Losing a child is every parents worst nightmare, and if anyone knows this, it’s Jacob and Tashana Armstrong. As if the loss wasn’t bad enough, someone seemed to be taunting them. Only they didn’t realize it until the couple visited their son’s grave at the Cemetery.
Parents. Hide camera in Cemetery to unveil their unwelcomed visitor.
Jacob and Tashana Armstrong imagined they’d get to see their son grow up into the incredible man he was destined to become. But that didn’t happen during the birthing process. Little McCabe Armstrong lost his life, but this was just the beginning of his parents heartbreak. Life is beautiful, but it can also be really hard at times. Bad things happen, and that’s something that the Armstrongs had just learned on April 14, 2017.
Coping with the loss of their child was unbearable at first, but they still had each other to get through one of the worst things they had to do bury their son. Although the loss of a baby during birth is rare, complications can happen without warning. And unfortunately for the Armstrongs, it did happen to them. And although they would never be okay with him being gone, they still wanted to honor his memory and hoped others would do the same. But that wasn’t the case.
Mccabe’s life was short, but he still was and would always be a very important part of the Armstrong’s lives. He was the most beautiful thing they had ever laid their eyes on, and his spirit would live inside their hearts. In the meantime, they had a place where they would always visit. And so it is future siblings, but a darkness threatened to disturb his eternal rest. Losing someone’s always heart and losing a child is all the more difficult.
The Armstrongs never believed that was an experience they’d have to go through already having two beautiful and healthy children. But they would soon find out that this loss would bring them closer together and closer to their community. The love and generosity of their family and friends kept them from sinking into despair, but they missed their little guy so much. Even in their grief, the loss brought the couple even closer, especially when they paid their son a visit at the Memorial Park Cemetery in Oklahoma. But one day they realized something was amiss.
When the family first decided to visit the Cemetery where they laid bikade to rest, Jacob and Tashana prepared their other children for what would obviously be a very somber experience. But the family didn’t expect that this visit would also change the way they thought about their town. Mccabe would never get to play with toys like a regular child, but his parents frequented the graveyard and left adorable flags, pinwheels and toys at his grave. They figured their son’s spirit would appreciate the items, but he never got to enjoy them for long, and it’s not because he wasn’t alive. Leaving behind tokens of their affection on their son’s grave was a great coping mechanism, but it wasn’t long before they realized that their son wasn’t the only thing missing in their lives.
Something else had vanished without a trace. Unbeknownst to the Armstrong family, something amiss was going on frequently at the Cemetery where they laid their child to rest. Whenever they laid toys, trinkets, or letters down on their son’s grave, they disappeared by the next visit. Surely there must be a reasonable explanation for this phenomenon. The brokenhearted parents realized that someone was taking the items they left behind.
The pinwheel doesn’t mean a whole lot to the next person, but it does mean a lot to the person who placed it there, she told Inside Edition. But wasn’t an animal who took them or some kind of monster in human form. Gray robbing isn’t a typical crime in small towns, and that certainly wasn’t the extent that this could be criminal was going to. But to take children’s toys from grieving parents is cruel and devastating for anyone in the morning process. But were the Armstrong suspicions correct, or was it some sort of animal or natural phenomenon moving their trinkets?
Little McCabe’s dad was really angry that someone had taken these items from his son’s grave. Some random stranger was stealing their baby’s toys. He wasn’t sure how to catch the bandit at first, but then inspiration struck and he got to work right away. He decided that the best way to catch the guilty party in the act would be to set up a hidden camera, so that’s exactly what he did. The camera was only a few feet away, but that’s all he needed to learn the identity of the grave robber.
To catch their thief on camera, Jacob Armstrong had to find specially made cameras that could be reliable and undetected by other people in the Cemetery. Armstrong didn’t want to harm anyone else’s morning experience or alert the thieves that there was something more valuable to take than a child’s toys. The camera Armstrong chose would blend in with the trees behind his son’s grave and not emit any light or sound while it was recording. Armstrong was willing to go to any lengths possible to ensure that his son could finally rest in peace. Once the camera was placed behind the trees, it was virtually undetectable.
And because the camera could be controlled remotely, Armstrong didn’t have to worry about being in the graveyard with the thieves to record their nefarious deeds. Thankfully, the camera did its job and prove that it wasn’t a curious animal or mysterious natural phenomenon moving their belongings, but a man who seemed to be purposely taking the items. But would this footage be enough to catch their culprit? Not only did their camera catch a man stealing from their son’s grave, the Armstrong’s also caught the thief stealing from nearby graves as well, proving that this wasn’t a targeted crime. And the strangest part was that the man seemed very nonchalant about what he was doing.
Someone had been plucking the Grave’s precious trinkets and that someone wasn’t done. The responsible party didn’t care that they were hurting the Grieving parents, but they hadn’t counted on the Armstrong’s ingenuity, and that was an oversight they would soon come to regret. The Grieving father had managed to capture two shady characters lurking over the grave on camera he’d hidden in the bushes, but the footage wasn’t clear enough to see the ones responsible, so he went back to the graveyard and changed the camera’s position to get a better look. But would it work the second time around? It took enough of a toll on the Armstrong family to grieve the loss of their son without having to deal with this added stress.
At the time, it seemed like they just couldn’t catch a break and that their luck had run out. But the people around them wanted them to know that this wasn’t the case. Thankfully, the Cemetery where the Armstrongs visited also helped the couple in their search for the thief who was taking their belongings by letting the couple view security camera footage and get in touch with other families who visited the Cemetery as well. But even this advantage didn’t make their search much easier. After changing the camera’s positions and setting out more toys for the taking, the Armstrongs returned home to keep an eye on the footage that their camera captured.
But would the thieves they saw before return to the site of the crime? Or was the first video just a fluke? As luck would have it, it did work, but the guilty party wasn’t what the Armstrongs were expecting. In the footage, they finally got to see an old man picking up a pinwheel from the grave and then walking away. The couple had to act fast, but they couldn’t do it alone.
After viewing the video, the couple got to work trying to identify the man who visited their son’s grave. They got in touch with a local news team to assist in their search, and the news team led the couple to the local police Department. The Armstrongs went to the Northeast Police Department in Oklahoma. There, they handed the footage to Deputy Chief James Lawson. But would they be able to identify the thief and bring him to justice, or would he evade the law and leave the couple without a resolution?
Sadly, it isn’t uncommon for people to take belongings that are left out in the open and cemeteries, as the police Department and news team knew. But with the video that the Armstrongs have been lucky to capture, they already had much more evidence than most victims could gather. Lawson felt sympathy for the family because his sister had passed away at birth and was buried only a few feet away from a cave it would be hard to find a more defenseless victim than someone buried out here, Logston said to Inside Edition. Then he figured out a way to find the man’s identity. The news organization that the Armstrongs contacted assured the family that this wasn’t the first time this crime had happened, let alone the first time it had happened in their town.
Sadly, it almost seemed like a common occurrence. Old evidence showed people stealing flowers, toys, and even balloons from gravesites, and thankfully, these perpetrators were fined and sometimes arrested for their actions. But this was reassuring to the family, who feared that their thief would never be brought to justice. The location gave the images of the thief to a local newspaper in no time. Tips helped authorities identify the suspect as 77-year-old Alfred Boyer.
Then cops headed over to his location to finally bring him to justice for what he’d done. A police body camera captured Boyer’s arrest. He was charged with petty larceny, but the Armstrongs were stunned that someone would do such a cold, heartless thing to a baby’s grave. It’s heartbreaking, McCabe’s mother told Inside Edition. But it wasn’t over.
I’m sorry I did that, Inside Edition quoted Boyer saying. I’m not a bad person, but it turns out that he wasn’t the only person responsible for the heinous crime. There was another person in the initial blurry footage who didn’t stay hidden for long. A then 58-year-old woman named Joe Fey Wit had also been caught on camera stealing from McCabe’s graveyard alongside Boyer. So cops went to her place of work to confirm that she was the culprit they were looking for.
