Cemeteries across the Northeast have rejected the body of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, but a Vermont man and Yale Divinity School graduate said he is willing to donate a burial plot at Hamden’s Mount Carmel Burying Grounds to the suspected terrorist.
“The only condition is that I do it in memory of my mother who taught Sunday school at the Mt. Carmel Congregational church for 20 years and taught me to ‘love thine enemy,’” Keane wrote in a post on his blog. “I own the plot. No one can refuse me access.”
But families who have loved ones buried in the cemetery said the offer is disturbing and disrespectful.
“This is a typical old New England type cemetery and this is what we wanted for our grandson, and this is going to change if this man is buried here,” said Grant Hayden, whose grandson is buried in the cemetery.
“He’s from Russia, he came here as a 12 or 14-year-old, I think he should be buried back where he was born,” said Hamden resident Laddy Rosenfeld.