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Body, skull may be reunited

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By JOSE PATINO GIRONA By JOSE PATINO GIRONA

jpatino@tampatrib.com jpatino@tampatrib.com

Published: October 29, 2009

ST. PETERSBURG - When he saw the gravedigger pull the skull out of the dirt hole, he knew it could only bring bad luck.

"I never touched it," Robert Carpenter said. "I never wanted anything to do with it."

Carpenter knew it would be a memory that would weigh on his conscience - until nearly 30 years later when Pinellas County sheriff's deputies found the woman's skull at the home of his old friend, Gary Thomas.

Now, authorities are investigating whether any laws were broken and a body will be exhumed today and, maybe, reunited with its missing skull.

The case began with a call of disorderly conduct earlier this month at Thomas' home in St. Petersburg.

Thomas was gone when deputies arrived Oct. 3, but they couldn't help but notice the skull on a bedroom table.

More investigators came to the scene and took the skull to the Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner's Office, where it was identified as a human skull.

"I knew where it came from," said Carpenter, 48, who now lives in Gulfport. "I felt bad that the lady was lying in the grave without her head."

This is what happened, he said:

In the early 1980s, two gravediggers at the Royal Palm Cemetery in St. Petersburg were digging a new grave next to an old grave that had no concrete liner, Carpenter said. He and another man were watching when, as the men dug, the body of Ruth Keaton, who was buried in 1948 at age 34, caved into the hole they were digging, Carpenter said.

He said one of the men pulled the skull out.

He never forgot the moment because the skull had a pronounced root sticking out of it, he said. Carpenter looked at the gravestone and read the name Ruth Keaton.

"This is one of the reasons I left, because they were so blase about it," Carpenter said. "I never talked to them about it because it was so wrong."

He said the men threatened him not to say anything.

But a week or two later, Carpenter went to Thomas's house and saw the skull there. He said Thomas also was a gravedigger at the cemetery.

The sheriff's office says Royal Palm gravedigger Bobby Anderson, whom the sheriff's office says collected the skull, took it to Thomas as a gift. Anderson's whereabouts today are not known.

They brought the skull to Thomas to gain respect from him, Carpenter said.

Carpenter said he dropped hints to Thomas to anonymously return the skull to Royal Palm but never pressed him. He said the dead needed to be respected, and feared what could happen.

Investigators found Ruth's nephew, Mark Keaton of St. Petersburg. He said he wants his aunt's skull returned to the burial site but does not want the men prosecuted.

At 9:30 a.m. today, the University of South Florida's Department of Anthropology will assist the sheriff's office in exhuming Ruth Keaton's body. If the skull is a match, it will be reunited with the remains and re-interred, the sheriff's office said.

Reporter Peter Bernard contributed to this report. Reporter Jose Patino Girona can be reached at (813) 259-7659.

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