Two Detroit mothers have filed a lawsuit alleging that Forest Lawn Cemetery sold a single burial plot to both of their families and buried their infant children in the same ground. Ronnisa Stallworth says she first suspected something was wrong when she visited her daughter Dariah's gravesite and found fresh dirt disturbing the site where her four-month-old had been laid to rest.
“I kind of put two and two together that it was another baby buried right there,” Stallworth said, according to a report from ClickOnDetroit. Stallworth said she also found a button bearing another child's photograph and the name Pharaoh left at Dariah's grave, a detail that sent her searching for answers.
Stallworth's family used social media to track down Pharaoh's photo and relatives, eventually identifying his mother, Catherine Hale, who said she lost her baby in May. The two mothers met at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Detroit to investigate the burial together, according to the same report.
What the Lawsuit Alleges Happened
According to the lawsuit, Dariah was buried at Forest Lawn in February 2025, and her family watched cemetery workers dig her grave deep with an excavator. The suit alleges that in June 2026, without any word to Dariah's family, the cemetery sold the top of her grave to Pharaoh's family.
The lawsuit further alleges that cemetery crews dug a shallow trench by hand and placed Pharaoh's casket on top of or within inches of Dariah's burial container. When the two mothers tried to confront the situation directly, the lawsuit says cemetery staff ended a meeting with them, locked the office doors, and shut both families out.
“This is the first time any of us have ever had to face losing a child, so this should be the easiest part — burying them and allowing them to rest,” Stallworth said. She said she wants both babies to rest peacefully, undisturbed, and the cemetery held accountable for what happened.
Cemetery Owner Declines to Comment
Forest Lawn Cemetery is owned by Everstory Partners, which told the station it does not comment on active litigation. The families' attorney, Anthony Bologna, said cemeteries have a duty to provide families a safe resting place for their loved ones.
The allegations in Detroit echo other burial disputes tied to Everstory Partners properties. In North Carolina, WRAL reported that a mix-up at Montlawn Cemetery was at least the second such occurrence there and the third instance involving an Everstory property, after two Wake Forest parents sued the company alleging someone else had already been buried in the plot they purchased so they could rest beside their own child. The outlet reported that Everstory owns both Montlawn and Pine Forest Memorial Gardens, along with roughly 400 cemeteries nationwide, and that North Carolina's Cemetery Commission had logged 30 complaints against Montlawn since 2020 without taking formal action.
Detroit has seen similar disputes before. A separate class-action lawsuit over Gethsemane Cemetery alleges burial plots there were double-sold and that multiple deceased people were buried in single plots, according to Top Class Actions. At that same cemetery, crews exhumed seven bodies in a single day as part of an effort to exhume 20 after investigators found irregularities in burial records, FOX 2 Detroit reported. Years earlier, Tanya Sanders filed a $20 million lawsuit against Gethsemane after her daughter's remains could not be located, ClickOnDetroit previously reported.
Local 4 has also said it heard from several other Detroit families describing delays with items they paid for to memorialize loved ones at a cemetery in the city, including Cora Doss, who said she waited more than a year for a headstone. Michigan's Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs identifies Act 251 of the Public Acts of 1968, as amended, as the state's statutory authority for regulating cemeteries.
No court ruling has determined whether the allegations against Forest Lawn are true, and it remains unclear whether any regulatory investigation into the cemetery is underway. For now, Stallworth and Hale say they are left waiting for the cemetery to answer for what happened to their children's graves.
