Families with loved ones interred at a historic Sellwood mausoleum discovered that urns, ashes and nameplates had disappeared after a series of alleged thefts. Court documents say a Portland man and his girlfriend took dozens of urns from the site and scrapped them for drug money.
The case centers on Wilhelm's Portland Memorial Funeral Home, located on SE 14th Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood, where funeral home staff contacted police in June about recent thefts, according to KATU. Court documents indicate the investigation began that month after a funeral home manager reported that security had spotted two suspicious people carrying backpacks inside the mausoleum in late May. Those two individuals, identified as Sierra Kennedy and Timothy Newbury, told staff they were visiting the remains of Paul Newbury on the mausoleum's fifth floor, and records show they returned to the building several times.
A Tip Points to a Mother and Her Boyfriend
An anonymous man later told investigators that his mother and her boyfriend were taking vases and urns from the mausoleum and scrapping them in North Portland for drug money, according to the same KATU account. Investigators found that as many as 60 niches in the Daisy Room were missing urns and ashes, as well as 16 copper plates bearing information about the deceased.
In June, police searched Kennedy and Newbury's home and recovered an urn, a bag of suspected human remains and a placard bearing the name Paul Arnold Newbury, KATU reported. The items were returned to the mausoleum. Timothy James Newbury, 50, is charged with one count of abuse of a memorial to the dead under Oregon's statute covering cemetery property, ORS 166.076. The law allows fines of up to $50,000 when a stolen or damaged memorial object came from a historic cemetery.
An Unrelated Arrest Brought the Case to a Head
Newbury's arrest on the mausoleum allegations came months after the reported thefts. KATU reported that Portland police arrested him September 3 while responding to a report of someone slumped over on a motorcycle outside a Plaid Pantry on North Going Street. The motorcycle had a punched-out ignition and had been reported stolen the previous October. Officers also charged Newbury with felon in possession of a firearm and possession of a stolen vehicle.
Newbury was arraigned on September 4 and has been held at the Multnomah County Jail since that date. He was previously convicted of heroin possession in Multnomah County in 2015 and of possession of stolen property in Cowlitz County, Washington, in 2017, court records show. He has a final resolution conference hearing scheduled for Friday morning, and court records indicate prosecutors have not said whether additional charges will be filed in the mausoleum theft case.
Sierra Kennedy faces the same single count of abuse of a memorial to the dead, but she remains at large. An arrest warrant for Kennedy was issued August 11, and her status remains outstanding as the case against Newbury moves forward.
A Landmark With Deep Roots in Sellwood
Wilhelm's Portland Memorial has stood in Sellwood since it was established as the Portland Crematorium on April 24, 1901, making it the oldest crematorium west of the Mississippi River and the largest privately managed indoor burial site in the Pacific Northwest, according to Wikipedia. The eight-story mausoleum spans six acres and three city blocks along a riverside bluff, holding roughly 97,000 interments across more than five miles of maze-like indoor corridors, as detailed by Atlas Obscura. That sprawling, labyrinthine footprint helps explain why suspicious visitors could return to the building multiple times before staff raised the alarm.
The building is also known for its exterior: a 50,000-square-foot hand-painted mural completed in 2009 depicting the adjacent Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge, recognized as one of the largest building murals in the country, Atlas Obscura notes. For a site so visually tied to its Sellwood surroundings, the quiet emptying of an interior room of niches struck a particularly painful chord for families with loved ones memorialized there.
Part of a Larger Scrap Metal Problem
The case fits into a broader surge in metal theft across Portland. The Portland Police Bureau reported in March that an ongoing crackdown on metal theft rings had revealed over $2 million in infrastructure damage and commercial property losses tied to scrap theft during late 2025 and early 2026, according to the bureau's own announcement. Investigations into those networks found that thieves often pass stolen metal through central brokers who use commercial business credentials to bypass recycling regulations and convert items into cash, the bureau said.
Oregon law explicitly classifies grave markers, urns, plaques, tablets, and decorative metal vases as commercial metal property under ORS 165.116, which requires scrap dealers to log sellers and report suspected stolen items to police within 24 hours. Oregon also requires anyone transporting scrap metal for sale to carry a signed Metal Transportation Certificate documenting its origin, with violations treated as a Class C misdemeanor. Whether local scrap yards followed those reporting requirements when the Portland urns came through remains an open question in the case.
What Scrap-Metal Rules and Police Records Show
Oregon law requires scrap-metal sellers to sign a declaration affirming that, to their knowledge, the property being sold is not stolen, according to the Oregon Legislature. That requirement does not establish whether any dealer handled items taken from the mausoleum. In a separate case, the Portland Police Bureau said officers responded August 25, 2026, to an ongoing copper-wire theft investigation at Vibra Specialty Hospital, 10300 NE Hancock Street. The incident documents a different type of metal-theft investigation, not the alleged theft of cemetery items.
Cemetery metal theft has become a nationwide pattern in 2026. Hoodline previously reported on a Phoenix case involving $25,000 in stolen bronze memorial plaques, and on systematic thefts of metal flower vases from a North Carolina graveyard that left families devastated. Newbury's additional felon-in-possession charge also carries its own weight: under ORS 166.270, unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon is a Class C felony punishable by multi-year prison sentences, adding further legal exposure beyond the memorial and vehicle charges already filed against him.
