Woman claims daughter's remain were desecrated after Oregon cemetery cracked open casket

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A woman is suing the Oregon cemetery where her 3-month-old baby has been buried for more than 20 years for $5 million, alleging workers cracked open the infant girl's casket and allowed the natural elements to cause desecration to her remains.

Janine Karvia said workers at the Odd Fellows Cemetery in the Dalles, a city 85 miles west of Portland, made a hole in little McKenzie's casket when they were laying an underground pipe.

The hole allowed the casket to fill with dirt, eventually “desecrating her daughter’s remains," according to the lawsuit.

McKenzie was buried at the cemetery in the 1990s. Karvia learned of the damage to the remains when she had the casket dug up so she could cremate her daughter.

“It’s just a rolling nightmare for me,” Karvia told The Oregonian on Tuesday. “I have horrible dreams. ... It’s so wrong. Shame on them. It’s heartless.”

Messages to the Odd Fellows Cemetery left by Fox News were not returned.

McKenzie was born in July 1996 but died in November of that year after she came down with a bacterial infection in her blood, according to the newspaper.

Karvia said she wanted to disinter her daughter so she could cremate her , keep her ashes and eventually combine them with her own upon her death.

She discovered the decomposed remains when the baby's casket was dug up.

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“I got to open up a box of dirt,” she said.

A mortuary was able to recover some of the girl's bones, Karvia said.

A worker told her a PVC pipe was installed across the foot of the casket to make way for an irrigation system. The lawsuit states the pipe looks like it had been placed there within the past several years.