A botched burial in Sebastopol

A neighbor's effort to honor her dead friend ran into problems at the local cemetery

What the gravesite looked like when the friends of Diane Laurie came to pay their respects. (Photo from the Williams family)

On Monday, July 28, Sebastopol’s Connie Williams and family set off for the funeral of their longtime neighbor and friend Diane Laurie, who had died in a care home at the end of June.

When Williams learned that her friend had died, she reached out to Laurie’s conservator for help in arranging the funeral. They arranged for a funeral service at Daniels Chapel of the Roses, which Williams said went beautifully, and a burial at Sebastopol Memorial Lawn, the town’s historic cemetery.

That did not go off as planned.

When the Williams family and the team from Daniels arrived at the cemetery, they couldn’t find the gravesite. There wasn’t a tent set up anywhere or any chairs that they could see. The funeral director went off in search of Steve Lang, the owner of the cemetery.

“There were just five of us because Diane didn’t have any family there,” Williams said. “So it was me, my husband, my granddaughter, my daughter and my daughter's friend…Then one of the girls said, ‘Well, there’s a backhoe down there,’ and that’s where it was. He hadn’t even finished digging the grave,” Williams said. “He said he’d hurt his back.”

Williams said there was also no bier to place the casket on—and no one to help lower the casket into the grave.

“This is 3 in the afternoon the day of the burial, and the gravesite is just being dug,” she said. “This was terribly upsetting to my family and to the funeral director.”

Williams said the funeral director, Will Daniels, told her, “Well, we’ll have to take her back to the mortuary. We’ll do this again tomorrow at three. I said, ‘Okay, we'll be there.’”

The Sebastopol Times reached out Daniels Chapel of the Roses, but Will Daniels declined to comment about this incident.

The next day, the Williams family returned to the cemetery. The grave was finished—though the backhoe was still standing at the graveside. There were still no chairs. Though Lang had promised the previous day to have workers available to carry the casket and lower the coffin into the ground, no one was there, except Lang, and he obviously couldn’t do it by himself.

Williams said that Daniels had to call over to his office in Santa Rosa to have some of his workers come and help. She said her granddaughter stepped up to be the fourth pallbearer.

Diane Laurie was buried that day, Tuesday, July 29, but the experience left Williams feeling unsettled.

“This has gone beyond,” she said. “This was totally inexcusable. No family should ever have to experience this.”

As for Lang, he remembers things differently. He said the grave was fully dug when the body arrived on Monday, and according to him, the burial took place that day. He did say that he’d hurt his back.

The Sebastopol Times reached out to the State of California Cemetery and Funeral Bureau, which regulates and licenses cemeteries and funeral establishments. A representative from the bureau called back. He could not confirm that the bureau had gotten a complaint about this particular incident, but he said the case sounded familiar.

Asked what happens in the case of a complaint like this, he said the bureau would investigate, and if the cemetery owner was found at fault, “They could have a warning issued to them. They can have a citation issued to them. Sometimes. It depends on how egregious the situation was. It depends on if they’re repeat offenders. There’s a lot of factors.”

We also reached out to Steve Doukas, a cemetery owner and expert witness consultant with over 30 years of cemetery management and operations experience. He was previously chair of the advisory board to the Cemetery and Funeral Bureau.

Asked if he’d ever heard of something like this happening before, he said, “It happens, though rarely,” he said. “Usually because the funeral director didn’t tell the cemetery they have a funeral coming.”

That doesn’t seem to have been the case here. Williams said she communicated with Lang at least two weeks before the scheduled burial.

What happened to the plan to sell the cemetery?

Lang put Sebastopol Memorial Lawn up for sale last November for $3 million. The property is 20.85 acres and is located within the city limits of Sebastopol. According to Rick O’Brien, the listing agent at the time, there are six undeveloped acres at the south end of the property that are not currently a part of the cemetery. These could be used for cemetery expansion, or the property could be split and that section could be re-zoned and sold for real estate development.

When we spoke last year, Lang, who has run the cemetery for 46 years, said that now that he’s older, it’s just too big of a job. “It’s a lot,” he said.

Reached this week, Lang said there were some interested buyers over the last year, including a few cemetery companies, but no one wanted to buy it—at least not for $3 million.

“They wanted to pay a lot less,” he said.

The property is currently no longer on the market.

Although Lang has struggled with licensing over the last couple of years, his cemetery manager license is currently up to date and expires on June 30, 2026.