County, VA), a front page headline is "Tampering with Grave Nets Jail Time". Aaron Richard Howard, 21, and Justin Thomas Rainey, 23, appeared before Southampton County Circuit Court Judge Carl E. Eason, Jr. to be sentenced on the felony charge of attempting to disinter a dead body. A third young man, Kyle Burks, 21, was also accused of the crime but had been killed in a car accident this past January.
Major Gillette served in the 13th Virginia Cavalry, Army of Northern Virginia. He died in 1863 from wounds received in the battle of Brandy Station.
Judge Eason pronounced the act of these young men as ‘deplorable’, in their sentencing to four years in prison for each, with the majority of that time suspended, but the requirement to complete community service upon their release from prison.
