Cheshire Woman: 'I'm Very Disturbed' About Boston Bomber's Burial

By Patch Editor Kathleen Ramunni.

The announcement that a Vermont man has offered a plot at Mount Carmel Cemetery to one of the Boston Marthano bombing suspects left many in the surrounding communities "disturbed" and has sparked debate about whether he should allowed to be laid to rest there.

Cheshire resident Gretchen Hayden, one of more than a dozen who joined the protest against the burial in Hamden, said she picked the Mount Carmel Burying Grounds as her three-year-old son Cameron Gilligan's final resting place when he passed away in 1989 because of its bucolic landscape.

"We picked the plot because it is a peaceful non-denominational plot under the mountain," she said. "I'm very, very disturbed."

Hayden went to the cemetery Tuesday to protest the burial of Tamerlan Tsanaev, the older of two suspects in the Boston bombing that killed three and injured more than 200 people.

Vermont resident Paul Keane said Monday that he was offering up a plot he owns in the cemetery next to his mother's grave to the Tsarneav family after it became known that no cemetery in Massachusetts was willing to take the accused terrorist's body. 

Keane said he was motivated to make the offer because of his mother's devotion to the adage, "love thy enemy."

But on Tuesday, many said they disagreed.

"The last thing I want in my town is some Arab buried in my town as a terrorist," said John Bellow. "A lot of my friends died in 9/11."

(Editor's Note: Tsarnaev was not an Arab. He hailed from Chechnya, a republic within Russia).

Frank Butterworth said it bothers him that Tsarnaev could share burial space with members of the military who are buried there.

Butterworth said his father and grandfather are buried in the cemetery and someday he will be too.

"This isn't fair, some of the people who are buried here were in the armed forces and fought for our country," Butterworth said. "This doesn't work — not in this town.

"This man has no reason to be here at all," he said.

But the residents may not have to worry about it. According to the New Haven Register, the Massachusetts funeral director who is handling Tsarneav's remains said Tuesday that in the last 24 hours he has received numerous offers from cemeteries willing to take the body and that it's unlikely that Hamden will be chosen. 

A location more rural than Hamden will likely be Tsarneav's final resting place, according to the funeral director.

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