Fairview Police are continuing a criminal investigation into human remains found at Metro's Blue Lake Park, but won't say if the investigation has a subject at this point.
Fairview Det. Brad Robertson said the investigation started Monday after a member of the Oregon Mortuary and Cemetery Board's investigative unit contacted him about more bones found in a dirt pile at Blue Lake Park, near the Columbia River in northern Fairview.
The bones are apparently from the pioneer cemeteries Metro assumed from Multnomah County in 1996. Metro communications director Jim Middaugh said gravesites, which date back to 1855 and are often unmarked, sometimes shift as dirt is moved in and out of plots. Contractors, he said, were responsible for excavating and moving the soil out of grave sites and to Blue Lake.
"Dirt sloughs off," as holes are excavated at interment sites, Middaugh said. The dirt that was excavated was moved to Blue Lake Park, something Metro had a permit to do, he said.
But representatives from two older West Coast cemeteries said they'd never heard of the situation Metro is describing.
"I've not seen that," said Jim Cannon, assistant manager at Seattle's 138-year-old Lake View Cemetery.
"If it's a smaller cemetery and the records aren't well-kept, it's possible," Cannon said. He said graves could be a few inches off from where records show them to be, but he'd never heard of bones turning up in an excavation pile in his 22 years at Lake View.
Maria Ignacio, an administrative officer at San Francisco National Cemetery, said she hadn't heard of any such situation at the Presidio, which had its first American burial in 1854.
Middaugh said he couldn't speak for other cemeteries.
"What I hear from Metro cemetery staff is any time you're digging in a cemetery that's old and has adjacent plots, this is an issue," he said, adding that privately-run cemeteries might be less inclined to report disturbed remains.
According to Robertson, violations under investigation include abuse of a corpse and offensive littering, in addition to other state regulations on burials. He wouldn't say whether the contractor, an individual or Metro were the subject of the investigation, but said more information would be released Thursday afternoon.
Middaugh said Metro has stopped selling graves at two of its cemeteries, Lone Fir in inner southeast Portland and Multnomah Park along Southeast 82nd Avenue, and contractors stopped moving dirt from the cemeteries in January. Any bones in the pile at Blue Lake, he said, were there when the problem was first discovered in January.
Metro is looking at going through the pile this summer to find and re-inter any remaining bones.
"We can't sift through wet dirt," Middaugh said. "We're working with the cemetery and mortuary board."