Residents in Southern Colorado are calling for a sweeping investigation into the Las Animas County coroner, alleging that he used county equipment to secretly and improperly bury at least two homeless people without their families' consent or the rural cemetery owner's knowledge.
The owner of Starkville Cemetery, the distraught daughter of a missing man, and a funeral home director in Trinidad suspect coroner Dominic Verquer has also been pocketing the state funds provided to providers for the proper burial of those who cannot afford services.
All this came to light during a special meeting of the Las Animas County Commissioners on December 4. Thomas Murphy, the owner of Mullare-Murphy Funeral Home in Trinidad told commissioners that he obtained documents through an open records request that show Verquer admitting to burying four people without the consent of Starkville Cemetery and without proper burial certificates.
Back in September, the owner of the rural cemetery that sits on the outskirts of Trinidad, Carl Mestas, shared with Murphy that he was concerned the coroner was improperly burying people on his land. He shared this just days before a funeral director from Denver, Frederick Marshall, was scheduled to arrive to exhume a body at Starkville.
On September 6, Mestas and Murphy observed crews exhume the remains of the man they were looking for, but unexpectedly, they also found another person buried in the unmarked grave.
"When we opened this grave, there were two bodies just laying on top of each other, not even any dirt between them. That's pretty sick. That's pretty disgusting," Mestas told commissioners.
It's illegal in Colorado to bury two people together without the permission of their family members.
Ahead of the exhumation, Verquer allegedly threatened Marshall, telling the Denver-based funeral home director to stay out of his county, but Marshall conducted the exhumation anyway on behalf of the Huff family. Frederick Huff was known in the community as a man who chose to live unhoused for decades. He was reported missing and later identified to be buried in the Starkville Cemetary. The other person buried with him has yet to be identified.
On the unsigned death certificates that lacked a county seal, according to Murphy, Verquer had noted that four people were buried there in 2019. However, Marshall found that date to be improbable, as the state of decomposition of the two bodies' they found indicated their burials were far more recent.
It's unclear who dug the graves or how many more there may be, however, Murphy suggested to the commissioners that if Verquer is using county equipment and personnel to dig the graves, he would be violating a county policy that government employees cannot use county property for personal gain.
Morgan Shier wants to know if her father is buried in Starkville Cemetery. David Shier, 81, went missing in February and was last seen on a walk looking in good health, according to his daughter who is a physician.
Shier owned a shop and lived 1.5 miles away from the cemetery. At the commissioners' meeting, Shier begged for them to allow for the identification of the bodies found at Starkville Cemetary.
Murphy tells News 5 that after the exhumation in September, he went to the health department and then to the state's vital records to report Verquer but said he followed up to learn nothing had been investigated.
There's no question Murphy's funeral home would lose business if the coroner acted as a funeral home director and directed any state funds away from Murphy or his competitors by burying the bodies himself.
Murphy told News 5 that the Colorado Department of Human Services will subsidize roughly $1500 for the burial of low-income Coloradans. While Murphy alleges that Verquer has threatened his life in the past, he said he wants to hold the coroner accountable on behalf of the Shier family and those buried in the unmarked graves.
"I'm in it for the long run. I want the truth," Murphy said.
News 5 reached out to Dominic Verquer and after eight hours had no response at the time this article was published. Currently, there is no local, state or federal investigation into the allegations against him.
Editor's Note: This article has been changed to reflect that two bodies were exhumed from the grave, not four as were allegedly listed as buried there.
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