CRESCENT CITY, Fla. – As the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office continues investigating the potential disturbance of historic gravesites in Crescent City, deputies have requested the help of the University of Florida.
The university’s ground-penetrating radar (GPR) could help uncover what’s beneath the soil after the Braddock Mason-Denver cemetery was bulldozed.
The burial site dates back to the 1800s. According to the Putnam County Cemetery Project, it is a private cemetery located on the former farm of James Aldrich Braddock, who is buried on the property. The land is also the site of “The Battle of Braddocks Farm”, as designated by a historical marker.
It was recently cleared, with the ground appearing freshly graded after the land was sold to an out-of-state buyer. The property owner told police he didn’t encounter any headstones or gravesites while clearing the land
The Putnam County Sheriff’s Office recently posted a request for information on possible headstones removed or displaced on the property, or any information on the person who cleared the land.
Police say that they have not received any useful tips so they’re hoping GPR can help identify if any graves were disturbed.
GPR works by transmitting high-frequency radio waves into the ground, which then reflect off of subsurface features like buried objects or changes in soil layers, allowing the receiver antenna to detect these reflections and create an image of what lies beneath the surface based on the strength and timing of the returning signals; essentially, it “sees” underground by bouncing radio waves off different materials with varying electrical properties, enabling the detection of buried objects or changes in soil composition.
UF has not yet responded to law enforcement’s request so there’s no set date for when the GPR can survey the site.
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News4JAX talked with Dr. Phoebe R. Stubblefield, the Interim Director of the C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory at the University of Florida. She reviews GPR reports and said the radar could help identify remains on the property. Dr. Stubblefield explains that once disturbances are located, police will have to dig to find out what’s under the ground.
“Ground penetrating radar is a tool for examining subsurface structures, or if there is subsurface structure,” Dr. Stubblefield said.“ So you look at the ground and you see ground, but wonder what’s beneath there and so before you go to the trouble of digging, ground penetrating radar can help shortcut that process, the digging process, by showing perhaps, that there’s been disturbances under the ground. It doesn’t show you what caused the disturbance or what the disturbance itself is, but it shows you that, hey, the soil is not smooth under the ground.”