
Authorities had been puzzled when Christmas ornaments, like these, began walking off from Florida cemeteries
LAWTEY, Florida — Call it the case of the “Gravesite Grinch.”
A Florida woman was busted Christmas morning for stealing graveside holiday decorations from numerous cemeteries and selling them to a thrift shop, police said.
Jenni Hudkins, 34, is accused of going into three cemeteries in the week leading up to Christmas and taking off with decorations people had placed on their relatives’ graves, the Bradford County Sheriff’s office said.
She then took the stolen goods to a thrift store run by Janice Crawford who bought the items, cops said. Crawford had been arrested a few days earlier on a charge of dealing in stolen property. She said she was unaware the decorations had been stolen.
“She never told me it came from the graveyard,” Crawford told WJXT-TV. “She said it was her’s and her mom’s and she had some of it in storage.”
Police say that may be true, but that Crawford failed to alert the authorities when she later discovered she had taken stolen goods.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I wish I could undo that bit of buying I did.”

Jenni Hudkins
Hudkins was charged with multiple counts of dealing in stolen property and removing a monument from a gravesite. She is being held on $700,000 bond.