Disputed cemetery plot returns to original owner

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December 2, 2009

By KATHY MELLOTT The Tribune-Democrat Wed Dec 02, 2009, 10:54 PM EST

EVERETT — John Gerholt apparently has lost his battle to be buried next to his wife – the woman police say he gunned down in a restaurant parking lot last year.

But he still faces a trial on charges of forgery, theft and theft by deception in connection with a dispute over transfer of the ownership of a cemetery plot.

Karen Gerholt’s stepmother, Elizabeth Lemin of Gretna, Va., learned last month that a plot she owned had been transferred to John Gerholt on March 24.

Court documents state that after Grandview Cemetery Association officials learned the plot in the Saxton cemetery had been wrongly transferred, the ownership was switched back to Lemin.

At a preliminary hearing on Wednesday, Gerholt’s court-appointed defense attorney, Thomas Dickey of Altoona, questioned his client’s role in the scam, but could shed no light on how John Gerholt’s name got on the documents or how the defendant got the documents while in the Bedford County Jail.

A sales agreement needed to transfer ownership of the plot is signed “John Gerholt.”

“He says he didn’t sign it,” Dickey said.

Gerholt apparently did want to be buried near his dead wife, as evidenced by letters of thanks he sent the cemetery association following the plot transfer.

“He had a relationship with her, he felt strongly about her,” Dickey said. “He has kids to her.”

Karen Gerholt, 24, of Hopewell, was the mother of three children.

Police allege that John Gerholt, 39, shot and killed his wife Nov. 9, 2008, in the parking lot of the Bedford area McDonald’s restaurant where she worked.

Gerholt told police the shooting was an accident, but Bedford County District Attorney William Higgins pointed out that a shell had to be pumped into the rifle chamber for the second shot Gerholt fired.

The couple were estranged at the time and Karen Gerholt had obtained a protection-from-abuse order days prior to her death.

John Gerholt would face the death penalty if convicted of first-degree murder. In addition to violating the protection order, he endangered a number of other people in the vicinity, Higgins said.

Gerholt was smiling and animated as he was escorted down the hallway of Bedford County Central Court on Wednesday to waive his right to a preliminary hearing in the forgery case.

Dickey said he will move for dismissal of the charges because of lack of evidence.

“We want to get this before a judge,” he said.

Assistant District Attorney Travis Livengood said there are a lot of unanswered questions but sufficient evidence links John Gerholt to the plot transfer.

The murder trial could be held in March or April, but there may be a delay if a jury is brought in from outside the county, something Dickey said he will seek because Bedford County residents may already have formed an opinion of guilt.

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