Barnsley: Jail for burglar who dug up grave in jewellery search

Wayne Joselyn pleaded guilty to causing a public nuisance and damaging property

A "habitual criminal" who dug up a woman's grave because he believed it contained valuable jewellery has been jailed for 15 months.

Wayne Joselyn, 43, damaged Ethel Maud Goodwin's remains during the "depraved desecration" of her burial site at Barnsley's Carlton Cemetery.

He had heard a "bizarre rumour" the grave contained either jewellery or a gun, Sheffield Crown Court was told.

Last month, Mr Joselyn admitted a charge of causing a public nuisance.

He also pleaded guilty to damaging property after digging up Mrs Goodwin's grave with a spade in the early hours of 29 April last year and disturbing other burial sites around it, including that of her husband Matthew Kelly Goodwin.

Wayne Joselyn caused nearly £1,000 in damage to graves in Barnsley's Carlton Cemetery

Prosecutor Andrew Bailey told a sentencing hearing on Friday that a member of the public had noticed piles of soil and three spades around the couple's graves.

The court heard Joselyn had dug a 3ft hole at the grave and had thrust a spade through Mrs Goodwin's coffin.

Mr Bailey said Mrs Goodwin's family had been left "very distressed" by the disturbance.

In a victim impact statement, her granddaughter Annette Dixon told the court she had suffered nightmares about what happened.

Mrs Goodwin's body, which had been buried at her funeral in 1984, had to be exhumed during a complex police investigation which involved a forensic anthropologist and archaeologist sieving through soil and analysing bone fragments.

Joselyn was arrested after an item of clothing he left at the scene provided DNA evidence linking him to the disturbance at the cemetery, which caused nearly £1,000 of damage.

The court heard that mobile phone data also showed he had been at the cemetery in the early hours of 29 April and his housemate told police he arrived home that night with his boots and trousers covered in soil.

'Immense anguish'

In mitigation, Joselyn's barrister Sean Fritchley said the defendant "knows his behaviour was despicable" and wished to "express his sorrow".

He added Joselyn, a serial burglar who is currently serving a 55-month jail sentence in HMP Doncaster for a string of crimes in 2021, had been addicted to crack cocaine and heroin at the time he disturbed Mrs Goodwin's grave and "is not quite sure in reality why he did what he did".

Mr Fritchley said Joselyn's actions were "not targeted at this family in any way. He wishes for that to be known".

Judge Jeremy Richardson KC, the Recorder of Sheffield, told Joselyn he had caused "immense anguish and upset to the family of Mrs and Mr Goodwin" as well as "considerable revulsion in the community".

He added: "You have said there was a bizarre rumour that jewellery or a firearm had been buried in the grave. You were utterly divorced from reality.

"There is no evidence to suggest that was true. It was almost certainly a figment of your drug-addled brain."

The judge said "habitual criminal" Joselyn's "depraved desecration" of the graves had been deliberate and premeditated and could only be punished with a prison sentence.

Speaking after the sentencing hearing, Det Insp Mark Cockayne said: "In essence, we had to have another funeral for Maud because of what he did and reinter her into the grave with her husband.

"Today's sentencing will hopefully have brought about some closure for the family, who will hopefully now begin to start moving forward and putting this behind them."