Workers looking for human remains or Native American artifacts at St. Thomas Aquinas Cemetery near Ojai have found evidence of possible graves that weren’t previously identified.
Concerns about possibly undocumented burials at the Catholic graveyard, which has been inactive since the 1930s or 1940s, had temporarily halted an upgrade project in September.
Since then, a ground-penetrating radar machine discovered “ground disturbance anomalies” that may suggest the presence of grave sites, wrote Yannina Diaz, a spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, which owns the cemetery. The radar used is not capable of detecting human remains.
Archeologist Scott Byram, in coordination with Rincon Consultants, Inc., used the radar machine on a section of the cemetery site in the construction area, covering about 40% of the property. The 2-acre cemetery property is located at 600 E. Villanova Road near Villanova Preparatory School, just outside Ojai city limits.
The radar, which was also used on known graves for comparison, found three “likely” graves. The process detected underground shapes that matched the arc of nearby coffins or vaults. It also found buried metal that could be related to graves and other imaging that appeared to show likely or possible graves.