Mom says she must pay to find out if baby's burial was botched

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A Missouri mother is livid after learning a cemetery may have botched her infant son's burial.

A tiny book is all Sarah Postpichal has to remember her baby boy, Weston.

“I was 18 years old, didn’t know a lot, but I was ready. I was grateful for the opportunity to love him,” Postpichal told WDAF.

She only got to spend seven short hours loving him - Weston was stillborn from a brain defect.

“This was totally unexpected and it hurt,” Postpichal said.

Thanks to a local nonprofit, the teen mom was able to bury her baby boy with all expenses paid at Forest Hills Cemetery in Kansas City.

A family member placed a statue at the foot of the grave site, which is where Postpichal grieved for six months -- until one day it was suddenly moved two grave sites over.

“Immediately went into the cemetery office and asked why it had been moved," Postpichal said. "They had no answers. All they ended up doing was gifting me a headstone and saying this is where your son is at. You’ll never lose him again."

The headstone was put where the statue had been moved, two plots over from where Postpichal knows her baby was buried. But for 15 years, she let that go.

But this Easter, something else strange happened. When she put down some blue pinwheels in the ground near the headstone, she hit something hard and not very deep in the ground.

“A week later, I got a phone call saying that the grave was at 18 inches deep, which was the proper depth for cremated infant remains," Postpichal said. "My son wasn’t cremated."

In fact, she has the embalming records, casket receipt and pictures to prove it.

Postpichal said cemetery management told her she was mistaken. To find out otherwise, they'd have to dig up whatever's under the headstone.

In her gut, Postpichal believes her baby is buried feet away and someone else’s remains are under her son's headstone.

“I don’t know where he’s at," she said. "I can’t protect him, and that’s my job. Even if he’s not physically here, it’s my job to protect him, and I can’t because I can’t find him."

The metro mom has now signed off on disinterment papers to have whatever is below baby Weston's headstone unearthed. But now, Stonemor, the parent company of Forest Hills, is telling her she has to foot the bill to have it done.

“Now I have to figure out a way to come up with $4,800 to have my baby removed from the ground, from his final resting place - if this is my baby," Postpichal said. "There’s no guarantee. I just need answers. That’s all I want.”

Postpichal has started a Go Fund Me page hoping to get money to finally find her son. But she's hoping the cemetery will step up and do the right thing.

"We take allegations of this nature very seriously, are looking into the matter, and will continue our dialogue with the family," a spokesperson for the owner of the burial site said.