'SECRET GYPSY GRAVES' TERROR - Northumberland

From the Express

A CEMETERY boss fears for her life because she exposed a racket that may have allowed Gypsies to bury their dead on the cheap.

It could mean that up to 30 bodies will have to be exhumed. Some families may even have spent years tending the wrong graves.

Debbie Mowatt, the supervisor, says children have been threatened and an insider says someone scrawled graffiti on her van with a message “along the lines that she was going to die”.

Now she has had to have a panic alarm installed linking her home directly to a police station and the house is monitored by CCTV.

The insider added: “This lady has had a terrible time since this all blew up.” Mrs Mowatt has already been knocked unconscious and thrown into a 6ft freshly dug grave.

She told police it was still dark when she woke up. She was only able to escape because she called her boss on her mobile phone and he brought a ladder to help her out.

Two gravediggers were arrested over the attack but all charges against them were dropped five months later for lack of evidence.

Mrs Mowatt suspected cemetery workers had been taking money from Gypsies and travellers to bury their relatives without proper records being kept. Northumberland County Council staff have been touring graveyards in Tweedmouth and Berwick-upon-Tweed looking for “unofficial” coffins by ramming metal rods into the ground and by electronically scanning the graves.

Last November, the council issued an apology for the distress it anticipates will be caused to families because it has discovered “serious errors” at the two cemeteries.

Chris Gregory, 52, and Malcolm Purvis, 49, the gravediggers at the centre of the allegations, claim they are victims of a “witch hunt”.

Although the police charges over the assault were dropped, both were suspended from their £20,000-a-year jobs and sacked 13 months ago for gross misconduct. There is no suggestion that the men are behind the more recent threats.

At home in Scremerston, Mr Gregory, who runs a landscape gardening business, said all the claims against them were “never proved” He said both had been quizzed about taking cash, which they deny.

He explained the large number of unmarked graves by saying: “There are loads of pauper’s graves. You can’t put a headstone on a pauper’s grave. I know 120 per cent that nobody was buried in the wrong grave.”

Mr Purvis, of Berwick, said: “I’m sickened by what has gone on.”